ALTERNATIVES
Madhu Ramnath reports: Unknown to the rest of the country, a small group of adivasis from the forested villages in central Bastar have been busy doing work that would make conservationists proud. People from Sandh Karmari, Kakalgur, Kangoli and nearby villages have been gathering native seeds and raising them in nurseries in fairly large numbers….
Read More about Bastar: Conservation in the time of conflictConflict/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
Pratham Books
ALTERNATIVES
The full text of a recent talk given by prominent ecologist Madhav Gadgil, a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India and the Head of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) of 2010. It tries to explore the significant issue of when and why people turn against conservation….
Read More about Development is for the people: A talk by Madhav Gadgil
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
Conflict/Dispossession
Nandita Haksar writes: Ravindra Velip, a 27-year-old tribal activist fighting mining in Goa, is facing the combined might of the state government, the mining lobby and a complicit media. A founding member of green activist group Rainbow Warriors, he was arrested and placed in judicial custody. When he was assaulted in jail, it went unreported….
Read More about How Goa’s mining lobby, government and media ganged up against a young tribal activistConflict/Dispossession
Since its formation Chhattisgarh has become the new destination of domestic and foreign investment. Sunil Kumar’s award-winning documentary Daan Se Raakh (Rice Bowl to Ashtray) captures displacement and industrialization in Chhattisgarh. It critically investigates the impact of unbridled industrialization, privatization of water, and acquisition of agricultural land on the life and livelihoods of the rural population….
Read More about Video: Rice Bowl to Ashtray – Documentary on industrialisation and displacement in Chhattisgarh
Attackers threw a toxic substance on Adivasi leader Soni Sori
Conflict/Dispossession
Sreekumar Kodiyath writes: The final phase of the Sri Lankan Government’s war with the LTTE in 2009 saw a systematic program to make the affair a private one, by expelling reporters and human rights activists from the war zone. Those who stubbornly remained either disappeared or were detained. The army called it a “War without witnesses”….
Read More about Chhattisgarh: A ‘War without witnesses’ in the making?
Dongria Kondh protest against the Vedanta mine appeal.
Bikash Khemka/Survival
ALTERNATIVES
Ashish Kothari & Pallav Das write in State of Power report: People are recognizing that the current power dispensation is frozen in an intellectual paradigm defined by free-market orthodoxy and will change only if confronted by worldviews such as swaraj or Radical Ecological Democracy. India (and the world) needs that change in order to continue to thrive….
Read More about Power in India: radical pathways to local self-rule
Conflict/Dispossession
Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava reports: Groups like JJMP and TSPC thrive on a levy collected from mining. Jharkhand accounts for nearly a third of India’s coal, a quarter of its iron ore and 16% of copper. In return, the armed groups provide protection to mining companies and intimidate villagers to facilitate land acquisition for the companies….
Read More about Video & Report: The jungle gangs of JharkhandCLIMATE CRISIS
SciDev Net reports: India, Colombia and Nigeria have the most cases of conflict caused by climate change and environmental disputes, according to a map of global ecological conflict. The Environmental Justice Atlas shows that more than 200 conflicts in India are caused by ecological disputes and scarcities of basic resources such as water and forests….
Read More about Map shows India leads the world in ecological conflictConserve/Resist
Bowing To No One, the first film in a series by Sarah Khan, is about Satyavati, an indigenous woman farmer from Central India, who comes from a rich but rapidly eroding agro-ecological knowledge system. Also in this post is a report from Meghalaya’s Terra Madre festival, which brought together around 600 members of international indigenous food-making communities….
Read More about Video & Report: India’s indigenous people are holding fast to food traditions against all odds
Aadi Kumbruka with various types of legumes, millets, oilseeds and corns grown on his farm.
India Water Portal
CLIMATE CRISIS
Nauri grows 72 varieties of crop on his two-acre farm. “The benefit of mixed cropping is that even in extreme weather events, we get something out of the field. Some crops work well in drought, others in flood. Compare this with mono cropping which won’t even yield enough to eat in severe drought”, he explains….
Read More about Tribals in Odisha humour changing skies with mixed platters
A Guarani family mourns the death of a member
Survival international
Conflict/Dispossession
According to a new report published by Survival International, the rate of self-inflicted deaths within the Guarani tribe is 34 times the Brazilian national average, and statistically the highest among any society anywhere on earth. Suicide rates among many other indigenous peoples such as Aboriginal Australians and Native Americans in Alaska also remain exceptionally high….
Read More about Why a Brazil tribe has the world’s highest suicide rate
Raiot.in
Bookshelf
If there is one book which speaks of all mining blighted societies, then it’s this one. The book by Hartman de Souza breaks all the boundaries of genres and gets its politics and economics right on. At once travelogue, investigative journalism and family memoir, Eat Dust maps the culture, topography and cultural diversity of Goa….
Read More about New Book: Eat Dust – Mining and Greed in Goa, by Hartman de Souza
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
