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Dear Reader,
Thirty-nine years ago, in Maharashtra’s Raigad district, about 256 families of a fishing village lost their homes and hearth, when their mango and cashew orchards were acquired by the government for the expansion of India's largest container port, the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT). In lieu, the families were promised new homes 20 km southeast in the town of Uran with a school, health centre, water, sanitation, and roads, in place.
In the interim, however, they were accommodated in a ‘temporary transit camp’ until their new homes were ready. Almost forty years on, the families (now grown to 400) are still where they were. Far away from their earlier homes, they are now huddled together in camps deprived of their farmlands and livelihoods and increasingly forced to work as daily labourers. Article 14 reports that the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, and a 2017 Lokayukta order directing the JNPT to return the unutilised land to the villagers have been to no avail.
India has among the highest number of undertrial prisoners in the world—434,302 as of December 31, 2022, which constituted approximately 76% of the total prison population in the country. This has many causes, including the increasing propensity of the Courts to deny bail.
The India Forum points out that this is concerning on many counts. Not least because bail in India is eventually granted only when the court’s discomfort with length of imprisonment as an undertrial is reached—the “jurisprudence of apology, and not on the merits of the case—the “ordinariness of statutory remedies”. The story argues that the courts must shy away from this mindset because over time, the ‘inflection point’, the stage where courts are embarrassed into granting bail, would be normalised and expanded, making longer custody the norm.
Despite well-intentioned schemes like the Har Ghar Nal Yojana, access to water for a significant part of India is still a pipe dream. Janchowk reports from villages of Uttar Pradesh where, especially for marginalised populations, the day begins with long treks in search of water. While the government has provided pipes and taps, they run dry for most of the year, as the water level in the ponds and wells depletes every year. This daily search for water has affected the lives of children, often at the expense of their schooling.
Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh National Park, in the Umaria district, with a core area of 716 Sq Km is home to 165 tigers, 250 bird species and over 33 mammal species—a bastion of biodiversity— with one of the highest densities of tigers in India. However, last month, in October, tragedy hit the Park, when ten elephants at the Bandhavgarh Park were found dead in circumstances that were not fully explained.
Official investigations pointed to poisoning of the pachyderms from ingesting an overdose of ‘Kodo millet’ during their foraging. However, as The Probe reports, the official stance has been contested by activists and conservationists. They question if toxicity from the Kodo millet is enough to cause elephant deaths and demand “further investigation” into delays in treatment, the absence of senior officials at the site despite being informed of the emergency, and the undue ‘tiger-centric’ approach of the government to the detriment of other animals, especially elephants.
For more such stories from the grantees this week, please read on.
Warmly,
Sunil Rajshekhar
IPSMF
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