-The Hindu Environment Ministry rejected forest clearance to Kalu dam in Thane district While irregularities were surfacing in irrigation projects around Mumbai in early April, the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) rejected forest clearance to the Kalu dam in Murbad taluka of Thane district, which would have submerged around 1,000 hectares of forest land. Work started last October without permission from the MOEF, and Indavi Tulpule...

The environment minister promised much, but his flip-flops of late raise concern Mr Compromised     * Vedanta In ’09, Jairam said no to mining. Now says yes to refinery expansion though water is scarce.     * Polavaram dam Gives forest clearance, then seeks explanation     * Posco Under litigation as the ministry says yes to forest clearance for iron ore/steel plant     * Lavasa township Ministry report says ecologically sensitive Ghats will be affected....

Government apathy and “land grabbing” on the Ghaggar basin by builders with the alleged collusion of bureaucrats, politicians and engineers are responsible for the recent floods in Punjab and Haryana. A report of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) - “An analysis of flood disaster in the Ghaggar basin in July 2010” - suggests that the floods could be a wake up call for the affected states...

KEY TRENDS  • The new Cohort-based Migration Metric (CMM) shows that inter-state labor mobility averaged 5-6.5 million people between 2001 and 2011, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 million and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million @* • The first-ever estimates of internal work-related migration using railways data for the period 2011-2016 indicate an annual average flow of close to 9 million migrant people between the states. Both these estimates are significantly greater than the...