If the problems are macro, think micro. That seems to have been the guiding principle for Lekha-Mendha, the Maharashtra village that last month became the first in India to win the right to grow, harvest and sell bamboo. Such rights are the key goal of a five-year-old central law which aims to give tribal communities control over some resources of the jungles they live in. “There is no point in looking out...

A high-level committee appointed to examine introduction of minimum support price (MSP) for non-timber forest produce has recommended that a central agency be constituted to fix MSP for the produce collected by tribals and the price be fixed keeping in mind wages paid under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), transportation cost, value addition to the produce and local market prices. The committee, which was appointed in August last year...

THE Union government is reviewing its landmark initiative, the Forest Rights Act, four years after enacting it. The aim is to find how to strengthen the law which was legislated to ensure the traditional rights of 100 million forest dwelling people in the country. Two high-level groups submitted their assessment in the first week of January. But it seems the Union ministry of environment and forests has made up its mind...