-MoneyLife.in The flood havoc in Kolhapur and Sangli districts has killed 54 people and thousands of cattle, besides causing colossal loss of property, farmlands and crops.  Was it the ferocity of nature that caused such a great calamity or did human interference aggravate the situation? RTI documents reveal that tampering of the red and blue line demarcation of the Panchganga River in the Kolhapur Development Plan, due to the pressure of the...

-Hindustan Times Since Independence, waves of forest encroachments have been regularised on one pretext or another, and this unfortunate trend seems to be continuing. With a recent United Nations report warning that one million species of plants and animals are poised on the brink of extinction, we need to take all forest destruction very seriously The Forest Rights Act (FRA) was originally meant to redress historical injustice to genuine forest dwellers by...

-TheWire.in The delta has shrunk by 20% because of diversion of land and climate change. Water-intensive agriculture and industrial practices are adding to the problem. Despite being one of the oldest water-regulator structures in the world that is still functional, the Kallanai dam or the Grand Anicut looks almost empty with not much water to regulate. Located near Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu, it was built across river Kaveri around 2000 years ago...

-The Hindu Both human rights and wildlife rights groups have not used the Forest Rights Act as a conservation tool On February 13, the Supreme Court ordered the eviction of more than 10 lakh Adivasis and other forest dwellers from forestland across 17 States. The petitioners, mainly wildlife NGOs, had demanded that State governments evict those forest dwellers whose claims over traditional forestland under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers...

-Hindustan Times The law provides for giving land rights to those living on forest land for at least three generations before December 31, 2005. The Supreme Court has asked the governments of 17 states to evict an estimated one million tribal and other households living in forests after their claims of the right to live in forests were rejected under the Forest Rights Act. The court has asked the evictions to be...