-The Hindu With no ownership of land or houses and denial of minimum wage, lakhs of workers continue to live in a vicious cycle of bondage plucking Over the past few elections, Benam Oraon, a tea garden worker at Nagrakata Tea Estate in West Bengal, attended several election meetings and kept a note of the promises which political parties made. This election, however, he is contesting the polls as a candidate from...

-IndiaSpend.com To set up big commercial, tourism and shipping projects in the islands, the Centre has taken measures that could affect the region's unique biodiversity and ethnicity New Delhi: The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are often pictured as a lush, tropical tourist paradise. But recent government moves may strip the protections that the ecologically and ethnically significant archipelago enjoys, in order to make way for big business, shipping and tourism projects, documents...

-Scroll.in If Maharashtra government doesn’t act soon, an entire generation of students from Melghat’s Tribal communities will be pushed out of higher education. Jaylal Dhikar wakes up at 4 am. While it is still dark, the 22-year-old climbs up a stony hillock a few miles from his home. He walks from one end of the flat hillock to the other looking for a mobile network on his basic smartphone. All by himself,...

-The Hindu A wide variety of spices and fruits grown in the coffee field diversifies the income of tribal farmers Not too long ago, Surya Chhautia was ready to give up on a 100-acre coffee plantation in Golur village in Odisha’s Koraput district. The plantation had been lying unattended, yielding little. But today, Chhautia, 39, from the Valmiki community, is leading a campaign to add another 100 acres to the plantation and to...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...