- In a bid to undo historical injustice meted out to primitive tribal communities living in central India, the government of Madhya Pradesh has for the first time recognised the habitat rights of seven villages in Dindori district, mostly inhabited by the Baigas.
- In a meeting held in village Rajni Sarai on January 13, the district administration told the villagers they are free to access all their ancestral rights over land and forests. The administration also assured them that the government will not be able to transfer any land for non-community uses without “consent”.
- District Collector Chhavi Bhardwaj, who started the process of recognising habitat rights in 2014, told Down To Earththat around 9,308 hectares in the seven villages—Dhaba, Rajni Sarai, Dhurkutta, Limauta, Jilang, Silpidi and Ajgar—have been granted to about 900 families under Section 3 (1) d of Forest Rights Act, 2006. Ekta Parishad, a non-profit based in Tilda in Chhattisgarh, was instrumental in ensuring the recognition of these rights as they organised several rallies and initiated a dialogue with the district administration.
- The administration used a gazette notification passed by the colonial British government which recognised these areas as Baiga Chak (meaning area of Baiga). Baigas are considered as a particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) in the Indian Constitution and rely mostly on shifting cultivation, forest produce and fishing for sustenance. The tribe numbers only 150,000 people spread over forested areas of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.
- For several decades, the Baigas were discriminated against and often evicted from forest areas by government agencies. Ekta Parishad is now planning to take the movement to 64 other PVTGs across the country. According to convenor of Ekta Parishad, Ramesh Sharma, grant of habitat rights to Baigas is still at a nascent stage. "This is a good start but a lot needs to be accomplished as Baigas are not only in Baiga Chak but across all of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh,” he added.
India Tech Vision-2035 India's technology thinktank under the ministry of science & technology has come out with `Technology Vision 2035' here at the ongoing Indian Science Congress, identifying the challenges ahead and how they can be dealt with through technological interventions while realising the dream of a developed India by the year 2035. The thinktank -Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) -in the vision document lists a technology roadmap for India, giving details of 12 sectors and technologies that in some cases exist but need to be deployed, some in the pilot stage that must be scaled up and technologies in R&D stage. It, in fact, talks about many future technologies, ranging from flying cars, real time translation software, personalised medicine, wearable devices, e-sensing (e-nose and e-tongue) to 100% recyclable materials among others which may be used in different areas to solve day-to-day problems “The trajectories del...
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