A war of words has broken out between the state government on the one hand and Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) and Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) on the other over processing land ownership claims of tribals as per provisions of the Forests Rights Act, 2006. In a report, a committee comprising officials from the two union ministries said lower-rung officials in the state have no clear understanding of...

If home minister P Chidambaram’s recent letter to West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is any indication, it has taken the Union home ministry seven years to realise that arming civilians to fight Naxalites is a bad idea. How much longer will it take for them to realise that the current paramilitary-based approach in Chhattisgarh is similarly bound to fail? From 2003 onwards, the home ministry has followed a policy of...

The Supreme Court has condemned the stripping and parading of a tribal woman by four upper-caste men 17 years ago, citing it as an example of how tribals are systemically ill-treated and “marginalised” in India. The accused had dismissed the evidence of the victim’s torn clothes claiming that she and other Bhils were poor and usually wore tattered clothes. “This itself shows the mentality of the accused who regard tribal people as...

Dronacharya, Guru of Pandavas and Kauravas in the epic Mahabharata, came in for some harsh contemporary scrutiny in the Supreme Court, with the apex court terming as shameful his action in seeking the right thumb of tribal Eklavya to clear the way for his favourite, Arjun, to emerge as the best archer of the times. "This was a shameful act on the part of Dronacharya. He had not even taught...

The world's third-largest steel maker Posco has said the company is running out of patience over its long delayed Rs 54,000-crore steel project in Orissa and may have to take a final call in the near future. The 12-million-tonne-per annum project has been stuck for the last five years and with an environment ministry panel recommending cancellation of its forest clearance proposal last year, the impasse seems endless. "The government has to...