-The Hindu Business Line Nine years after a landmark law empowering local communities, thousands of forest villages across India struggle to regain their traditional rights over resources and livelihoods Sundar Singh Rabha always carries a certain file folder. He holds it against himself in a hot tin car as it jangles along forest roads towards village Shalkumar, in a northern corner of West Bengal. His phone rings without respite. Every few minutes,...

-Hindustan Times A migrant labourer not long ago, 37-year-old Sitaram Majhi is now a successful farmer. As Odisha’s agricultural fields starve for water due to drought conditions this year, Majhi never had a problem watering his crop in Kharamal village in Bargarh district’s parched Paikmal block, more than 500 km from Bhubaneswar. Equipped with chahala – a small traditional water harvesting structure – and a vermi-compost pit the three-acre farm, on which he...

-The Hindu Ignoring the groundswell of public opinion against a resumption of bauxite mining, the Andhra Pradesh government has been taking concrete steps to start mineral exploration in the Eastern Ghats. The Maoists have used this opportunity to try winning support of the tribals. Ever since the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)] made a tactical retreat from the undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2004, engagements between the naxalites and the State...

-The Times of India BURLUBARU, KANDHAMAL: Kanigalaru Majhi's food stocks are running out. A middle aged woman from the Kutia Kondh tribe in Kandhamal's Burlubaru village in Odisha's Kandhamal district, Majhi is worried there will be a time soon when they will no longer be able to depend on the hills for their food because teak plantations have supplanted entire patches of forest where Kanigalaru and her tribespeople sourced millets, pulses, tubers...

-Livemint.com MGNREGS work days increased to 150 from 100; Rs.5,142 cr rurban project to create 300 smart village clusters New Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government on Wednesday unveiled a package of measures to combat rural distress in the backdrop of a below-average monsoon rainfall. The Union cabinet decided to increase the number of days of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) from the existing 100...