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Struggle of the Dongria Kondh people: The media blackout continues
• Date published: August 15, 2010
On August 10, a frantic message landed in the mailbox of members of a Facebook group called Save Niyamgiri. Two leaders of the Dongria-Kondh tribe’s resistance to a controversial mine in Orissa’s Lanjigarh were said to have been abducted, and had subsequently gone missing. The two men were reported to have been ambushed at the base of the hill range where they live, bundled into a vehicle at gunpoint, and driven away. They were not being held at local police stations, Lanjigarh or Muniguda. A third person accompanying them was left alone.
HERE'S AN ENCOURAGING UPDATE
The dam report on tribal peoples that was damned by the media
• Date published: August 14, 2010
When skewed concepts of development are the watchwords of the day, it is more than likely that voices against this twisted sense of development don't see the light of day. So when a group that fights for tribal people around the world releases a report on dams, it is damned and made to disappear into the back hole of the news world.
That is what happened to happened to the report "Serious Damage: Tribal peoples and large dams" that was released last week by Survival International. The report exposes the untold cost of obtaining "green" electricity from large hydroelectric dams. The impact on tribal people is profound. One Amazonian tribe, the Enawene Nawe, has learnt that Brazilian authorities plan to build 29 dams on its rivers. Across the Amazon, the territories of five uncontacted tribes will be affected.
Let's talk about Sania
• Date published: April 5, 2010
The name Sania Mirza seems everywhere these days. Ubiquitous is what they say, I believe. In the sleazy, unimaginative headlines of newspapers. In those garish, framed boxes on websites. On sacrosanct Facebook status messages. And all-pervading Twitter, of course. For all the wrong reasons. Ok, I will concede that Shoaib Malik too is all over. Maybe more so. For all the same wrong reasons. But to me, it is Sania who matters first. That Paki Shoaib Malik is incidental, circumstantial.
Come to think of it, I am certainly missing something here. What’s wrong with people? You have nothing better to do? Nothing better to write? Nothing better to read? Sick and tired of celebrity-driven IPL, is it?
To save these people, you need to keep them out of our sight
• Date published: March 10, 2010
The most recurring, quoted number in India today is 1,411 – the mean count of tigers ostensibly remaining in the wild in the country. Everyone knows and everyone seems pretty upset. The number, of course, can be disputed and refuted too if needed; but that can be the topic for another discussion. What is evident is that given the rate of decline, it might be just another 20, or maybe 50, years by when tigers would vanish from our landscape. This number, till the other day, remained in the knowledge domain of wildlifers – conservationists, activists, enthusiasts. Thanks to the biggest ad campaign of the year, most people now know that 1,411 is too small a number in itself. Alarming, is how most ordinary people have been describing the number as.
This is one of India's most blacked-out stories
• Date published: March 9, 2010
It ought to be counted as one of India’s most downplayed stories of the day. It is about the struggle to save an ecosystem called Niyamgiri in Orissa from mining, deforestation and devastation. It is about indigenous people and the rights over their land.
Vedanta Resources, a stinking rich British company owned by NRI Anil Agarwal, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine in Niyamgiri. This mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. The Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the project, but the battle rages on. Albeit silently. This project, by the way, will also see the death of the centuries-old sacred groves of these people. The Dongria Kondh do not live anywhere else and there are just 8,000 of them left.
Making Cat Calls
Mohammad bin Tughlaq had ruled over vast stretches and tracts of land that today constitute India. He was a great ruler who left behind a legacy. A legacy that is today most identifiable as an adjectival derivative of his name – Tughlaqesque. The word is too complex to have an exact synonym. Tughlaqesque would mean exotic, Quixotic, far-fetched, well-meaning, ill-conceived, arrogant, grandiose, all at the same time. It is also a word that can be routinely associated with India’s later-day rulers. Especially, the ones who have lorded over us since Independence.
There is one Tughlaqesque idea that is doing the rounds these days and the gullible Indian media has fallen flat for it – that of reintroducing the cheetah in India.
Seeing the cheetah in the Indian wild is any Indian wildlifer’s wet dream. It is something that sets our hearts aflutter. But let’s get real and see what this dream is all about.
The minister and his words
Food for thought: It is time to junk Haldirams and Nestlé
It's an irony of sorts. One of the most popular food chains in India is arguably one of the worst when it comes to food safety. Haldirams has been rated Red in Greenpeace's Safe Food Guide version 2.0 that ranks 25 of the most popular food companies which hold a major share of the market in the country. Based on their responsibility towards Indian consumer on the GM food issue, the Guide categorises companies as Green, Yellow and Red.
Apart from Haldirams, other major companies that have made it to the Red list include Nestlé, Pepsico, Cargill, Hindustan Unilever Ltd, Britannia, Godrej Hersheys Ltd, MTR, Parle Biscuits Pvt Ltd, Agrotech, Surya Foods, Amul, GSK, FieldFresh (Bharathi Enterprises] and Kelloggs. These companies have not taken any concrete steps to provide Indian consumers with GM free food for now or in future thereby being irresponsible, says Greenpeace. Now, that kind of blacklists half of one's favourites in the market that sees little or no regulation.