-The Indian Express According to the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Rules 2016, the district collector needs to complete the process of vesting of forest rights under the FRA and obtain written consent of the affected Gram sabhas before any project proposal reaches the forest department for consideration. New Delhi: A day before it moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay and modification of its February 13 order directing states to evict over...

-The Hindu Experts and activists say the complex problem cannot be prevented merely by monetary handouts meant to retain girls in school Kolkata: Dipali, Manju and Sahanara (names changed) were all beneficiaries of West Bengal’s most talked about conditional cash transfer scheme, Kanyashree. However, despite being beneficiaries of the scheme, which according to the State government has 56.09 lakh beneficiaries so far, these three young women were trafficked between 2016-18. Of the three trafficking...

-The Indian Express The SECC has identified a total of 1.82 lakh households where at least one person is employed in manual scavenging in rural India, numbers which have been dismissed as gross underestimate by organisations working in the area. The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has issued orders to all states to use the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) so as to identify persons working as manual scavengers, persons with disabilities,...

-The Indian Express The state has reported 13.13 lakh hectare of chana acreage as compared to 19.77 lakh hectare last year. The acreage had come down this year due to moisture stress from the drought. Pune: Gram growers in the drought-hit district of Marathwada are facing reduced yield and low prices. Low demand and offloading stock by government agencies have dimmed the prices of good realisation for farmers this year. Farmers in...

-Press Release by All India Forum of Forest Movements (AIFFM), dated February 22, 2019 On 13 February, the Supreme Court of India, hearing a decade-old petition challenging the constitutional validity of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, ordered that forest dwellers whose claims for recognition of forest rights have been rejected would have to be evicted in a summary and time-bound manner. The order contains separate instructions for each state government to...