Kuno's folk: missing the wood and the trees
Thousands of Sahariya Adivasis who have lived here for centuries and depended on the forest for their livelihoods, are now banned from entering. September 2024 marks two years since the state shut them out for a cheetah safari park
September 3, 2024 | Priti David
Kuno’s caged cheetahs and exiled Adivasis
Kuno is now a hunting ground for green political optics. Money and state influence are powering a cheetah safari in the guise of a conservation project. For the hundreds of displaced people who vacated the forest for the cats still primarily in cages, finding jobs, schools, firewood and even drinking water is a daily challenge
February 6, 2024 | Priti David
In Bagribari: the river takes it all
The annual monsoon flooding of the Puthimari river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, is a constant source of anxiety for those who live on its banks. Flood waters destroy farmland, standing crops and even looms, leaving many residents with no option but wage labour. Expensive embankments don't help
September 20, 2023 | Wahidur Rahman and Pankaj Das
‘Who drowned Delhi?’
The capital is getting a facelift as it gears up to host the G20 meet on September 8, 2023. But the sprucing up is selective. Those residents of Delhi who have been displaced by the recent Yamuna floods and on-going development projects on its banks, are now living on public roads, and told to ‘stay out of sight’
September 6, 2023 | Shalini Singh
Mumbai's Adivasis stand up to be counted
On World Indigenous People’s Day, Adivasis who live in and around Mumbai’s Aarey forest gathered for a show of strength and solidarity
September 2, 2023 | Ishita Pradeep
When elephants come calling in Birbhum
In Patalpur village, it's only the family of farmers, Ujjwal and Chandana Das who are still holding out against annual raids that devastate their crops and destroy their home. The rest of the village has left
July 28, 2023 | Sayan Sarkar
‘Where will we go leaving everything behind?’
At the Deocha Pachami coal mine in West Bengal, women are at the forefront of the protest to save their land and livelihoods. An artist tells us the story of their determined fight through a series of illustrations
July 6, 2023 | Labani Jangi
In Kuno Park – no one gets the lion’s share
It’s been 23 years since mainly Sahariya Adivasi and Dalit families in forest villages of Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district were displaced from their homes to make way for lions…that have still not arrived
July 4, 2022 | Priti David
In Kuno: Cheetahs in, Adivasis out
The Sahariya Adivasis of Bagcha village in Madhya Pradesh’s Sheopur district will be displaced to make a home for the African cheetah – a move fraught with livelihood loss and ecological risk
April 25, 2022 | Priti David
A Palghar village battles a national highway
The Warli Adivasis of Nimbavali were tricked into giving up their land and homes for the Mumbai-Vadodara expressway, but the project tore through the village and the compensation was inadequate
March 16, 2022 | Mamata Pared
Chased by development in Chikapar
Little Chikapar in Koraput, Odisha, was probably the only village in the world to have taken on the Army, Air Force and Navy – and lost
November 18, 2021 | P. Sainath
When the mountain crashed down on Mirgaon
Many weeks after a landslide flattened their village, the people of Mirgaon in Maharashtra are still staying in a local school. This is their third displacement – the first was by the Koyna Dam – and they are exhausted
September 9, 2021 | Hrushikesh Patil
Mudumalai Adivasis – displaced by deceit
Adivasi families of the seven hamlets within the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve's buffer zone speak of coercion and cheating after they took a compensation package and moved out of their ancestral homes
January 21, 2020 | Priti David
Bridge over troubled squatters
A month after the decades-old Tallah basti in north Kolkata was demolished to make way for bridge repairs, the families who were shunted out to transit sheds continue to seek fair rehabilitation
December 12, 2019 | Smita Khator
Pardhi school bulldozed by Prosperity Highway
A school in Amravati district, Maharashtra, started by a Phanse Pardhi teacher for kids from his long-stigmatised and impoverished community, was demolished on June 6, leaving them anxious and uncertain
June 17, 2019 | Jyoti Shinoli
Flattened by Prosperity in Chiradpada
Four Katkari Adivasi families living for decades just outside Chiradpada village in Thane district could soon lose their huts and livelihoods when a viaduct of the Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Highway runs through their hamlet
March 27, 2019 | Jyoti Shinoli
‘At least here we have our land’
The residents of Rampura, a small village in the buffer zone of the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, have been asked to move. But, they say, with no allocation of alternative land, where will we go?
March 22, 2019 | Maithreyi Kamalanathan
Living on the streets, looking for work
On the cold winter streets of the country's capital, seasonal migrants from Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and other states set up temporary 'homes' and try and find work at construction sites and other places
February 07, 2019 | Purusottam Thakur
Soaring land prices, falling farm fortunes
With the Andhra government's takeover of land for Amaravati, many landless villagers have lost farm work, forcing young men to seek wages at sand quarries near the Krishna river, and leaving women unemployed
January 21, 2019 | Rahul Maganti
‘Let the state give us the jobs it promised’
With the Andhra government's takeover of land for Amaravati, many landless villagers have lost farm work, forcing young men to seek wages at sand quarries near the Krishna river, and leaving women unemployed
November 13, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
New capital city, old mechanisms of division
Displaced farmers with fertile ‘assigned’ land they have cultivated for decades at the site of Andhra's new capital Amaravati, are asking why they are being given less compensation than farmers with land titles
October 29, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
‘This is not a people’s capital’
Amaravati, the mega-city coming up in Andhra amid grand claims by the government, will displace thousands of farmers from fertile land. While many are resisting, others are giving in to land pooling schemes
October 5, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Powerless in a power-surplus state
Thousands of villagers in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh will have to leave their land and livelihood to make way for a nuclear power plant – when the state has enough energy and the new capacity will cost a lot
September 14, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
'As if we had neither a village nor a country’
The Warlis have lived in the national park at Borivali in Mumbai for decades without adequate water or other facilities, fearing relocation. And in the struggle for a livelihood, they have also lost their distinctive art
August 22, 2018 | Apekshita Varshney
Displaced by the dam, homeless in Hukumpeta
Two years after leaving Pydipaka village to make way for the Polavaram project, six Dalit families are still waiting for houses, while the Adivasis of Devaragondi have been uprooted from their traditional homeground
August 16, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
‘Our houses are vanishing. Nobody cares’
For decades, villagers from Ghoramara island in the Sundarbans have been migrating to Sagar island because the river and rain keep washing away their houses. They have received little help from the state
July 20, 2018 | Urvashi Sarkar
Polavaram’s dispossessed march with hope
From July 10 to 16, a determined group of Adivasis marched from Cheeravalli village in West Godavari district to Eluru, protesting against the Polavaram project, which will displace and destroy their communities
July 19, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Pydipaka families: and then there were ten
Hundreds of villages will vanish over time due to the Polavaram project on the Godavari. In Pydipaka, ten families are refusing to move, demanding from the state at least the legally mandated resettlement package
May 28, 2018 | Rahul Maganti
Caged in concrete: an Adivasi urban nightmare
An Adivasi village within the megacity of Mumbai has been razed to make way for a Metro car depot, its inhabitants herded into matchbox-sized flats in an SRA building
March 6, 2018 | Jyoti Shinoli
‘Many families just vanished…’
Adivasi and OBC families thrown off their land for the Bhatsa irrigation project in Maharashtra’s Thane district still wait for justice almost half a century later
November 16, 2017 | Jyoti Shinoli
On the ‘prosperity highway' to penury?
Many in Marathwada are resisting the proposed Mumbai-Nagpur Samruddhi Highway, which the CM claims will transform the state's economy – though it will actually displace thousands of farmers in 354 villages
October 25, 2017 | Parth M.N.
Unquiet on the riverfront
The fishing communities on the banks of the Krishna in Andhra Pradesh are being forced to leave their homes and livelihoods due to the state’s many riverside projects around Vijayawada and the 'new' Amaravati
October 18, 2017 | Rahul Maganti
The fallen homes of Anantapur
A sudden demolition on August 3 in Vijayanagar colony of Anantapur town in Andhra Pradesh has left entire families – many of them daily wage workers or migrants – homeless and living out in the open
August 11, 2017 | Rahul M.
Struggles of the sandbar people
Hasan Ali is one of 2.4 million people who live on impermanent ‘chars’ or sandbars on the Brahmaputra – without basic necessities, frequently shifting home, their lives dictated by the flux of the mighty river
January 6, 2017 | Ratna Bharali Talukdar
Life in the company of coal
“The companies have destroyed the environment, agreed. But the government gives them the right to do it.”
January 26, 2015 | Parth M.N.
The poet-singer of Dhinkia
Back To South Korea (Go Back POSCO)
Sepember 20, 2014 | Purusottam Thakur
Worshipping a steel rath in Orissa
Trying to criminalise protesters seems a standard operating procedure in dealing with anti-displacement struggles in Orissa and beyond
July 25, 2014 | P. Sainath
