Chhattisgarh's Industrial Jungle

The rich green fields of Darramuda village in Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh were almost peaceful. A JCB backhoe loader whirred on as it dug in and pulled out lumps of wet brown earth.

Common concerns

On a cold January night in Hyderabad, a fortnight ago, Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Environment and Forests, was led to an open-air dinner by folk drummers and body-painted tiger dancers as an appreciative audience of international academics and grassroots workers cheered and milled around him. Ramesh had become the toast of the evening after he asked the world’s top scholars working on issues related to the commons to help shape his ministry’s thinking.

Acid Test

Letters

Seeds Of Water Disputes

Koyna sanctuary plundered

Electricity wires hang dangerously over a bituminous road. Unending rows of gigantic windmills look down from where, perhaps, a tiger should have kept an eye on its territory. Instead of birds, turbines create a humming noise. Trees are hardly in sight and one has to be lucky to spot wildlife. The Vankusawade plateau in the Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra hardly looks like part of a wildlife sanctuary.

Villages protest forest acquisition

MORE than 2,000 people from five villages of Odisha’s Angul district formed a human chain on January 5 to protest acquisition of Jamuda forest land by the Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL). Under the banner of Anchalika Jindal Khyatigrastha Praja Samiti, residents of Sankerejenge, Badakerejenge, Sadanandpur, Duhidabeda and Jamuda villages shouted slogans against the steel major, accusing it of not compensating them for community property, including forest, grazing land and village ponds, acquired.

Notice to Mundra for flouting laws

The Union environment ministry on December 15 issued a show cause notice to the Adani group promoted Mundra SEZ and Port in Gujarat. The ministry has asked the company to reply within 15 days as to why the clearances given to it for developing the port and a township should not be cancelled for environmental and coastal destruction. The ministry has charged the company with destruction of mangroves, reclamation of land and filling up of creeks without obtaining the mandatory clearance under the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification of 1991.

Suzlon, Lavasa raised loans from the company named in bribery scam

Suzlon Energy and Lavasa Corporation are among the companies named in the bribery scam that led to the arrest of eight top officials of public sector banks and financial firms on November 24. The companies were allegedly raising loans from a Mumbai-based private financial firm that bribed the senior officials of the state-run banks for the loans.

Orissa high court blow for Vedanta

In an unprecedented judgement, Orissa High Court has asked mining giant Vedanta to return the land acquired for a university to its owners. The university was proposed on a spread of 2,400 hectares or land equivalent for 5400 football fields. With an outlay of Rs 15,000 crore, the university has been controversial since it was proposed on land rich in thorium deposits along the Puri-Konark marine drive.

Scrap Lavasa township: petition

Social activists have moved court to scrap the Lavasa township project near Pune. The public interest petition filed in the Bombay High Court says the project does not have the mandatory environmental clearance from the Union environment ministry, and hence is liable to be cancelled.