To chalk out the future course of action in view of the disputes regarding the use of Mahanadi river water, a well-rounded strategy that includes both the people and policymakers is needed. The strategy must allow for dialogue by rebuilding trust and should look at arbitration and negotiation as methods of conflict resolution.

Despite the international recognition accorded to the key role played by women in issues around water, the extent to which India’s national water policies accommodate gender concerns remains to be examined. Based on an in-depth content analysis of the three nwps—of 1987, 2002, and 2012—this paper argues that incorporation of women in the planning, provisioning, and management of water resources continues to be disregarded.

Against the backdrop of a dwindling marine fisheries resource base, declining catch rates, and escalating conflicts about securing rights over oceanic resources, this paper emphasises the need to relook at the marine fisheries regulatory regime in the country with a view to better align it to address outstanding issues and emerging challenges.

Compensatory afforestation is a dubious and controversial environmental “offset” that is adding to environmental damage instead of mitigating or compensating it. Compensatory afforestation may actually be accelerating the invasion of India’s forests by big corporations, in collusion with a permissive state, by legitimising the destruction of forests, greenwashing the land grabs, and encroaching on common property resources and community-held lands.

The Sardar Sarovar dam exemplifies unjust and unsustainable development. (Editorial)

The management information system of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 was hailed as a pioneering tool for enhancing transparency and accountability. However, it is now being used with impunity to centralise the programme and violate workers’ legal entitlements, causing frequent disruptions on the ground and opening new avenues for corruption in the programme.

Original Source

Two seminal books, John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York’s The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth and John Bellamy Foster’s The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet suggest that the rift between humanity and nature must be analysed in its intertwining with other kinds of alienation, all stemming from the adverse effects of the very nature and structure of capitalist society. Nothing short of an eco-social revolution is required to deal with the social and ecological crisis.

Paying farmers for ecosystem services that they provide could be a novel way to achieve multiple goals of doubling the farm incomes, reduce rural–urban migration, reduce pressure on urban infrastructure, and at the same time, incentivise sustainable agrarian practices in India.

Farmers have a complex relationship with their land: losing it means losing an entire way of life. A survey of the original inhabitants of Maan, a village near Pune where land was acquired for an information technology park and industrial estates, found that the process of acquisition was both attractive and scary for the farmers involved. Almost 70% of the respondents were willing to sell their land under different conditions. They were bitter about the escalation of land values after acquisition. What farmers want is a share in the future appreciation of land.

This article examines evidence for disparities between three ethnic groups within the Scheduled Tribes category in the Jawhar and Mokhada talukas of Palghar district in Maharashtra in order to understand the dimensions of these disparities.