-Scroll.in Gadchiroli has recognised community forest rights in 66% of eligible land, compared to the state’s figure of 15%. Ten years after the Centre passed a law granting Adivasis and other forest dwellers rights to manage resources in Forest Lands, Maharashtra has emerged as the front-runner among states in implementing the provisions of this legislation, followed closely by Kerala. A new report by Community Forest Rights Learning and Advocacy – a collective...

-BusinessWorld.in There simply are no easy solutions to the crisis in Indian agriculture, a product of decades of neglect and poor policies It is quite macabre, really — the barely concealed glee that seems to course through liberal analysts and intellectuals whenever it looks like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is heading for trouble. Macabre, because as the latest series of protests and events centred around farmers show, it is as ghoulish as...

-The Times of India Gurgaon: More than 6,000 trees have allegedly been axed in the ecologically sensitive Aravalis after the additional chief secretary (forest), in a written order, granted permission to clear the green cover spread across 52 acres of land. According to local villagers, six earthmovers felled the trees to clear the land near a private university in Faridabad within a few hours. "The work started on Saturday night and by...

-The Hindu The plant species is known for its nutritional value Hyderabad: Stylosanthes hamata, a perennial leguminous plant commonly known as Caribbean Stylo, could play a vital role in feeding lakhs of sheep to be distributed among people of certain castes by the Telangana government. The fact, however, that the plants would be grown on thousands of hectares of Forest Land is inviting criticism from environmental and wildlife activists. While it has been the...

-TheWire.in The government knows what it wants to achieve where the environment is concerned, even if it is at the cost of the protection of ecosystems, and people’s livelihood and well being. The last three years under the Modi government have seen the transformation of the environment from being a field of relative stability and inactivity, to functioning as an active instrument of capital accumulation. The sharp polarisation between extremely positive initiatives...