-IPS News MALKANGIRI (Odisha)- Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India's eastern Odisha state, the Upper Bonda people are considered one of this country's most ancient tribes, having barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years. Resistant to contact with the outside world and fiercely skeptical of modern development, this community of under...

-Tehelka Bureau Though well-meaning, the new Land Acquisition Act is far from being a perfect legislation. But the urgency to amend a law even before a real field test signals a larger agenda. By all counts, this was expected. Long before he became the BJP and subsequently the nation's chosen one, Narendra Modi had made it clear that his model of development gains from the ease of doing business. Then, days ahead...

-The Times of India   NEW DELHI: Giving an important clarification on live-in relationships, the Supreme Court has said that if a man and woman "lived like husband and wife" for a long period and had children, the judiciary would presume that the two were married. A bench of Justices B S Chauhan and J Chelameswar on Monday issued the clarification on a petition filed by advocate Uday Gupta, who had questioned...

-Press Information Bureau (Ministry of Tribal Affairs) Government has disposed of 31, 06,690 claims by the end of Dec-2013 out of 36,54,420 claims filed under Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act -2006, commonly known as Forest Rights Act (FRA). This is 85.01% of the total claims filed under the Act. Out of the claims disposed off, 14,18,078 titles (13,95,647 individual titles and 22,431...

-Survival International Anthropologist Dr. Felix Padel works with the tribes of Odisha in eastern India, including the Dongria Kondh, for whom Survival International has campaigned for 10 years. Felix is the great great grandson of Charles Darwin and lives in a remote village in Odisha. In this interview, he talks to Survival about the Dongria Kondh's relationship to their mountains, their heroic struggle against Vedanta, Darwin's evolution theory and the experience...