-The Telegraph Over 10 crore tribal people who earn their living by selling minor forest produce can now look forward to a better deal. State governments and the Planning Commission have backed a proposal to fix a uniform minimum support price for 13 such items by an independent commission. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs is likely to take up the proposal for setting up a National Minor Forest Produce Price Commission (NMFPPC) with...

The tribal affairs ministry is moving fast to amend the Forest Rights Act and bring about changes in rules that would make it easier for traditional forest dwellers to get their rightful claim over forest lands and more difficult for the industry to use the green patches without the former's nod. The move comes with the central government recording serious flaws in the implementation of the Act across the country. As...

For the first time, the Centre has urged the governor to use his special powers in Scheduled Areas to cancel bauxite mining leases given in Andhra Pradesh's Vishakhapatnam district. Linking the issue of bauxite mining to the growing Maoist violence on the Andhra-Odisha border, the Centre has asked Andhra Pradesh governor ESL Narsimhan to use special powers, bestowed to governors in Scheduled Areas under the Constitution, to cancel the leases. The Centre...

The National Green Tribunal's decision to suspend the environmental clearance given to Posco vindicates the project's critics. ON March 30, the Principal Bench of the newly formed National Green Tribunal (NGT) delivered a momentous decision suspending the environmental clearance (EC) given to the South Korean transnational corporation, Posco, to set up an integrated steel plant at Paradip in Odisha's Jagatsinghpur district. The former Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam...

-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...