-The Hindu Mumbai: Sloppy implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) has resulted in large tracts of forests being cut down and claimed as cultivated land in Maharashtra, according to a study. Data shows that in Jalgaon district alone, more than 79 per cent claims over cultivated forest land were apparently on ineligible lands and about 25 per cent had forest cover. In Thane, adjacent to Mumbai with a high land...

-The Hindu Natpurwa is a village where women have been forced into prostitution for centuries. And one of them is determined to help the others break free. Round faced, stout and dusky, Chandralekha, at age 15, was the most desired girl among the politicians, policemen and senior members of Eastern Uttar Pradesh’s civil society. “They always wanted plump women,” says Chandralekha, now 51 years old. Chandralekha was pushed into prostitution, by her...

-The Hindu Rajput women in Bikaner have found empowerment through home-based call centres dispensing tips on organic farming As a young girl, Vijay Laxmi was never allowed to visit her family farm in Bikaner. Rajput women, she was told, stay in purdah, their world restricted to their home and hearth. Even when Laxmi got married to Mahendra Singh of Jhajhar village in the neighbouring Jhunjhunu district, her life did not change much...

-The Hindu In the absence of safety gear, silica mine workers suffer the worst consequences Shankargarh, a block along the south-western fringes of Allahabad district in Uttar Pradesh, is widely known as a large supplier of silica sand to the glass industry. The area is rocky and unfit for Cultivation, leaving its major inhabitants- the Kol tribe, and Chamar and Kumbi castes little option but to engage in stone quarrying and sand...

-Outlook Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due next year, the UPA government has finalised a draft Bill for providing homes to the homeless in rural areas. The draft of the National Right to Homestead Bill, 2013, prepared by the Rural Development ministry, is almost ready for inter-ministerial consultation, official sources said today According to the eleventh plan document, an estimated 13 to 18 million families in rural India are landless, of which...