-VillageSquare.in The people of Navagam village in Dang district of Gujarat have said they would boycott upcoming assembly polls if the government does not resolve the long pending issue of land and house titles Dang (Gujarat): The 1,300 residents of Navagam village in Gujarat’s Dang district, an ethnic people living adjacent to Saputara, the state’s only hill station, are up in arms over their demand for land and rights in an area...

-Down to Earth None of the 30 low and middle-income countries analysed met the standards of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women In what could be a wake-up call to global conservation efforts, a new report by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) says that legal protections for indigenous and rural women to own and manage property are missing in India and 29 other...

-The Financial Express The agriculture ministry is not reconciled to the grip which Monsanto has on the Indian cottonseed industry owing to the immense preference for its patented, genetically-modified (GM) bollworm-resistance traits. On May 16, Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta intervened in a dispute between Monsanto and its biggest (now divorced) sub-licensee, Hyderabad-based Nuziveedu Seeds. He made written submissions on behalf of the government, a week after hearings on the matter had...

-TheWire.in Instead of evicting forest-dwelling communities for engaging in traditional activities in protected areas and reserved forests, the government should use them for co-management. In a circular released on March 28, 2017, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) ordered the directors of all tiger reserves to refrain from recognising the rights of forest dwellers within critical tiger habitats. Since its enactment in 2006, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of...

-The Telegraph Jamshedpur: As water scarcity forces many urban residents to rely on tanker dole, a village around 35km southeast of Jamshedpur enjoys piped drinking water 24/7 thanks mainly to self-help. All 1,617 residents of over 300 households of Durku village in Kuldiha panchayat, Potka block, get safe tap water to drink. The reason behind it is surprising. Swajaldhara, a UPA-I drinking water scheme based on self-financing, which largely failed in the country...