-The Business Standard About 15 kms from the idyllic hilly town of Semiliguda in South Odisha’s Koraput district, the stage is set for an encore of the Niyamgiri-type agitation, as the tribals gather at the foothills of Mali Parbat to protest against bauxite mining by Hindalco Industries Ltd in the area. Sharing the concerns of the Dongria Kondh tribe at Niyamgiri, whose protests had put a halt to Vedanta’s bauxite mining plan...

Natives of Niyamgiri feel that the police is acting as an agent of the Vedanta group, playing dirty tricks to help the company go ahead with its plans to mine bauxite from the sacred hills ONE OF the world’s most controversial mines is back in the spotlight after hundreds protested against renewed efforts to mine Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. Dongria Kondh and Niyamgiri supporters held their own ‘public hearing’ in Odisha...

Activists working for the rights of tribes people are concerned about their portrayal in the media in India. London-headquartered Survival International, which lobbies for the rights of tribal people across the world, said it is concerned about how tribals are viewed in India. “They are often referred to as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, implying that their way of life is in some way inferior and needs to be ‘developed,’” Survival’s South Asia campaigner...

Tension prevailed in the villages where the Naveen Patnaik government is striving to acquire land for the proposed steel plant project of Posco. In Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district villagers protesting land acquisition clashed with police. Eight persons, including six women, were injured when police resorted to lathi charge to disperse villagers who came out of their homes to protest tree cutting by the men engaged by the district administration to acquire land near...

As the commons come under increasing assault, academics, practitioners and policymakers come together to devise ways to protect shared resources On a cold January night in Hyderabad, a fortnight ago, Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests, was led to an open-air dinner by folk drummers and body-painted tiger dancers as an appreciative audience of international academics and grassroots workers cheered and milled around him. Ramesh had become the toast of...