Food/Farming
Osama Manzar writes: As part of a digital literacy project in Maharashtra, rural students identified the following major consequences of drought— lack of water for basic needs, irregular supply of drinking water by government authorities, supply of unhygienic water, shortage of fodder for cattle, unemployment, health issues and lack of awareness about water conservation schemes….
Read More about Digital story of drought and death
A view of the Athirapilly falls
Countercurrents.org
Conflict/Dispossession
Neha Miriam Kurian writes: The Left-Front government in Kerala is reviving the Athirappilly Hydro Electric Project against stiff resistance from local tribes and environmentalists. If implemented, it will displace the ancient hunter-gatherer Kadar tribe and submerge the only remaining low elevation riparian forests left in the Western Ghats, one of the world’s eight biodiversity ‘hotspots’….
Read More about Athirappilly: Kerala’s destructive dam project that refuses to dieConflict/Dispossession
Archana Mishra writes: Authorities failed to use MGNREGA and NFSA provisions meant for relief in difficult times. Even delayed wage payments forced downtrodden farmers to migrate towards cities. The national average of MGNREGA wages delayed beyond the statutory limit of 15 days is 62 percent of all wage payments for 2015-16, an RTI query revealed….
Read More about A calamity bigger than drought
Representational pic
Conflict/Dispossession
In this excerpt from his new book, published by Hachette India, Rohit Prasad looks at the roles of the different players in the battle between Adivasis, Maoist rebels, corrupt bureaucrats and hungry corporations, concluding that the situation is one of “cooperative plunder”, where two apparently antagonistic forces align for the purpose of siphoning away resources….
Read More about Bookshelf: Blood Red River: A Journey Into The Heart Of India’s Development Conflict
Dongria Kondh boy Kalia stands in front of the Niyamgiri hill range
Lewis Davids/Survival
Conflict/Dispossession
Susmita Mukherjee writes: The Supreme Court has scrapped a petition filed, yet again by the Odisha Mining Corporation, challenging the resolutions of the Gram Sabhas of Niyamgiri Hills. For ten years, the Dongaria Kondhs have been looking beyond the education facilities being offered to them by Vedanta and continue their struggle to protect their land….
Read More about For 10 Years, Niyamgiri’s adivasis have resisted a takeover of their land by the government and VedantaConflict/Dispossession
Activist, filmmaker and writer Debaranjan Sarangi, actively involved in the struggle of adivasis in Odisha’s Kashipur to protect their lands from bauxite mining, was arrested on March 18, 2016 on the basis of a 2005 case. In this interview with Countercurrents.org following his release on bail, he describes his experiences and the present situation in Odisha….
Read More about Anti-mining activist Deba Ranjan Sarangi on the alarming situation in Odisha
CLIMATE CRISIS
Michael Igo writes: Since 2008, 22.5 million people have been forced from their homes due to floods and hurricanes, twice as many as the record 11 million displaced by conflict in 2014… As global temperatures creep higher, and storms, droughts, floods, and heat waves grow more severe, we face a future of mass climate-related migration….
Read More about The gathering storm of climate migration
Conflict/Dispossession
As the new Jungle Book movie is released, tribes across India are being illegally evicted from their lands because they’ve been turned into tiger reserves. One of these places is the iconic Kanha Tiger Reserve, the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s original novel, from where hundreds of Baiga and Gond tribespeople were illegally evicted in 2014….
Read More about Jungle Book: Tribes threatened with eviction as Disney movie opens
Frans Lanting
Conflict/Dispossession
Bill Laurance writes: Some 25 million km of new paved roads, thousands of dams, and hundreds of thousands of new mining, oil and gas projects, are being planned, roughly 90% of them in developing nations. Their environmental impacts could easily dwarf climate change as thousands of projects penetrate into the world’s last surviving wild areas….
Read More about An infrastructure tsunami is being unleashed on the environment in the name of ‘development’
The Hindu
Conflict/Dispossession
Nikhil Inamdar writes: India has the world’s largest number of people without access to clean water. The financial burden of this has fallen on its poorest agrarian communities, but the crisis is now spilling over to industries too. In Marathwada, the tanker business is the only one booming. The rest of the economy has collapsed….
Read More about India’s looming water wars can destroy everything, from Make in India to smart cities
Conflict/Dispossession
Rohini Mohan reports: In under a year, the Modi government has begun to undo policies of fair land acquisition, undermine environmental protection and reverse the fight for tribal rights. The finance, environment and rural-development ministers, and Modi himself, have called these safeguards to protect people’s property, the environment and tribal rights “roadblocks” to economic growth….
Read More about Narendra Modi’s war on the environment
Conflict/Dispossession
Basudev Mahapatra writes: Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, has “delinked forest clearance from clearance by the National Wild Life Board and halved NBWL clearance requirements from 10km to 5km around forest reserves, besides emasculating the Board by replacing eminent experts and concerned NGOs with rubber stamps. He has also relaxed procedures of the Forest Conservation Act….
Read More about Rohini Mohan: The Modi Government’s war on environment
Conflict/Dispossession
Basic protections to safeguard the environment, that were not particularly strong to begin with, are being wiped out. While in general, faster moving transparent government processes are required, the Modi government’s predilection for protecting private corporations at the expense of public welfare, does not bode well for the environment nor the well-being of India’s peoples….
Read More about Modi and the Environment: The 100 day report
Development/Growth
Jay Mazoomdar writes: Narendra Modi does mean business. So his government has gone about eliminating the policy paralyses that many claimed ailed the previous regime. This meant dismantling roadblocks that hamper economic growth. But here is what also happens to be under fire: laws and rules that safeguard India’s environment, forests, wildlife, and tribal rights….
Read More about 11 environmental disasters Narendra Modi blessed in his first 100 days
Conflict/Dispossession
Papri Sri Raman reports: The new environment minister, Prakash Javadekar, met Defense Minister Jaitley on June 10 and later announced a policy that would enable India’s border states with Pakistan, China and Burma to clear defense projects falling within 100kms of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), without approaching the union government for environment clearances….
Read More about Environment Under Siege in New India
Conflict/Dispossession
Avay Shukla writes: The most disappointing and worrying aspect of the recent elections, for me, has been the almost complete absence of any debate or discussion on the environment. Some political parties, the BJP included, did make weak proforma noises about it in their manifestos but there was no mention of it in their campaigning….
Read More about Mr Modi and the environment – A green vision or a grey area?
Conflict/Dispossession
The lion, tiger, turtle, butterfly, orchid, mudskipper and one-horned rhino will need every helping hand to survive the development ambitions of a nation that believes that economic ambitions can be fulfilled at the cost of its wildernesses. We know that’s not possible and hope that you will move us away from the subcontinent’s biological-climate precipice….
Read More about Bittu Sahgal: Narendra Modi’s development plan: Will it hang India’s wildlife?
Conflict/Dispossession
Jay Mazoomdar writes: In its “classified” report titled ‘Impact of NGOs on Development’ sent to a host of government offices including the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), on June 3, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) has named a long list of organizations and activists under its watch, from well-known environmental and anti-nuclear groups to little-known localized outfits….
Read More about IB’s NGO Report: Not a time for intelligence or dissent
