The FRA promise
Two decades after the Forest Rights Act became law, the record is uneven. While the law offers a democratic framework for forest governance, its transformative potential is unrealised due to weak implementation and resistance from bureaucrats
The governance, rights face-off
Between paper and forest floor, an entrenched bureaucracy, aided by an indifferent political class, has managed to subvert the FRA’s most radical promise of genuinely democratic, grassroots governance of forests.
Why the FRA matters in Arunachal
Arunachal Pradesh’s forests, covering 80 per cent of its area, remain inseparable from the ancestral homeland of the indigenous Scheduled Tribes, who account for two-thirds of the State’s population. Every activity linked to land—cultural, material, and commercial—is, in one way or another, linked to forests. Even at first glance, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) would […]
Exploring Continuity and Change in ‘India’s Forests’
Environmental scholars should also produce a similar volume on wetlands, rivers and coastal ecosystems, that also have long histories of diverse human interactions, ranging from worship to destruction
Should MSP Become A Legal Right? Constitutional Debate Around C2 Formula
Beyond Honey Bees: Rethinking Urban Green Spaces for Pollinator Diversity
Beyond Big Parks: Why Everyday Green Spaces Shape City Life
When the Rains Miss ‘ashar’: El Niño, a Shifting Monsoon, and the Smallholder Sowing Window
On May 15, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast that the southwest monsoon would reach Kerala by May 26, five days ahead of the usual date. It arrived on June 4, three days late. That nine-day gap, at the coarsest scale the monsoon is tracked, an entire coastline rather than one farmer’s field, is this […]
What the Western Ghats Map Leaves Out
The piece examines the Centre’s State-by-State notification of the Western Ghats ecologically sensitive area (ESA), built on the Kasturirangan Committee’s 2013 split between “natural” and “cultural” landscape. It argues that the boundary excludes the most populated, plantation-dominated, and landslide-prone slopes from protection, and that the same areas also lack Community Forest Resource rights under the […]
The Neem Patent Case and India’s Next Battle Over Traditional Knowledge [commentary]
Most public discussion of biopiracy still focuses on the misappropriation of specific biological resources: a plant compound, a seed variety, or a fermentation culture. The legal response has focused correspondingly on access and benefit-sharing rules, prior art databases, and geographical indication protections. These instruments work, imperfectly, for that kind of theft.
