Access to land and its resources is important since it determines the extent of poverty and deprivation one faces. Historically tribal populations and other traditional forest dwellers did not enjoy any legal entitlement such as ownership rights or user rights of the forest lands where they had been living since ages, both communally and individually. The Forest Rights Act (FRA) is, thus, seen as a progressive legislation that attempted to...

-PTI Muslims have the highest number of illiterates — nearly 43 percent of their population — while Jains have the highest number of literates among India’s religious communities with over 86 percent of them educated. According to the Census 2011 data, Jains have just 13.57 percent illiterates aged seven and above among all communities. The census has taken those between 0 and 6 years as illiterate. Muslims have the highest percentage of illiterates aged...

-The Hindu Recorded incidents of agrarian riots jumped 327 per cent from 628 in 2014 to 2,683 in 2015. New Delhi: Incidents of rioting remained almost the same in 2015 as compared to 2014, but as communal riots decreased, big increases were seen in other categories — agrarian, sectarian and student riots and caste conflicts, data from the “Crime in India” report for 2015 released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB)...

-The Hindu Jaipur: Calling upon BRICS countries to strengthen “cooperative mechanisms”, Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan on Saturday said a united front would help in the successful implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Much of India’s development agenda was mirrored in the SDGs, Ms. Mahajan said. Inaugurating the first meeting of the BRICS Women Parliamentarians’ Forum at the Rajasthan Assembly here, Ms. Mahajan said while India had chosen the path of...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Parliament’s Standing Committee on Agriculture may have expressed concern at the unscientific and excessive use of pesticides in agriculture that pose a threat both to the environment and human health. But experts say their judicious use, combined with safe agricultural practices, is the only way out as the country’s growing demand for food cannot be met through organic farming. In its recently presented report in Parliament for 2015-16,...