-The Hindu Forging gram sabha resolutions clears the path to lucrative mining... Such fictions manufacture on file the legal requirement of villagers’ participation and consent. Over 12,000 villages across Odisha conserve their community forests, says a 2013 Odisha Jungle Manch study. In a visit last October to seven villages in Keonjhar district’s Gandhamardan range, Munda communities showed me their forest protection rosters. Each roster listed four villagers for every weekday to roam...

-The Indian Express A new initiative attempts to economically empower villagers living near Kanha National Park, and protect its green cover and wildlife. The Kanha–Pench forest corridor is rich in biodiversity and home to a large concentration of tigers, leopards, gaurs, barasingha, and cheetal. But with the population of the villages increasing and land holdings shrinking, conservation efforts were paramount. If the needs of the villagers for improved livelihoods are not...

-Outlook Vigorous action can nullify the reasons that conspire to keep Dalits out of newsrooms In the ’50s, a foreign correspondent wrote to a renowned south Indian English daily, seeking comments on alleged discrimination against non-Brahmin journalists on its staff. Discrimination was out of the question, the paper clarified, as it never hired a non-Brahmin!  Over  60 years later, the media landscape has altered but the Indian newsroom is still the sanctuary...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The women and child development ministry (WCD) has written to the Rajya Sabha seeking to withdraw its response on marital rape describing it as an "oversight." The fresh response that the ministry is likely to put before Parliament is that the issue is under law commission's consideration. WCD minister Maneka Gandhi's response to a Parliament question in Rajya Sabha terming marital rape as a concept unsuited...

-The Indian Express That’s what the Aadhaar Act is. It was rightly categorised as a money bill and is wrongly expected to double up as a privacy statute With the billionth Aadhaar number being issued, the Aadhaar project is well on its way to becoming the centrepiece for governance in India irrespective of which government is in power. To that extent, critical engagement with the Aadhaar act is an essential exercise...