-Down to Earth Close to 20 million people displaced or affected Since October 2013, when Phailin hit Odisha's coast, India has witnessed a series of extreme weather events like cyclonic storms, cloudbursts, floods, droughts and hailstorms. These events not only destroyed lives and livelihood of people, but also caused a huge economic loss to the state and national economies. In the period between October 2013 and October 2014, floods in three states-Odisha, Assam...

-Economic and Political Weekly The failure by the police to file a First Information Report is the subject of much debate but the Final Report by which a case is closed has received scant attention. This article reflects on the findings following a study of 100 Final Reports each under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code and the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. The police's differential stance...

-The Hindu Average size of landholding has shrunk to 0.80 hectares during 2010-11 Chennai: Land available for farming in Tamil Nadu is going down year by year. There seems no end to fragmentation. According to the latest report of the Department of Evaluation and Applied Research (DEAR) on the State's economic appraisal for the period from 2011-12 to 2013-14, the average size of landholding has shrunk from 1.45 hectares during 1970-71 to 0.80...

-Down to Earth Sivasankaran's land grabbing spree has threatened millions of livelihoods, says report Indian origin businessman Chinnakannan Sivasankaran has engaged in aggressive land grabbing of more than half a million hectares across Africa, Asia and South America, putting millions of livelihoods at risk. This was revealed in a detailed report released by Barcelona-based non-profit GRAIN on Tuesday. The report says Sivasankaran diverted 0.56 million hectares of food-producing land to production of palm...

-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...