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Dear Reader,
India’s rate of deforestation is second only to Brazil. Over the last 15 years alone, India has cleared approximately 300,000 hectares of forest, or 3,000 sq km, equivalent to more than twice the area of Delhi, for ‘development’ — mining, power plants, and connectivity.
However, Article 14 finds that what is equally concerning is that the provision mandating “compensatory afforestation” that requires any forests cleared to be replaced with an equivalent area of man-made forests, is being violated through a sleight of hand, defying the government’s own rules and Supreme Court orders.
The land that is being offered in compensation for the lost forest cover is “already a forest”. For instance, in Odisha’s Jeypore and Malkangiri, 100 hectares of forest acquired for a railway line is sought to be replaced by land already designated as forests by the state government, which potentially impacts the ecology and the rights of the local populations whose livelihoods depend on these very forests.
The alluvial rivers that arise from the Himalayas and drain eventually into the Ganga are known to meander over time. But with increasing untimely rainfall events, and the proliferation of artificial embankments, these rivers change course violently and without warning. For instance, in July, the Sharda River, in Nayapurwa village in Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, began to veer, severely and cruelly eroding its banks.
The flooding and erosion were so grave that the Yadav family, living on the banks, lost their ancestral home and fields that provided their sole sustenance. With nowhere to turn to, left landless and homeless, they eventually surrendered to the river’s fury, joining the growing ranks of climate migrants. The Migration Story brings you the family’s story, emblematic of thousands in the Terai region in the last few years, where extreme climate events have become an almost annual feature.
In Kerala, on the evening of December 4, 2024, a diesel leak at the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited’s (HPCL) Elathur depot in Elathur, Kozhikode district, caused approximately 1,500 litres of fuel to spill out. As a consequence, contamination was found in an area spanning a kilometre. The Corporation claims that the spill was caused by a malfunctioning sensor and was an “accident”. However, the incident reignited the longstanding demand to relocate the depot, as residents allege non-adherence to safety arrangements and continued lapses over the years, finds TrueCopy Think.
For a century and a half, India Post has been the stalwart of the country’s correspondence. Delivering mail to the farthest corners of the country—reaching places where no other service provider would, or could. However, in the last few decades, its role as the ‘national postal service’ has been eroding. The latest service to be discontinued is the ‘book post’, which enabled the low-cost mailing of books across the country. This, Jan Chowk reports, has the potential to impact small publishers, who depended on India Post for the sustainability of their distribution.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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