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Our last chance to save them
Sooner or later, it had to happen. Forty-two children from the isolated Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands have been hit by measles in the last three weeks in an epidemic which could wipe them out if not nipped now. The figure represents 16 per cent of the tribe's total population of 270. Liberal estimates put the population count at 300.
The Jarawa people of the Andaman Islands lived until very recently in almost complete isolation. Both British and Indian settlers have moved onto their islands over the last 150 years, but until 1998 the Jarawa chose to resist all contact with them.
What Nagaland doesn't need is a Neroesque politician
The tragedy of the Naga political movement has been the annihilation of Nagas by Nagas themselves.
The Nagas have remained cleaved along various schools of thought. Between radicals and moderates (from the killing of Theyieu Sakhrie to that of Kaito Sema) among the insurrectionists themselves. Also between those underground and those overground (from the killing of Imkongliba Ao to that of the Kevichusa brothers).
And somewhere complicating all these delicate equations and rendering all calculations awry are the perennial inter-tribe schisms. Exploiting all these to the hilt are politicians, giving all internecine killings a tribal hue. The blight continues.
Inadequate news coverage of environmental/wildlife issues
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• Originally published in ENVIS Newsletter
• Originally published in ENVIS Newsletter
This is a subject so oft-debated in our circles that it is beginning to lose its significance. The basic factors responsible for the virtual non-existence of environmental/wildlife issues in the news media are the same today as they were some years back. Recycling the same issues again would do nothing more than fill up space for Green Voice.
It is time to take things further, to develop a strategy, and work on – not towards – it.
The fight for news-space is not a battle, it is a game. It is a ruthless mind game. What we keep forgetting is that it is not we who set the rules for this game. We indulge in too much rhetoric and create a ballyhoo about ethics and all that. Who cares? Trust me on this one – no one does; for if they did, things would have been different. If we are to play this game, then we have to do so by the rules that are not to our advantage.
