By stopping social security pensions, the Karnataka government has put the lives of over 10 lakh poor in peril. Naveen Basavaraj Kuntoji is nine years old and suffers from cerebral palsy. His movements are greatly restricted, and it looks like he is in great pain every time he valiantly wills his body to do something. When he is hungry, he slowly lifts his hand and points to his mouth. When this...

Highway users should brace for paying toll even after the private road developer or the government recovers the capital investment with the interest. A new plan finalized by the government has proposed that road users would pay user charge for "efficient" operation and maintenance of the highway stretches in perpetuity. Under the new model, the highways ministry wants to levy a fee for projects taken up under short-term operation-maintenance-transfer (OMT) contracts...

-Down to Earth Industrial houses use tribals as fronts to amass tribal land in Chhattisgarh Ram Singh’s neighbours tease him by calling him Crorepati Singh. The 40-year-old Gond tribal from Parsada village in Raipur district of Chhattisgarh has hardly any landholding and depends on the government’s employment guarantee schemes to feed his family. But according to official documents, Singh has recently purchased land worth Rs 1.5 crore from a dozen of tribals...

-FAO The world's forests have a major role to play in the transition to a new, greener economy, a theme being discussed at the Rio+20 Conference.  But to spark that shift, governments must enact programs and policies aimed at both unlocking the potential of forests and ensuring that they are sustainably managed, FAO said today. In a new report, The State of the World's Forests 2012 (SOFO 2012), the UN Food and...

-Down to Earth Where titles have been granted, average size of land holdings much smaller than what the Forest Rights Act provides for, says status report on implementation of the Act   The latest status report of the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs on the implementation status of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 confirms the general perception that the law has not really benefitted tribal people and other forest dwellers...