Land Acquisition

NABARD to raise Rs 77,000 crore to fund 100 prioritised irrigation projects

Despite the severe water management crisis India is going through, hydro energy continues to be the second leading source of power, next only to thermal-based energy in the country. Hydropower generates over 16 percent of India’s electricity.

"If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country.”

- Jawaharlal Nehru, speaking to villagers who were to be displaced by the Hirakud Dam in 1948.

In the field of environmental justice, compliance is one of the least understood and researched topics. Since compliance may involve scientific and technological aspects of the environment, it is mostly left to technical experts, regulatory bodies and members of the industry. It has seen almost no public engagement or community action at the field and at policy levels.

NGT raps UP government over Yamuna's pollution near the Taj Mahal

Farmer Ravikant Deshmukh (40) is a much worried man. He lives in Kudari Dalli in Balod district in Chhattisgarh, a village that would get affected adversely if Mohar reservoir project takes off. The project, once realised, is estimated to submerge the agricultural land and houses of 1200 villagers in Kudari Dalli.

Vikram Patel, a 71-year-old farmer in Chidavad village of Dewas district in Madhya Pradesh is one of the first farmers to have embraced the idea of farm ponds to increase the groundwater level in his farm.

Ramesh Mali, a farmer in his late thirties, looks at his farmland nervously. It has been 13 days since the Simhastha Maha Kumbh festival, 2016, concluded. The district administration had acquired his four bigha land (approximately 0.64 hectares) for the festival. The barricades and the concrete left on his land give us the idea that the land is not fit for farming this season.

The Madhya Simhastha Maha Kumbh festival, the religious extravaganza that happens once in every 12 years, was held in Ujjain from April 22-May 21, 2016.

A number of Asian countries are going through environmental crisis. Nowhere is the impact felt so seriously than in India, where the crisis threatens to affect survival. It is also impacting biodiversity, ecology and livelihoods. In this context, it becomes important to understand how nature and the current environmental crisis are being addressed in policy discourses.