People

For parents with differently-abled children, things are better than they were a few years ago, but challenges remain. Maybe because perceptions haven't changed yet. To start with, things have to change at the policy level. "Making play spaces inclusive is not a matter of BBMP (Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike) policy. Those are still seen as 'special projects'. They (BBMP officials) 'agree' to do so because a bunch of us request/ demand them to," says Kavitha Krishnamoorthy, managing trustee...

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Friday directed the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to respond to applications challenging diversion of 10,000 acres of Amrit Mahal Kavals grassland ecosystems to a variety of public sector and commercial projects by October 30 or face serious consequences. The South Zone bench of the NGT, based in Chennai, warned the ministry that failure to comply, by filing an appropriate response, would attract a fine of Rs1 lakh in each of the two...

In a decision, being described as unprecedented and significant, the National Green Tribunal has ordered a status quo on all project activities proposed in the ecologically-fragile Amrit Kaval grasslands of Challakere talkuk in Chitradurga district. More than 10,000 acres of this grassland had been diverted by the Karnataka government for nuclear, defence and scientific projects. On Wednesday, the National Green Tribunal (South Zone), Chennai, comprising Justice P Jyothimani and expert member R...

The last time, they had come in droves. This time, they brought their herds too. Over 1,000 people from 80 villages in Chitradurga district on Thursday flocked to Chitradurga town in protest against the massive diversion of around 10,000 acres of Amrithmahal Kavals land in Challakere taluk of the district for a variety of industrial, defence, institutional and infrastructure projects. The communities, whose livelihood primarily depend on livestock that they graze on these grasslands, herded...

There’s something grossly wrong with the environment of Bangalore. Most people believe things have deteriorated in the last five years. But hold on, the majority believes that it is the government which should work towards improving the state of the environment. According to the Teri Environmental Survey 2013, which looked at the state of environment in six major Indian cities including Bangalore, 55 per cent of the people believe that it should be the government which should be working towards...

The Indian mining industry has spiraled out of control, and the government has miserably failed to regulate it. The scale of lawlessness in the multi-billion dollar industry is hard to assess, and the industry has not only fuelled corruption, but also wrecked havoc on both local communities as well as the environment. This overview of the mining industry comes from a 70-page damning report – Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human...

The Karnataka mining scandal provides a useful case study of the broader problems affecting India’s mining sector as it juxtaposes astonishingly serious regulatory failures with a relatively high level of capacity on the part of state governments. The assertion has been made in a 70-page damning report - Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday. It said, “The mining scandals in Karnataka reveal the...

State governments across the country have been both callous and tardy in implementing the Forest Rights Act. Claims are being rejected on flimsy grounds, with the rejection rate in as many as 11 states being over 50%. Karnataka stands fourth in the rejection rate with 95.66%, according to a compilation released on Monday by the Delhi-based Asian Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Network (AITPN). As of January 31 this year, 31,68,478 claims have been received and 27,24,162 (85.98%) disposed of. In...

Conservation, till very recently, was so top-down and condescending in its approach that conservationists and social activists would forever be at each others’ throats. There was no clear winner and it was evident that it were both people local communities on one hand and wildlife and forests on the other that were losing out in this internecine battle. That top-down approach is being, to quite an extent, turned on its head by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) which submitted to the...

Sometime in the early 1990s, a young Ashoka fellow set about shaking off the archetypal lethargy of old Kolkata. This man, Debashsis Nayak, formed an organisation called the Foundation for the Conservation and Research of Urban Traditional Architecture (CRUTA), and went out taking both tourists and residents of old Calcutta on guided tours through an intricate maze of lanes and bylanes of the cold city. The heritage walks soon found takers among oldtimers of the city, and when Kolkata celebrated...