Inside slum lanes, a Delhi group helps quell hunger
The intiative, led by students and teachers of Delhi University along with lawyers and activists, feeds 800 slum dwellers a day
A decentralised system will lead to sustainable water use
S Vishwanath, a Bangalore-based engineer and planner, started the Rainwater Club to help people manage rainwater efficiently. He spoke to Binayak …
Health care should be cheaper and more accessible
N H ANTIA Director of the Foundation for Research in Community Health, Pune, Maharashtra is striving to promote the concept of better health care …
Who is protected?
The Lok Sabha passed Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Bill with complete amendments on August 9, 2001, twenty months after it …
A bushful of medicine
Seabuckthorn, a plant with numerous medicinal properties, grows wild in India. Rural communities are the losers
Water is wealth
Excerpts from the Statement of Shared Concern by the participants of the CSE conference on Potential of Water Harvesting: Traditions, Policies …
Corporate wastelands
Tamil Nadu seems set to gift community land to corporates under the name of wasteland regeneration
At loggerheads
While the state government is keen to introduce JFM, villagers say there is no need for that since they have been carrying out all protection …
Message in a baton
The decades after Independence saw rampant destruction of trees. This was followed by years of drought. It was then that the villagers realised …
Farmers can only teach traditional knowledge
P S Ramakrishnan , former director of G B Pant University in Nainital, Uttar Pradesh and currently professor at the School of Environmental …
Last mile smile
Communities are coming together in Jharkhand to create vigilance mechanisms to enforce food entitlement programmes
Spreading root
OLD ROOTS, NEW SHOOTS: A STUDY OF JOINT FOREST MANAGEMENT IN ANDHRA PRADESH·C S Rangachari and S D Mukherji·Winrock International …
How Chunar, a small town in UP, is combating COVID-19
How awareness drives involving local bodies, distribution of PPEs and other equipment, helped turn the COVID-19 situation around
Micropowerful
A microhydel project a day. Communities snatch the initiative from the government to electrify rural Nepal
Proactive planning
It's not about fighting the problem later, it's about pre-empting the problem. Measures against air pollution and plastics are all about taking …
Three avenues, one goal
The focus is on development of hydropower, industries and food production: how sustainably can the targets be achieved?
TRAMPLED DESTINIES
What happens if conservation is based on half-baked knowledge? Ask a person rendered homeless by wildlife managers "No conservation strategy …
WORKING IN ISOLATION
A mutual lack of trust and understanding between forest officials and wildlife scientists may be responsible for the mismanagement of India's …
CONSERVATION TO DEATH
Misguided conservation efforts are leading to depletion of biodiversity and exploitation of poor people
Drought is in the mind
GOOD NEWS: There is more evidence to show that water harvesting can go a long way in dealing with drought and solving the water crisis, and even …
Political harvest
Report card: A scheme that can help solve the water crisis has become a tool to promote political interests of the ruling party Success level: Poor
Learning the mantra
Report card: The government realised its failures and learned from the civil society. Despite cases of corruption and some errors in planning, …
'Community rights must figure in the Forest Bill'
The raging controversy over the regressive draft Forest Bill has dumped the onus of defending it on minister of state for environment and forests …
Chronicle of a journey foretold
Water trains aren't a strange sight anymore. Not the least in the parched areas of Gujarat. But while many villages await their erratic supply, …
On The Warpath
They prefer to be called the 'forest castes'. They are the 2,000,000-odd villagers living in some 10,000 villages across Orissa. After …