2019 was the year of elections. Starting with the biggest festival of democracy - the elections to the parliament - India witnessed elections every few months at various levels of…
When the 14th Finance Commission incentivised forest cover in states, with the aim of balancing ecology and economic development, the move was welcomed by civil society. The 14th Commission's recommendations,…
Up in the mountains of Nagaland, in Mimi village, bordering Myanmar, village elders recollect that in the late 1970s, there was an outbreak of a “mysterious disease” that claimed more…
Bulbul, one of the most recent tropical cyclonic storms, wreaked havoc in southern West Bengal along with parts of Odisha on 8th and 9th November 2019. The storm is said to…
Shifting cultivation, variously known as swidden agriculture, slash and burn, or locally as jhum in Bangladesh and northeast India, has been vilified and blamed for deforestation and environmental degradation since…
Hunting poses a significant risk to wildlife persistence in four-fifths of the remaining tropical forests on earth. Eighty percent of these tropical forests lie within a 20-km radius of a…
In Mizoram’s rugged mountains, telltale signs of climate change and population pressure show on slash-and-burn agriculture (jhum or shifting cultivation) and its indigenous practitioners (jhumias), who soldier on despite production…
On September 17, 2019, when Gujarat’s Sardar Sarovar Dam reservoir was filled to its highest level of 138.68 metres to celebrate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s birthday at the dam site,…
At a time when election fervour is at its peak in Maharashtra and political parties are sweating it out to lure voters with tall promises, residents of the Manibeli village…
Nestled within the picturesque Western Ghats, the Lavasa township near Pune, Maharashtra is unlike any other hill city of India. As one drives up a smooth road amid the monsoon…
In Palghar and Bhiwandi, two distinct urban districts close to the financial capital Mumbai in the western state of Maharastra, politicians have skipped the customary pre-election visits, in advance of…
Caught in the transition from shifting cultivation (jhum) to rubber monocropping, members of indigenous communities in a remote district in Tripura - India’s second rubber capital - are “struggling” or…
In the latest budget session of the Odisha Legislative State Assembly, State forest and environment minister Bikram Keshari Arukha hinted at the extent of mining the northern region of the…
The picturesque traditional Ladakhi houses made of stones, mud and wood are increasingly finding it difficult to sustain themselves. Wooden roofs that were originally designed to stand amid snow now…
The hall at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s residence was filled with a sense of jubilation as he announced the results of the 2018 countrywide tiger estimation on July 29, 2019,…
Asserting that the range and intensity of desertification have increased in some dryland areas over the past several decades, a latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…
Once every four years the Indian government releases an estimate of the total number of tigers in India. The estimate for 2018 was announced on July 29, 2019, which is…
Turn page 266, the last one of Voice of a Sentient Highland, and you would have transitioned through myriad emotions. Wonder, as author Godwin Vasanth Bosco's knowledge of the land…
Released a day before the union budget, Indian government’s Economic Survey 2018-19 advocated for making the cleaning of rivers an integral part of the country’s clean India campaign. However, the…
The lack of alternative livelihood options is reinforcing the attachment of the Konyaks, a Nagaland tribe, to the practice of shifting cultivation (jhum), highlights a new study. This perceived economic…