Tribes News

It was a long day here, in Kachchh, when we were out in search of Gujarat’s indigenous breed of sheep, the Patanwadi. There are less than 5,000 sheep of this…

Sabhalgarh Compartment 8, in the Haridwar forest division is known to the residents as Gaindi Khatta. This is a settlement of the Van Gujjar community, who have been relocated and…

Human-wildlife interactions are on the rise. But not all of them are positive. In India, every year, hundreds of people and animals die due to human-animal conflict. Conflicts with wild…

The government of India is going all guns blazing on the “holistic development” of the Great Nicobar Island with a multi-component mega project. An international container trans-shipment terminal, a military-civil…

The historic rise in temperatures this year has affected the lives of many in India. This has also renewed focus on the impacts of climate change. Even as people are…

At the first-ever global tiger summit, to save tigers from extinction, held at St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2010, 13 tiger range countries, including India took a resolution to double tiger…

Thirty-year-old Bhagbali has vivid childhood memories of life in his village Bokrakachhar, amidst the forests of Chhattisgarh. Reminiscing about the time before his family and many others were displaced from…

India is yet to fully explore over 80 percent of its reserves of bauxite (an aluminium ore), notes a committee of India’s parliament, while emphasising that issues related to land…

Almost eight years ago, on March 25, 2014, at least 31 women from Jharauta village in Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh were arrested for protesting against the commencement of the…

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, commonly known as the FRA, is a landmark legislation in the history of independent India, as…

Tribal families living in north-eastern Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district have employed a sustainable way of honey extraction which does not harm the bees. The families have been collecting honey from the…

In Uttarakhand, there is a strong drive to displace the nomadic pastoral tribe of Van Gujjars in order to protect wildlife. ‘Van’ means forest. It was an identity conceived by…

A 58-page, undated “vision document” for the “sustainable development” of the Little Andaman Island in the Bay of Bengal was produced by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog,…

For the Gond community, one of India’s largest indigenous people, cremation is a part of the final rites when someone dies – the dead body is put atop a pile…

In the entire list of environmental laws in India, perhaps no legislation is as underutilised as the Biological Diversity Act, 2002. A law that provides for local control over biodiversity;…

Sanjay Kumar Hansda, a member of the Santhal tribe, would usually earn as much as Rs. 25,000 between March and June by collecting and selling minor forest products. However, this…

What is a forest? At present, in India, there is no clear nationally-accepted definition of ‘forest’. States are responsible for determining their definition of forests. In its meeting in September…

Every year millions of Indians, who belong to scheduled tribes, collect Rs. two trillion (Rs. 200,000 crore) worth of non-timber forest products (NTFP) from the country's forests. However, in the…

At least twice, the staid kalam tree (Mitragyna parvifolia), standing tall on a mound surrounded by farms in a nondescript village in the hilly areas of western Madhya Pradesh has…

Before the semi-autonomous status of the north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir was abolished by the Union Government on August 5, 2019, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest…