Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh said he’d set up an advisory council with participation of industry to look into policy issues regarding environment clearances. The council, to meet once in three months, will examine suggestions on changes required in policy for faster environment and forest clearance. In an interaction yesterday with the Confederation of Indian Industry, he also endorsed the view that all projects related to natural resource extraction should be...

Adequate involvement of academicians and policy makers is most essential for effective management of forests and common resources in the country, said Jairam Ramesh, Union minister of environment and forest. Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural ceremony of the 13th biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC), being held in the city on Monday, the Union minister put the spotlight on the environmental...

Villagers of Netai in Lalgarh could not conceal their grievance against the state administration when district police superintendent Monoj Verma and district magistrate Surendra Gupta reached the village on Sunday morning to supervise arrangements before governor M K Narayanan's visit on Wednesday. Gupta and Verma arrived at the village, escorted by heavy security, around 11am. Gupta started visiting different portions of the village and found a tube well that was not...

Concerned over the plight of poor Scheduled Caste women and children, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) will take stock of its schemes and their implementation at a two-day meeting beginning here on Tuesday. As a nodal ministry, the WCD will review the outcome of these schemes and gaps in implementation. “It has been seen that targeted schemes do not reach the poor population, thereby excluding 70-75 per cent...

There is a new “plan” for the scheduled tribes, but the adivasis themselves will have no say. Alienation from the forest and its resources, alienation from cultivable land and alienation from the State underlie the anger of the adivasis in India’s heartland. This is not a new or startling observation. Adivasi mass organisations, the more sensitive administrators, political organisations with their ears to the ground and scholars who have studied India’s...