By Teresa Rehman

Meghalaya’s South Garo Hills are under serious threat from illegal coal mining. The Garo Students Union, and its dynamic leader Prosper S Marak, have been battling to preserve the biodiversity of this region. Marak was declared Earth Hero for 2009 and also won the Young Naturalist Award for 2009

Union Minister for Forests and Environment Jairam Ramesh talks to Diva Arora about the role of BASIC countries in the Copenhagen summit, the challenges of ‘green’ growth and why it’s important for India to engage positively with China

By Anuradha Kumar

A new take on private schools in developing countries, which sees them not as money-making machines exploiting the poor, but as a much needed asset that can help fulfil the goal of a decent education for all

The people of Chhattisgarh appear to have lost the battle against industrialisation without rules. Even those who held out longest against the acquisition of their lands, forests and rivers are giving up the fight. Dilnaz Boga travels through the villages of Raigarh district, where thousands are being displaced

By Kathyayini Chamaraj

A public hearing on the Mangalore Special Economic Zone revealed how rules were flouted and records fudged, compensation was not paid and promised jobs never materialised, and how land and groundwater were polluted

By Moushumi Basu

Like other women, transgender women too crave romantic relationships and family, but they have to fight for their rights to these. Helping them is Kalki Subhramanium’s first-of-its-kind initiative – a matrimonial website for transgender women in search of Mr Right

By Anosh Malekar

Boa Senior, the last speaker of a language called Bo -- one of the ten Great Andamanese languages -- died last week in Port Blair. She was aged around 85. With her death, the language that may have constituted the sixth language family in India has become extinct

By Mukul Sharma

As the demand for minerals grows, the huge revenues generated from it are all too often fuelling conflicts and human rights violations, increasing poverty and undermining sustainable development. The new legislation the government is introducing must ensure transparency in allocation of mining concessions, and ensure participation of, and consultation with, communities affected by mining projects

Several legislations have been enacted for the protection of the scheduled castes and tribes. And yet violence and discrimination against them continues. This is hardly surprising, says K S Subramanian, since the police resorts to various machinations to discourage registration of cases, dilutes the seriousness of the offences, shields the accused persons, and often inflicts the violence itself

By Anosh Malekar

If they return to their villages they may not survive. If they stay on in their resettlement colony they will never have basic education, healthcare or livelihoods. Eight years after the Gujarat riots, this is the status of thousands of displaced Muslims in the state.

By Manshi Asher and Sayantoni Datta

Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT), to come up in Gandhinagar, is being promoted as India's largest multi-services financial hub. To be built mostly on common grazing lands grabbed from surrounding villages and by panicking farmers into selling their agricultural land, it is yet another instance of how commercial interests are favoured at the expense of the poor

By Teresa Rehman

In the northeastern state of Assam, riddled with insurgency, the rights of disabled people get even lower priority than elsewhere in the country. Disability Law Unit-North East has come up with successful legal interventions to secure the rights of the disabled in the region and to spread awareness about the protections available under the law