-Down to Earth The families depended on forest produce but have been moved far away from forest land The eviction of residents from 222 villages on the Godavari river basin for the Polavaram dam project tells the story of India’s tribal families fighting a losing battle for their land and forest rights.  On March 27, 2021, Bariya Nagaraj’s was among 72 families forcefully shifted from their home in Agraharam village in East Godavari...

-TheWire.in "Constitutional and legal mandates are not sufficient to protect the rights of the marginalised group including Dalit and tribals," he said at a lecture. New Delhi: tribals are subject to oppression and cruelty even after independence and still picked up by the investigating officers to cover up shoddy investigations, Supreme Court Judge Justice D.Y. Chandrachud said on Monday. Justice Chandrachud was speaking at the 13th B R Ambedkar Memorial Lecture on the...

-The Hindu The sustained campaign helps 43% reach the ‘normal’ mark Following the adoption of a bottom-up approach to strengthening child protection systems, 43% of malnourished children in one of the 11 blocks in tribal-dominated Banswara district in southern Rajasthan have hit the normal mark. The initiative has sought to protect the most vulnerable ones among the undernourished children and safeguarded them against a possible third wave of the pandemic. The drive for...

-Down to Earth Srikumar Khadi’s claim to his land in Odisha’s Sundergarh district is over a century old; but it still awaits recognition Srikumar Khadi’s great-grandparents moved to Bhuin-Jor from Dhamakpur in Odisha’s Sundergarh district around 100 years ago. They were offered a small piece of land in the forest by Bhuin-Jor’s inhabitants. They settled in the forest with the passage of time and started using the land as a homestead. They also...

The virility of Muslim men vis-à-vis men from other religious communities have often been used as a political tool and to create a divisive agenda just before elections for getting votes from the majority of the Indian electorate who are Hindus. Instead of focusing on positive agendas like human development, employment generation, and poverty reduction, political campaigns just before the elections oftentimes reduce to mere communal propaganda (when a lot...