-The Telegraph The Telegraph reports on a riverine community’s determination to save its environs Once upon a time, when my forefathers were looking for land to settle down, they found this barren sandbar and decided to make it a habitable place,” says Nani Roy, 42, a resident of Manachar. Char is the Bengali word for sandbar. Manachar is the sandbar that extends from Durgapur Barrage to Panagarh in Burdwan district. About three...

-Newsclick.in The Forest Rights Act aims to reverse the historical injustice meted out to tribals, ensure their land tenure and livelihood. Jaipur: Vishram had applied twice for a patta under the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, but without success. A member of the Bhil community in Rajasthan, Vishram, who belongs to Rajasthan’s Talwara village, is always apprehensive about the future.    “We have been staying at the same place for three generations. Though...

-Newsclick.in On May 24, 2021, poor tribal peasants were shocked when they got an executive order informing them that the period of land leases given to them in Sirsi Dam foothills was over on March 31, and renewal stood cancelled. Mirzapur (Uttar Pradesh): Talking about tribals and farmers in present day Mirzapur means inviting gloomy stories weaved into everyday sorrows and sufferings. Gone are the days when the areas inhabited by them...

-Scroll.in The In-Situ Slum Rehabilitation model offered by planners is deeply flawed. Let us assume that the goal is uncontested – Delhi, in 2041, should be without the inadequate housing, absent services, and insecure tenure that define the “slum” or the “jhuggi jhopdi cluster”. Getting there is not easy. Delhi has over 757 jhuggi jhopdi clusters that house (officially) between 11%-15% of the city’s population in neighbourhoods not just materially vulnerable but lacking...

-Down to Earth Reflections on Supreme Court order to evict ‘illegitimate’ tribals from the forests There is an ominous significance to the February 13, 2019 order of the Supreme Court on “illegitimate” forest-dwellers. When we first heard of it, we felt a rising dismay and shock at this judicial legitimation of unparalleled atrocity against the tribals. The order is nothing less than the final legitimised expropriation of the tribal communities (poor landless)...