-Live Mint   Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is advocating a new approach to fighting the Maoist insurgency that has gripped 78 districts so far. Apart from development and security, the approach involves politics and justice, he said. In an interview, Ramesh warned that in the rush to attain high growth rates, India was placing the interests of tribals below that of mining firms. The minister suggested the setting up of a...

I read Aman Sethi's piece on the Saranda Development Plan (“Nine months on, police camps sole development in Saranda plan”, June 4) with great interest but with greater anguish. Before I deal with his main charge — that private mining interests are behind the SDP — I want to lay out what the SDP is all about. It is the first systematic experiment in combining a security-oriented and development-focussed approach...

Mohammad Sarfaraz stood in front of his burned-down store on Sunday, almost reduced to tears as he spoke of the communal violence that tore apart his town on Friday, claiming four lives and destroying hundreds, including his own. “I had invested my life in this shop, which was turned into ashes,” the scrap dealer said. “I do not have a single penny to start my life again.” The store in front...

-Daily Bhaskar Indore: Thousands of tribals on Friday staged a dharna at Silawad police station in Badwani district to protest the district administration’s notice of externment against noted activist Madhuri Krishnaswami. The tribals said it is the district administration that deserved to be externed for resorting to unconstitutional step against Madhuri Ben. The move has sparked protests across the state. Tribals have now started serving “externment (zila badar) notices” to the collector and...

The marginalisation of tribals in the last few decades has been enormous. Tribals have lost out in agriculture, and their forests also stand depleted, writes KD Singh In 2006, the Prime Minister described the Maoist threat as “the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by the country” and suggested development in insurgency-affected regions as the key remedy. In 2009, the Union Government announced a new nationwide initiative, the ‘Integrated Action...