-The Indian Express Ramesh, who had the independent charge of the ministry between 2009 and 2011, said the “Environment Minister must stand up and say that climate change is more important than Ease of Doing Business”. The job of the Environment Minister is to protect the environment and not look at it from the perspective of Ease of Doing Business, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said during a discussion on climate...

-Down to Earth Devansh Mehta believes that people can be sensitised through incentives, be it as small as mobile top-ups In 2016, when Devansh Mehta was asked to sensitise tribal people about the forest rights Act, 2006 (FRA), he came up with a simple solution: “Give them an incentive. They will come on their own.” Raipur-based non-profit CGnet Swara, where Mehta heads sustainability initiatives, implemented his proposal on an experimental basis and...

-Hindustan Times It is also important to remember that both these laws were the product of sustained, grassroots-level social movements. Consequently, perhaps the surest remedy against possible future dilution may lie not in judicial challenges (although that remains important), but in popular mobilisation. With the 2019 general election yielding a decisive mandate for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), attention will soon turn to the new government’s legislative agenda. As the government is...

-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ tribals from the forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” forest-dwellers. When we first heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...

-The Hindu It is shocking that a democratic government is seeking to strengthen the colonial-era Indian Forest Act The Indian Forest Act, 1927 was a remarkable piece of expropriation in the name of conservation. The British government carried out one of the largest land expropriations in history, where the rights to occupy and use forests were transferred from communities with customary and historical property rights to the colonial Central government. The act...