Dear Reader,

The last census of India, way back in 2011, recorded nearly 30 million persons with disabilities constituting more than two per cent of the Indian population. Despite progressive disability rights laws in India, systemic barriers—ranging from bureaucratic delays to narrow eligibility definitions, including a complex system of classification of disability—continue to deny young people with disabilities their rightful support.

A July 2024 case, where an IAS officer allegedly usurped a job reserved for the disabled, led to the amendment of the timelines provided for medical certification of disability. Ironically, this has only worsened and prolonged the challenges for genuine claimants to reserved jobs. Inclusive education, employment, and legal protections remain largely aspirational, with reserved job quotas unfilled and policies, like one for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), pending for years. Article 14 brings a first-hand account of a father of a child with special needs on how India continues to fail its millions with disabilities.

Bureaucracy in India seemingly has a penchant for self-inflicted blunders. Villagers in Jharkhand's Garhwa district found out the hard way when they discovered that the forest department, in its drive to clear the ground before a tree plantation drive, wantonly cut and uprooted precious trees and plants—tendu, koreya, and bhelwa—which provide the villagers with a livelihood.

Janchowk finds that the department had neither consulted the villagers nor employed them for this work. Instead, they used JCB machines to pull out trees and plants indiscriminately. A trench meant to serve as a barrier to keep wild animals away was placed so far from the forest boundary that it encroached on the village farmlands. The locals lament the lack of transparency and their exclusion from decision-making processes that affect their access to forests, as well as their lives and livelihoods.

The Mahua tree—‘Kalpa Vriksha’, or the ‘tree of life’—is of deep cultural and economic importance to tribal and forest-dwelling communities in India. Its produce, including flowers, fruits, branches, and leaves, is used for food, fodder, fuel, medicine, and income generation. India, according to some estimates, produces 45,000 tonnes of Mahua annually, making it one of the most important Minor Forest Produce (MFP), estimated to provide 30 to 45 days of livelihood in the country’s tribal belt.

However, a recent study by a prominent publication warns that climate change—increasing temperatures, erratic rainfall, and extreme weather events—is severely affecting the Mahua tree, potentially pushing it toward extinction by 2100. मैं भी भारत visits the Gumla district in Jharkhand to document the warning signs threatening the Mahua and other vital forest produce—a trend that, if left unchecked, could have a devastating impact on India’s already vulnerable tribal and forest-dwelling populations.

On February 9, 2023, India announced the discovery of its first lithium reserves—5.9 million tonnes—in the Salal-Haimana area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi district. With the potential to become the seventh-largest lithium reserve globally, the find was hailed as a major breakthrough for India’s green energy ambitions. However, efforts to exploit the discovery have been mired in uncertainty, with two mining tenders falling through due to a lack of bidders and the government now considering more detailed exploration before issuing fresh tenders.

For the residents of Salal in the Jammu region, the prospect of lithium mining has rekindled fears of displacement. Many were already relocated in the 1970s for the construction of the Salal Dam—the state’s first hydroelectric power project under the Indus Water Treaty with Pakistan. Ground Report documents their anxieties over potential resettlement and rehabilitation, as well as concerns about the environmental impact of lithium mining, which demands significant land and water resources and threatens the fragile Himalayan ecosystem they inhabit.

For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.

Warmly,

Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF