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Granite industry blues The granite industry in Rajasthan has been growing at 50% annually. But this growth has serious social and environmental costs. For one, water sources are being depleted, forcing farmers to become labourers in the granite industry More... Love's labour lostThe luminescent marble of the Taj Mahal is said to have come from Makhrana, a quaint mining town in the state of Rajasthan. But though Makhrana marble can compete with the best in the world, the region is an ecological and economic disaster, thanks to the Rajasthan government’s misguided mining policies More... Little justice for juvenilesChildren picked up for theft and assault are lodged at observation homes. Children in need of care and protection, including runaways, end up here too. What are the conditions in these homes? Has the Juvenile Justice Act passed eight years ago made any difference? This article finds out More... India's coast up for grabsThe 1991 CRZ regulations did put the brakes on indiscriminate development of coastal areas. Now the environment ministry’s draft Coastal Management Zone notification of May 2008 threatens to undermine the law and bring in changes in coastal land use for so-called ‘development’ More... Buying land from the rich to distribute to the poorEighty-five-year-old Krishnammal Jagannathan’s mission is to buy land and distribute it to poor landless dalits. Through her organisation LAFTI, which was set up in 1968 in Tamil Nadu, around 12,000 people have received 11,066 acres of land More... Haiti's real food crisisOnce the richest colony in the world, Haiti is shockingly poor today. In April Haiti made international headlines for food riots. This two-part travelogue on Haiti looks at how Haiti’s inability to safeguard its local food self-sufficiency has plunged the country into debt and dependence on foreign aid. There are important lessons here for other countries of the South More... How food insecurity impacts health in HaitiMalnutrition and maternal and infant mortality rates are extremely high in Haiti. Chronic malnutrition is seen as the biggest hurdle in raising socio-economic indicators in the country More... Neutrino physics versus wildlife conservationA cutting-edge neutrino observatory is slated to come up in Singara in the Nilgiris, bang in the middle of a biodiversity hotspot and the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve. There are sound geophysical reasons for this choice of location. But there is no doubt that the observatory will irreversibly damage the ecology of the region More... How the adivasi became a bonded labourerThis is the story of Khaliya Sabar who once lived happily in the forest village of Kiribiri in Ganjam district, Orissa. And of what happened to him and 300 other families when they were evicted from the village by forest rangers More... The song, dance and sorrows of sex workers' livesVAMP, a sex workers’ collective, aims to ensure that marginalised communities like women in prostitution and transgenders can assert, articulate and access their rights. They couldn’t have come up with a better way of articulating their concerns than My Mother, The Gharwali, Her Maalak, His Wife, a play devised and performed by the sex workers themselves More... Genetically modified crops: The risk factorLeading scientist Dr P M Bhargava warns that India may be flooded with genetically modified foods with unknown health risks unless the government takes urgent action More... Jungle Raj!A divisional forest officer in Orissa proves that the forest bureaucracy considers itself above the law and, on a whim, can deprive people of rights over their resources. A case in Sambalpur district, where a man had to wait two years for permission to cut and sell some trees on his land, shows how More... Farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh: A state in denialDespite having the highest rate of farmer suicides per 100,000 population, the Chhattisgarh government is in denial. No one talks about farmer suicides in the state. As a result, the problem goes totally ignored, unlike other states like Maharashtra and Kerala More... Letter from Dhaka: A fishing taleBangladeshi fishermen have fished in the country’s huge inland waterbodies for generations. How, in just a decade, did they come to be denied the right to fish? How and why did entire villages, their way of life, their culture, their livelihoods, crumble? Khademul Islam describes the battle over water rights More... Discrimination is built into our legislationIndia passed the Leprosy Act in 1898 to ensure that leprosy patients did not face discrimination. A hundred years on, Indian laws and regulations do just that. Legislation in several states prevents leprosy patients from obtaining a driving licence, travelling in trains, and contesting panchayat elections. And many marriage laws make “contracting leprosy” grounds for divorce More... |
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