-Scroll.in It contends that the draft policy released in March undermines the rights of Adivasis and other forest dwellers. The Union tribal affairs ministry has criticised the environment ministry’s draft National Forest Policy, contending that it will promote the privatisation of forests and undermine the rights of communities who live in them. In a letter to the environment secretary CK Mishra on June 19, Leena Nair, the tribal affairs secretary, noted...

-The Hindu Arvind Subramanian brought heft and pizzazz to his role as CEA — but who was listening? Arvind Subramanian has had quite a paradoxical tenure as the Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Finance Minister. While he brought a lot of pizzazz and heft back to the usually staid Economic Surveys and lent his voice to a number of pressing economic issues, the government repeatedly failed to heed his advice or...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the...

-PTI Recently, the breed virtually became a bone of contention between Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh with both the States staking claim over its nativity. Bhopal: The Madhya Pradesh government has come up with a mobile application to market rare chicken breed — the “Kadaknath” — whose black meat is in high demand for its nutritious content and purported medicinal properties. The “MP Kadaknath” mobile app aims to connect poultries that sale the breed...