The draft Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, or MMDR Bill, includes a crucial provision to share the wealth of mining — 26 per cent of the annual profits — with people who live near the projects. But industry wants this profit-sharing clause dropped. The Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (Fimi) says it will breed lazy people, who will only drink and beat up their women. The Confederation...

The implementation of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 has created controversy in West Bengal. The gram sabha, the basic unit in the process of forest rights recognition, has been replaced by the gram sansad, denoting the village level constituency under the panchayati raj system. This has been followed by contiguous arrangements as well as initiatives which are inconsistent with the Act....

In a bid to increase employment and integrate locals with the administration, especially in naxal-hit areas, tribal people with some basic education could soon be hired as community forest officers on a seasonal basis. If the original proposal is approved, the Chhattisgarh forest department alone will get an additional workforce of 1.2 lakh people at the annual cost of Rs. 450 crore. Speaking at a national conference on reforms in forestry administration...

Four days after a government-appointed expert panel recommended that Vedanta Resources should not be allowed to go ahead with its bauxite mining project in the Niyamgiri hills of Orissa, the Congress announced that its general secretary Rahul Gandhi would be visiting Niyamgiri on August 26. In a report to Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, the expert panel headed by N C Saxena, a retired IAS officer who is a...

Jharkhand’s implementation of the Centre’s flagship scheme to grant land rights to forest dwellers has been extremely poor, ringing hollow promises by successive governments to uphold rights of over three lakh tribals of the state. According to a report prepared by a 19-member committee constituted by the Union ministry of environment and Forests, 24 districts of Jharkhand had granted land rights to a mere 7,207 forest dwellers under Scheduled Tribes and...