In a bid to increase employment and integrate locals with the administration, especially in naxal-hit areas, tribal people with some basic education could soon be hired as community forest officers on a seasonal basis. If the original proposal is approved, the Chhattisgarh forest department alone will get an additional workforce of 1.2 lakh people at the annual cost of Rs. 450 crore. Speaking at a national conference on reforms in forestry administration...

When former Karnataka Lokayukta N Santosh Hegde recently said that vested interests were controlling the mining industry, he was not exaggerating, considering that India registered over 182,000 cases of illegal mining across 17 states in the last five years alone. The Union government data show that Andhra Pradesh — the single largest contributor to the country’s mineral production of roughly Rs 1,28,000 crore — alone registered a 110 per cent increase...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...

In continuance with the government’s effort to empower people of Naxal affected areas, the government is considering significant changes in two Central laws to meet the aspirations of locals. The two laws — Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas  Act, also called PESA, meant for scheduled tribe areas and Forest Rights Act (FRA) covering those living in forests —are said to contradict each other  while identifying rights of the locals. While PESA...

JHABUA, India — Inside the drab district hospital, where dogs patter down the corridors, sniffing for food, Ratan Bhuria’s children are curled together in the malnutrition ward, hovering at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling...