The government says area under forests has been increasing for the last 13 years. ET finds this is the outcome of statistical jugglery and the use of flawed definitions by India's forest bureaucracy. The bald truth is India's forests are in serious decline, both in numbers and in health. In February, the latest instalment of a little environmental kabuki played out when the Forest Survey of India released its biennial report...

ZAVOORA, India (AlertNet) – Amid thousands of tree stumps stretching over almost 60 hectares (150 acres) of bare plateau, there are signs of life. Delicate saplings of kail and deodar conifers are growing between other newly planted deciduous trees.  The woodland had been cut down illegally by loggers and encroached upon for farming. But forestry officials here in Shopian district, a two-hour drive south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s...

Historians tell us of the colonial era stories of miserable conditions of workers, even bonded labour, in Tea plantations of eastern India. However, the situation improved after independence. In the past few decades the tea industry has made steady profits even in worst years of economic downturn. And that is why reports of starvation deaths in Tea plantations of Assam are so shocking. An Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report says that...

-Express News Service   Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Virbhadra Singh on Tuesday tore into the state BJP government on various issues like corruption, illegal land deals and dynastic rule, and did not spare the state Congress leadership either for not playing the role of an effective Opposition.   The five-time former chief minister raised the issue of land transfer recently allowed under Section 118 of the HP Tenancy and Land...

Assam tea has failed to capture the market in the very country whose planters made it a marketable commodity in the state 150 years ago. The situation, however, can be turned around with a better marketing strategy, Mark Kibblewhite, an eminent tea scientist and a professor at Cranfield University in the UK, told The Telegraph on the sidelines of World Tea Science Congress which began at Tocklai Experimental Station at Cinnamara,...