-The New Indian Express   BHUBANESWAR: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked Malkangiri district administration to submit a detailed report within 15 days on the allegations of irregularities in implementation of Integrated Child Development Service (ICDS) programme in two blocks. Taking cognisance of a petition filed by Right to Food Campaign, Odisha, the national child rights panel directed the Collector to investigate into the charges. The petition stated that child...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government is worried about the safety of these "stubborn, independent and aggressive" denizens of the hills. Cyclone Hudhud could prove to be more aggressive. Special relief commissioner P.K. Mohapatra said the Bondas - a primitive tribe living in the Malkangiri forests that fall in the path of the approaching cyclone - have not experienced in the recent past such a storm that weather officials said could pack...

-IPS News Malkangiri (Odisha)- Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India's eastern Odisha state, the Upper Bonda people are considered one of this country's most ancient tribes, having barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years. Resistant to contact with the outside world and fiercely skeptical of modern development, this community of under...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: "Is there andhergardi (lawlessness) in this country," an angry Supreme Court asked after being told by the Naveen Patnaik government that unlicensed labour contractors chopped off the palms of two migrant labourers' after the tribal men they had herded for contract labour in brick kilns managed to flee. Counsel Jayshree Satpute and R S Jena narrated the unending exploitation of tribal men in six districts of...

-The New Indian Express   BHUBANESWAR: With women's participation in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on a decline in the State, the Odisha Government has asked the district collectors to adopt women-specific plans to reverse the trend. Apart from specific types of work which are favourable to women, facilities at the work sites and if possible, incentives must also be provided to district coordinators, the collectors have been told. In...