-TheWire.in One of the most disturbing effects of the pandemic has been on the nutritional needs of the disadvantaged. The Budget needs to prioritise addressing this issue. The pandemic led disruptions of nutrition services have exacerbated India’s existing burden of undernutrition. Children did not get the mid-day meals and supplementary nutrition under the anganwadi services scheme they were registered under. Critical health services like immunisation, iron-folic acide and calcium supplementation, treatment of...

-Down to Earth The ‘real owner’ of forest land is still the forest department. Such brazen violation of the law betrays a systematic attempt to implement FRA, reducing it to a symbol rather than a tool of empowerment The Dangs, the smallest district in Gujarat, is a thickly forested and tribal-dominated region that has been away from the ‘developmental’ paradigm till today. Some 77.5 per cent of its area is under forest cover,...

-Scroll.in Influenced by conservative vegetarian lobbies, most BJP-ruled states do not serve nutrition-laden eggs in school and Anganwadi menus. In her haunting short story Shishu (Little Ones), writer Mahashweta Devi depicts the cruelty of shrunk bodies deformed by acute hunger and starvation in Adivasi hamlets, due to chronic administrative apathy. Reminiscent of this dystopian parable, the recently released National Family Health Survey 2019-’20, for the first time since the turn of the millennium...

-Article-14.com The Uttar Pradesh government is entangling Dalits, Adivasis, who demand land rights or protest displacement, in cobwebs of criminality by using its version of a colonial law meant to unconstitutionally exile and humiliate ‘goondas’. Mumbai/ New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government has filed more than 25 criminal cases against a 65-year-old Dalit farmer called Shyamlal Paswan, ever since he sought formal rights to the land he farmed. Under the Forest Rights...

-The Telegraph A large segment of the protesters who travelled are Adivasis fighting for their land titles under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 The tent seemed more spacious and the winter didn’t bite as much. After spending four days on the road in a cramped tempo with 14 others, Chhagan Chaudhari, 60, extended his legs and wrapped himself with a thick blanket as he prepared to sleep on December 25 night in...