-The Hindu On the tenth anniversary of the historic passage of the Forest Rights Act, tribal resistance to defend their rights is growing even as government after government tries to dilute its provisions On this day 10 years ago the historic Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was passed in the Lok Sabha. Its conception and passage was the result of the decades of struggles and...

-Business Standard This is the time when farm labour is engaged in the fields which result in a dip in demand for work under MNREGA New Delhi: November is considered the best month for sowing of rabi crops as the winter starts setting in and the residual moisture in soil is still available, lowering farmers reliance on ground water. This is also the time, when farm labour is engaged in the fields and...

-The Hindu People migrating due to environmental disasters should be accorded ‘refugee’ status in international law An increasing number of people globally are facing displacement due to droughts, famines, rising sea levels and other natural disasters caused by climate change. This class of migrants has been labelled as ‘environmental refugees’ in popular literature. According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, an international body reviewing trends of internal displacement, an estimated 24 million...

-The Indian Express Demonetisation politics unfolds as a vast morality play. Its imagination unleashes the state on you, in the name of protecting your own virtue. The so-called demonetisation is a watershed event for India. It signifies the arrival of a new kind of politics that will redefine the relationship between citizen and state. The scale of this event is so unprecedented that we are struggling to see where all the chips...

-The Financial Express There is by now substantial agreement amongst analysts that a strategy for dal production which ensures supplies and a reasonable degree of self-reliance is sorely needed, and the country cannot go from one crisis to another without a well-worked-out policy. However, the discussion is flawed on its assessments of what governments can and cannot do and on the lack of a short and medium strategy to enhance production....