Nagpur orange’s survival hinges precariously on its return to sustainable cultivation. Farmers have woken up to this, but will the government? A beaming Uday Wath hugs the trunk of his sturdy, disease-free Nagpur orange tree. All around him are trees drooping with the fruit, large and healthy. The tree trunks are singularly free of both telltale gummosis wounds and bluish white bordeaux paste, the chemical meant to prevent them. Not more than...

The Justice MB Shah Committee, appointed by the Central Government to probe illegal mining of iron ore and manganese across the country met with a poor response in Ranchi, on the first day of the two-day public hearing. Jharkhand, accounts for a fourth of the country's iron ore. The few journalists covering the event outnumbered the public, and the former judge had to beseech the few attendees to come forward to...

HINDIYANKALAN, India – One afternoon last November, 10 people in this eastern Indian village sat in a circle on a dirt road and told us about their fight against hunger. We wanted to know: What would drive a person to eat a poisoned root? I was on a research assignment with my colleague Ankita Aggarwal from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. It was part of a...

-IANS As many as 7,563 rape cases were reported in Jharkhand during the ten-year period since the formation of the state in November 2000, a local NGO Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM) has reported. In a report titled "Jharkhand Human Rights Report 2001-2010", the human rights group said women in the state were easy prey to crimes like rape, witchcraft and dowry. The report, released here in the form of a book,...

So what if it was the largest-ever FDI in India? The law finally caught up with it on 30 March 2012, when the National Green Tribunal suspended POSCO’s environmental clearance and ordered a fresh review. We can celebrate the outcome in this day and cynical age: It is still possible, though not easy, to get environmental justice in this country. Since June 2005, when the agreement between the Government of Orissa...