-The Hindu It is tragic that ‘New India’ chooses to attack Adivasis and forest-dwellers instead of those destroying its ecology When the tsunami hit the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2004, thousands perished. However, some of the oldest Adivasi tribes, the Jarawas and the Onges, lost nobody. These communities followed animals to the highlands well before the waves hit. Formal education was of little survival value in a context where you needed...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of deliberately creating and highlighting contention on national security issues as a political strategy, Swaraj India president Yogendra Yadav warned that the long term result would endanger national interests. He was speaking in the context of the BJP’s response to Congress leader Sam Pitroda’s comments on the Balakot air strikes, and other efforts by the BJP to “hijack the electoral agenda”...

-The Hindu Sabotaging the Forest Rights Act damages democracy Since 1980, through the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF) has “diverted for non-forest use” (bureaucratese for destroyed) over 1.5 million hectares of forest. How many Adivasis and forest-dwellers have been evicted by this ‘lawful’ forest destruction? Stripping these forests has yielded thousands of crores of rupees for corporations to which a bulk of these forestlands...

-Scroll.in They were told to furnish non-existent records, their claims were illegally decided by forest guards, they were not informed of rejections or allowed to appeal. Breaking the law isn’t something one is usually proud of. But for Devi Lal, a resident of a forest village in southern Rajasthan, a court summons for encroaching on forest land in 2002 is a prized possession. A quiet, tall man dressed in a dhoti, kurta and...

-TheWire.in Issues tied to forest governance require a collaborative approach rather than narrow court action on the Forest Rights Act. The Supreme Court order related to the “eviction” of tribal and forest-dwelling communities has made big news. The February 13 order directing state governments to initiate action against all those with “rejected” claims has reignited longstanding ideological disputes over India’s forest governance. Reactions to the recent order in a case filed by Wildlife...