 |
From owners to ‘occupiers’
Generations of families have lived and fished on the floating islands of vegetation on Loktak Lake called phumdis. Now, claiming that the 10,000 phumdi dwellers are polluting the lake, the Manipur government is evicting them. Where will they go? They know no other way of life More... The trade-off between food security and ‘development’Most of Manipur’s population, especially people in the valley area, depend on the lake’s fish and vegetation resources for their nutrition and food security. The Loktak hydropower project has given them a few hours of electricity every day, and better roads. What is that trade-off worth, asks the third in our series on this common property resource in Manipur More... Niyamgiri: A temporary reprieveThe Dongria Kondh know that their battle against Vedanta and for the preservation of their sacred Niyamgiri is not over in a state where money matters, people and the environment don’t, reports Ranjan K Panda from Orissa More... Treasure hunt in the Kendujhar forestsDark clouds are gathering over Kendujhar district in north Orissa, this chronicle reveals. As in other forested areas across India, adivasis are standing up to fight the takeover of their forest resources. What kind of wisdom is the forest department driven by when it undertakes large-scale commercial plantation after clear-felling natural forests that rightfully belong to them, they ask More... ‘There’s nothing you didn’t get from Loktak’You would never come back from Loktak Lake empty-handed in times past, people say. Manipur’s freshwater lake provided fish, fuel, fodder, thatching material, medicinal plants and raw material for handicrafts. Today, both fish and vegetation have dwindled, and with it an important source of livelihood and security for thousands of local residents More... Sound and fury over the 'New Delhi superbug'The Indian government has been quick to rubbish the Lancet study on the NDM-1 bacterium, choosing to see this as a commercial problem that will impact our growing medical tourism industry, rather than as a healthcare problem that could seriously impact a country where antibiotics are overused and where scant attention is paid to infection control in hospitals More... Ditty for a dying lakeThe Loktak Hydropower Project commissioned in 1983 has damaged the ecology of the largest freshwater lake in the northeast, and altered the culture, agricultural and livelihood patterns of communities residing around Loktak. The first in this FES-Infochange Media Fellowship series on Loktak, looks at what this common property resource used to be and what it has become More... Kashmir's e-protestThere is a rising tide of e-protest in Kashmir as the children of the Kashmir conflict make themselves heard through street graffiti, Facebook and YouTube More... Transferring 26% of mining profits to local populationsThe Indian government is thinking about giving local people a stake in the resources mined from their area by offering them 26% equity or payout of profits. But will government implement profit-sharing any more effectively than it implements the rehabilitation of the displaced? More... Chemical warfare in JhabuaPetlawad block in Madhya Pradesh’s Jhabua district illustrates in microcosm the crisis of Indian agriculture. Desperate farmers are using a phenomenal 600 kg of chemical fertiliser per hectare of farmland. As yields decline and costs of inputs rise, the average village’s debt is four times its annual income More... Supporters of the forest rights law intimidated in OrissaA misinformation campaign on who will benefit from the Forest Rights Act is setting adivasis against non-adivasis in Bolangir district, Orissa, while those creating awareness about villagers’ rights under the Act are being harassed by the authorities who fear they are losing their control over natural resources More... ‘Men also need to be liberated from patriarchy’Efforts to tackle gender-based violence against women in India have concentrated on empowering women to assert themselves and prevent violence. Men have been insulated from the process of transformation, says Harish Sadani of Men Against Violence and Abuse. Until men are seen as part of the solution, the status of women will not change significantly More... A totem pole for a brave new virtual world‘10 Tactics for Turning Information into Action’ is a smart, nifty resource package, loaded with valuable information and links that unlock the doorway to a world where hard data, software technology, creativity and sheer human ingenuity frisson to tell tales of human resilience and struggles for social justice More... TB championsIt’s easy to blame the media for its disinterest in covering issues such as tuberculosis, which kills 1,000 in India every day. But the problem could be the way organisations working with TB communicate their information. Trainings in effective communication and media advocacy clearly hel More... Global double standards: BP oil spill vs Bhopal gas tragedyIndian commentators have highlighted the contrast between the US response to the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in which BP has been forced to pay USD 20 billion, and the response to the Bhopal gas tragedy in which a US company paid out a paltry USD 470 million in compensation for 20,000 dead, thousands more injured, and a city poisoned More... |
View articles by page |
|
||||||
| Microsites | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Newsletter |
|---|
|
|
| Syndicate |
|---|
 |