-Newsclick.in The move is aimed at helping corporate biggies that have recently forayed into the commercial coal mining sector. New Delhi: In yet another attempt to help corporate biggies that have recently forayed into commercial coal mining, the Narendra Modi government has tweaked an environmental law to allow extraction of combustible mineral even before obtaining final forest clearance. The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change...

-PTI/ TheWire.in The government said that an allocation of Rs 2,000 crore has been made in the current financial year for the waiver. Ranchi: The Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand waived farm loans of up to Rs 50,000, benefitting around 9 lakh farmers of the state, officials said on Thursday. The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, partly fulfilling the promise made by the ruling coalition ahead of the 2019...

-Mongabay.com * A latest government study has found that mining activities in the coal-rich Tamnar area of Chhattisgarh have put the local population, mainly tribal people, at an increased risk of acute respiratory diseases and tuberculosis. * The study reveals that in the case of tuberculosis, the disease burden rate in Tamnar is nearly double the national rate and almost triple the rate in the state, highlighting the adverse impact of mining. *...

-Livemint.com Politics in India has been based on caste in recent decades. But a rising middle class and increasing inequality within caste groups is paving the way for a class-based faultline. One cliché looms large in every election campaign in India: that caste politics may finally give way to class politics. But as counting begins on the day of the election verdict, caste subsumes every other factor, even in serious analyses of...

-TheWire.in Engaging with the agrarian question must necessarily mean questioning the development model that is hungry for land but spits out the people that live on it. Over the last few weeks, images of farmers from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh engaged in pitched battles against the police, and by extension the state, have caught the nation’s attention as it forced the government into unconditional talks with a broad coalition of farmers’...