-Scroll.in They were told to furnish non-existent records, their claims were illegally decided by forest guards, they were not informed of rejections or allowed to appeal. Breaking the law isn’t something one is usually proud of. But for Devi Lal, a resident of a forest village in southern Rajasthan, a court summons for encroaching on forest land in 2002 is a PRIzed possession. A quiet, tall man dressed in a dhoti, kurta and...

-Scroll.in The ‘First Question’ helpline launched by the Kerala Forest Research Institute is being managed by research scholars, subject matter experts and scientists. On Friday morning, six-year-old Milan rang up the Kerala Forest Research Institute to get an accurate answer to a question that has been troubling him for some time: “How do fans produce wind?” His call was attended by a research scholar at the institute who patiently noted Milan’s question before...

-The Indian Express The last five years, in other words, have seen a slowdown in rural wages even after adjusting for inflation, which has been far lower than during the UPA regime. Rural wages have grown 3.8 per cent year-on-year in December, the lowest ever for this month. Together with depressed farm PRIces — annual wholesale inflation in December was minus 0.07 per cent for “food” and 4.45 per cent for...

-The Indian Express According to the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Rules 2016, the district collector needs to complete the process of vesting of forest rights under the FRA and obtain written consent of the affected gram sabhas before any project proposal reaches the forest department for consideration. New Delhi: A day before it moved the Supreme Court seeking a stay and modification of its February 13 order directing states to evict over...

-The Hindu Trees in plantations, PRIvate lands should not come under it, says expert panel A high-power committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has recommended that forest surveys — the biennial exercise by the government to estimate forest cover — explicitly demarcate trees grown in forests from those grown outside, that is, in plantations and PRIvate lands. Currently, the government counts both towards estimating the portion of...