-Down to Earth Despite living in abject poverty and depending on natural resources for survival, the Kondhs do not use wood from the forests for fuel and also prevent illegal tree   The Kutia Kondhs are a particularly vulnerable tribal groups in Kalahandi district, Odisha. They live in Lanjigarh, Thuamul Rampur, Madanpur Rampur and Bhawanipatna blocks. The Kondhs worship nature like many other tribal groups in the country. Members of the community take...

-Down to Earth The ‘real owner’ of forest land is still the forest department. Such brazen violation of the law betrays a systematic attempt to implement FRA, reducing it to a symbol rather than a tool of empowerment The Dangs, the smallest district in Gujarat, is a thickly forested and tribal-dominated region that has been away from the ‘developmental’ paradigm till today. Some 77.5 per cent of its area is under forest cover,...

-Article-14.com An apple tree takes a decade to mature. In Kashmir's Budgam, thousands were cut in 24 hours, as the government—in its rush to evict Muslim tribals from land they have used for generations—held back a protective forest law and ignored a Supreme Court stay. Kanidajen, Budgam: On a cold November morning, Abdul Gani Wagay was home when he heard that men with axes had come to cut his precious apple trees,...

-Hindustan Times For the AIKS, the experience of 2014 movement against the land bill and the 2018 long march in Maharashtra came handy this time The CPIM in India had long mastered the art of issue-based support. It’s farmer arm, All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), increasingly widened the scope of such pacts to stage big-ticket protests such as the ongoing farmers’ agitation in the National Capital Region. For the AIKS, a key participant...

-Newsclick.in The state government is said to be formalising plans to give 40% of "degraded forest land" to private firms, allege activists. New Delhi: Amidst the ongoing battle by tribal communities in India to formalise their land claims, the Madhya Pradesh government has reportedly proposed the privatisation of 40% of “degraded forest land” to private firms. The government claims that this land is wasteland and has degraded for multiple reasons, and that private...