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unjust policies

Jordan Bardella, spokesman for France's RN, has called borders “the environment’s greatest ally.”

Conflict/Dispossession

The European Far Right’s environmental turn

3rd August 2019

Kate Aronoff writes: Until now, European far-right parties have tended to question climate science as another example of cosmopolitan groupthink, if they mentioned it at all. But some have begun to embrace the fact that climate is on European voters’ minds. France’s National Rally recently unveiled a climate policy platform just before the European election….

Food/Farming

Poisoned earth, poisoned people: The unravelling of Punjab

10th July 2019

From The Guardian: Cancer rates are the highest in the country, drug addiction is rife, and 900 farmers have killed themselves in two years. How did Punjab turn toxic? A new film explores the roots of its problems; ‘Toxification’ tells the moving stories of farmers at the sharp end of the chemical epidemic engulfing Punjab….

CLIMATE CRISIS

Richard Greeman: France’s Yellow Vests struggle to reinvent democracy

17th April 2019

Many working-class Yellow Vests can’t help seeing environmentalists as bourgeois on bicycles wanting to be nice but unwilling to struggle directly against the establishment. So their call for unity is also, in part, a challenge to the environmental movement: “Join us in the struggle for social equality and be ready to fight the whole system.”…

Conflict/Dispossession

Laboratory of Fascism : Capital, labour and environment in Modi’s Gujarat

24th January 2019

Rohit Prajapati and Trupti Shah write: We are caught in a false debate, where Narendra Modi, the perpetrator of 2002 carnage is counter-posed with Modi the “development leader”. We call it a false debate, since for us, who have lived and grown in Gujarat, the two aspects are actually the same – that of fascism….

Conflict/Dispossession

How India’s economists have failed its farmers

15th January 2019

Devinder Sharma writes: If raising productivity is the major factor I see no reason why Punjab farmers should be committing suicide. But the fact that economists don’t want to acknowledge is that it is actually the low price that farmers being deliberately paid that is the primary reason for the terrible agrarian crisis that prevails….

ALTERNATIVES

The Yellow Vests: Is Europe seeing the world’s first climate riot?

17th December 2018

What started as an online protest movement against the hike in fuel taxes, France’s ‘Yellow Vest’ movement has led to the worst riots witnessed by the country in half a century. With six dead, 12,000 arrested, and the unrest spreading to the rest of Europe, it may be the world’s first ‘climate riot’ of consequence….

Conserve/Resist

Spotlight: Manifesto of Indian Farmers

13th December 2018

This manifesto was adopted by an assembly representing the farmers of India on the occasion of the historic Kisan Mukti March organised by AIKS at Delhi, on 30 November 2018. Over the past 25 years, more than 3,00,000 of India’s debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide, a crisis which successive governments have done little to address….

Conserve/Resist

Read: A PIL to protect India’s vital, life-supporting natural resources

9th December 2018

The full text of a Public Interest Litigation initiated before the Supreme Court of India, by Akhilesh Chipli and Shankar Sharma, requesting the court to draw firm legal limits on India’s suicidally destructive economic growth during the last three decades, which has led to rapidly deteriorating ecological conditions (air, water, soil, climate) in the country….

Conflict/Dispossession

Enough! Why 1,00,000 farmers are marching to Delhi on November 30

21st November 2018

From The Telegraph: India’s farmers are marching once again to demand that Parliament discuss the agrarian crisis. The underlying message is simple. If over 3,00,000 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the past 25 years, then the agrarian crisis is no longer an economic one. It’s a moral crisis. It cannot be allowed to continue….

Food/Farming

“A scam bigger than Rafale”: P. Sainath on Modi government’s Fasal Bima Yojana

9th November 2018

From The Business Standard: “Selected companies like Reliance, Essar have been given the task of providing crop insurance. In just one Maharashtra district, where the soya crop failed, Reliance earned a net profit of Rs 143 crore without investing a single rupee. Now, multiply this amount to each of the districts it has been entrusted.”…

Illustration: Sumit Kumar/BBC

Conflict/Dispossession

Chai with Narasimha

3rd November 2018

This is a snapshot of a fleeting encounter between a Karnataka farmer and a water activist at the premises of a leading agricultural university. In a few painful sentences, it captures the everyday desperation that is the lot of the average Indian farmer, caught between an unraveling climate, a ruthless market and a malignant state….

Development/Growth

Presenting Narendra Modi, ‘Champion of the Earth’ (Disclaimer: This is not a joke)

28th September 2018

To the shock of greens everywhere, Indian PM Modi, whose government has absolutely the worst environmental track record in the country’s history, has been declared a UN “Champion of the Earth”. However, coming from Erik Solheim, the UN environment chief facing a string of corruption allegations himself, this ‘honour’ may not be all that surprising….

Education/Awareness

The National Green Tribunal is not so green anymore

10th September 2018

Rajeev Suri writes: In keeping with his belief that most cases are being filed by blackmailers, Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel, the new Chairperson of the National Green Tribunal, has been following the three D rule; Dismiss, Dispose, Disburse. The Chairperson is also known for his previous association with the ruling party and strong RSS leanings….

Conflict/Dispossession

The magnificent seven: The rights defenders targeted by the Indian state

2nd September 2018

On August 28, 2018, some of India’s leading land and human rights defenders were arrested or had their homes raided on charges of conspiring to assassinate the PM Narendra Modi, among other things. Here, we present their profiles and some selected writings/talks, as well as a video dossier of the draconian UAPA law, courtesy TheWire.in…

Conflict/Dispossession

Tuticorin: The enemy stares at you from the mirror

30th May 2018

Ratheesh Pisharody writes: The protest in Tuticorin and the police reaction to it is exactly what is expected in a society built on foundations of greed and injustice. Whose interest do you think the police is supposed to protect? Ours, the “middle class” of course. We need those cheap phones and air conditioners, don’t we?…

Laxmi Gayakwad's Aarey colony home was razed in front of her eyes

Jyoti Shinoli/People's Archive of Rural India

Conflict/Dispossession

Caged in concrete: an Adivasi urban nightmare in Mumbai’s Aarey Colony

7th May 2018

From PARI: The people of Aarey find their eviction and ‘rehabilitation’ absurd. Prakash Bhoir, 46, who lives in Keltipada, says, “We are Adivasis [he is a Malhar Koli]. This land is a source of income and survival for us. Can we do cultivation in those high-rise buildings? We just cannot live without soil and trees.”…

ALTERNATIVES

The ZAD will survive: Dispatches from Europe’s largest ‘liberated territory’

25th April 2018

It was supposed to be the site of western France’s biggest airport, but instead, it became the center of a utopian experiment. Hundreds of squatters –eco-warriors to some, green jihadis to others– now live in the ZAD, which resisted a eviction operation after a 2,500 strong police unit recently forced their way into the camp….

Conflict/Dispossession

The ‘Gujarat Development Model’ rests on the twin pillars of authoritarianism and divisive politics

11th February 2018

Atul Sood writes: Why are we not talking about the facts on the ground amidst the cacophonic discourse of the success of the Gujarat model? The need to impose Section 144 every time the Vibrant Gujarat Submit is organized symbolizes one pillar of ‘managing’ support for the model. The cultural narrative is the other pillar….

Development/Growth

British Raj to Billionaire Raj: India’s inequality is now worse than in 1922

26th January 2018

India’s income inequality in 2017 may be worse than what it was during the British Raj. According to a new paper titled ‘Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?’ penned by renowned economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel, India witnessed a sharp rise in the incomes of top 1 per cent post 1980s….

Development/Growth

Why should India risk an economic disaster to save the American Dream?

17th January 2018

Shelley Kasli writes: Recent changes in India’s foreign direct investment policy allows 100 percent FDI (from current 49%) for single brand retail trading and construction, among others, paving the way for global players. In reality, India is being drawn into the spiral of debt economics to protect the American Dream from turning into a Nightmare….