-The Hindu Business Line The rejection of the the Gadgil panel report, by all the six States along the Western Ghats, has proved to be a costly error The floods of catastrophic dimensions that ravaged Kerala recently have brought into sharp focus the all-round ecological destruction caused by human interference in the State’s hilly terrains. The fact that there were 12 major landslides and hundreds of minor ones within a fortnight in the...

-Scroll.in Raghav Chandra, secretary of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes, says displaced Adivasis should not only be compensated with money but land as well. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes has been quite proactive in the last few months. It has prevailed upon the central government to withdraw orders that it thought “diluted” tribal rights, asked states to return “unfairly acquired tribal lands”, and reminded governors of their powers to...

  The outcome of a social audit (conducted in April this year) related to the pilot cash transfer programme in the public distribution system (PDS) in Nagri block (Ranchi district) has confirmed that most beneficiaries want back the normal ration system that existed previously. Yet the Jharkhand state government continues with the DBT-based PDS in Nagri block, instead of returning back to the older system, says a press release by the...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

-The Telegraph Patna: A project has been launched in Bihar to make structures - primarily water bodies - under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme climate resilient. UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is providing technical assistance to the state in this project which aims to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change. Christened "Infrastructure for Climate Resilient Growth (ICRG)", the project is being implemented in 35 blocks spread over West...