-The Hindu   ‘Neo-liberal policies fine-tuned to global capitalist accumulation to blame' Neo-liberal policies fine-tuned to global capitalist accumulation are increasing poverty, mass deprivation and unemployment besides undermining food security in India, economist Utsa Patnaik said on Friday. Delivering the inaugural ‘T.G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture on Social Deprivation' under the auspices of the Media Development Foundation and the Asian College of Journalism here, Prof. Patnaik said contrary to the claims by the Centre about...

Activists working for the rights of tribes people are concerned about their portrayal in the media in India. London-headquartered Survival International, which lobbies for the rights of tribal people across the world, said it is concerned about how tribals are viewed in India. “They are often referred to as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, implying that their way of life is in some way inferior and needs to be ‘developed,’” Survival’s South Asia campaigner...

Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing assertion of adivasi identity, born out of class predicaments and experiences of displacement as much as notions of indigeneity. Supriya Sharma...

Rampant illegal iron ore mining in Chitradurga and Tumkur districts has caused severe damage to agriculture and horticulture activities, as well as spreading of mining related diseases among the people of the region, a study has found.    The micro-level environmental impact assessment study conducted in the two districts by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) also expressed concern over large-scale damages due to violations of environmental norms.  It recommended...

The CBI has said that the multi-crore forestry scam in Haryana which was exposed by whistleblower Sanjiv Chaturvedi, a young forest official, is a fit case for it to investigate independently.  However, the agency will require clearance from both the Centre and the state government to investigate a case that many officials have attempted to scuttle over the last five years. The green signal may be difficult to get considering that...