-Down to Earth This new development will benefit the scheduled tribes residing in Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister on Wednesday (April 25) approved the declaration of 227 villages in three districts of Rajasthan as Schedule Areas. The declaration of Scheduled Areas under Fifth Schedule to the Constitution of India was done by rescinding the Constitution Order 114 of February 12, 1981 and promulgating a new Constitution...

-TheWire.in The focus of the Maharashtra farmers' march was on land rights for Adivasi communities. That promise will take a while to fulfil, and not much headway has been made. It has been a month since over 40,000 farmers walked 180 km from Nashik to Mumbai to press for their demands. They returned home with an assurance from the state’s chief minister that their demands would be met “100%”. Although chief...

-Livemint.com The historic farmer protest launched on 1 June 2017 had a nationwide impact and raised several demands of farmers which still remain unaddressed Mumbai: The Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha, a farmers’ organization affiliated to the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, will launch yet another protest on farm issues from 1 June to mark the first anniversary of the Maharashtra farmer protests. The Maharashtra state council of Akhil Bharatiya Kisan Sabha...

-The Hindu The draft Forest Policy re-emphasises production forestry, raising many ecological and social concerns Government policy documents are statements of goals, priorities and strategies. If old strategies have failed or circumstances have changed, they should be revised. Given that our Forest Policy was last revised in 1988, changes are perhaps overdue. The new draft Forest Policy 2018, however, ignores the lessons from this period and returns to the state-managed forestry of...

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the...