-Hind Kisan In the hill state, only 16 percent of the cooks working under the school meal programme are Dalits. This is an appalling figure in a state where they make one-fourth of the population. Caste is a stronger divider in this picturesque Himachali village of Saraha than the river which cuts across dividing it into two halves. The west bank hosts mostly Dalit houses and the upper castes have occupied...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com Vikas Gando Thayo Chhe" which means ‘development has gone mad’ is a super hit song these days in Gujarat. In the just concluded garba festival, this song was hugely popular throughout Gujarat. The song became popular even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi celebrated his birthday on 7 September by declaring completion of an incomplete Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), heaping totally unnecessary, unjustified and unjust displacement on 40,000 families in the...

-Livemint.com The river interlinking project will adversely affect land, forests, biodiversity, rivers and the livelihood of millions of people Interlinking of rivers is a very expensive proposal. It has huge adverse environmental impacts on land, forests, biodiversity, rivers and the livelihood of millions of people. It is a socially disruptive proposition. It will not only add to climate change impact (destruction of forests means destruction of carbon sinks, and reservoirs in tropical...

-The Hindu The headline in a recent PTI report “Saving 2 tigers gives more value than Mangalyaan”’ was intriguing, since it said that saving two tigers yields a capital benefit of Rs. 520 crores, while Mangalyaan cost us Rs. 450 crores. The headline was both exciting and hurtful. Excited by it, I contacted Professor Madhu Verma of the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal, and she shared with me both...

-Scroll.in Instead of wages for a short period of time, the family running the project in Lanka village will create an asset for life. Mahavir Parhaiya’s household in the remote village of Lanka in Latehar district of Jharkhand is bustling with activity. They are busy working on setting up a mango plantation on what was once a barren plot near their house, under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act...