Chikkamade Gowda had once told the Centre to give him poison. It was better than being evicted from his forest habitat. That was in 1974. Thirty-seven years on, the Soliga tribal and some 16,500 fellow sufferers are celebrating their homecoming, thanks to a landmark central amendment. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2008, allows them to use nearly 60 per cent of their ancestral land,...
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These girls chose education despite adverse circumstances
-The Hindu An event called ‘Navjyoti' was organised by UNICEF in collaboration with DD Sahyadri to honour these girls from Maharashtra For the many poor girls who drop out of school in Maharashtra's rural hinterland, there are those who decide to stay. And then there are those who stage a comeback. It's what Lata Batku did, after being forced to drop out of school to take care of her baby sister. Her village...
More »CPI(M), activists oppose Jaitapur nuke project
-PTI CPI(M) and other parties, including scientists and activists, on Sunday came together to form a national committee to support the struggle against the Jaitapur nuclear project in Maharashtra. A 15-member National Committee in Support of Jaitapur Struggle will have CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat, his CPI counterpart AB Bardhan, former Atomic Energy Regulatory Board chairman Dr A Gopalkrishnan and former Union finance secretary SP Shukla as members among others. "The people of...
More »Cost of mining: dry lakes, barren fields across a state once green by Shalini Nair
While imposing a ban on mining in Karnataka’s Bellary district in July this year, the Supreme Court had reasoned that the massive environmental damage caused by excessive mining impinges on the constitutional right to life. In neighbouring Goa, the latest state rocked by a mining scandal, the destruction could be on an even larger scale if one compares mining figures and relates these to the areas of the large district and...
More »‘There was only one old woman left in the village. The others were all hiding in the hills’ by V Shoba
A tiny road flanked by lush turmeric and maize fields veers off the state highway from Dharmapuri to Harur in Tamil Nadu towards Vachathi, a tribal village that has hungered for justice for nearly two decades after an irreparable tragedy destroyed its peace. Nineteen years ago, a large team of Tamil Nadu Police and officers from the forest and revenue departments swooped down on the village nestled in the foothills...
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