The fight for forests, the struggle for land rights

In Shahbad: drown a forest; grow a dam

A proposed pumped storage hydro project in Shahbad’s dense forests will drown over 400 hectares of land. Thousands of Sahariya Adivasis and Dalits who depend on the forests will lose their livelihoods

October 8, 2025 | Priti David

When Dalits fight to reclaim half the sky

Having reclaimed 4,210 acres of panchayat land in 162 villages, Punjab’s Dalits now push to occupy acreage held by dominant castes which exceed the limits laid down in the Land Ceiling Act of 1972

September 15, 2025 | Vishav Bharti

PSP: pushing Sahyadri people into deep waters

In Maharashtra’s Western Ghats, plans for a hydropower project threaten to submerge farms and forest land, and displace families, raising questions on the nature of India’s clean energy transition

August 12, 2025 | Jyoti

Adivasis in Panna tiger park: dammed futures

First, they were moved to make space for tigers. Now it’s the Ken-Betwa river linking project that is grabbing forest dwellers’ land. The uncertainty about compensation, displacement dates and destination, is happening all over again

November 28, 2024 | Priti David

Adivasis of Jharkhand — landless in their own land

In a new, digital India, Jharkhand’s Adivasi communities are slowly losing their rights over individual as well as common lands

November 19, 2024 | Jacinta Kerketta

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 03, 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 06, 2024 | Priti David

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

Footprints of protest in the sands of a mine

A small, brave band of farmers in UP’s Banda district have been fighting the damage to their lands and the river Ken by a sand mining mafia. Shortly before World Environment Day on June 5, they held a jal satyagraha

June 6, 2020 | Jigyasa Mishra

‘We believe 15,000 trees have already been cut’

For two weeks now, innumerable trees are being cut to make way for the Talabira coal mine in Odisha. The villagers are heartbroken and intimidated, allege forged consent, and plan to oppose this destruction

December 18, 2019 | Chitrangada Choudhury

'But the forest department says it's their land'

Teak plantations, evictions, a lack of land titles – Adivasi women spoke of this and more in Delhi last week, and demanded implementation of the Forest Rights Act. An SC ruling on a case against the FRA is awaited

November 25, 2019 | Chitrangada Choudhury

'Let them ask animals for votes'

At a rally last week in Delhi to demand utilisation of the Forest Rights Act, many spoke of encounters with the forest department, their struggles to secure forest rights, and resolve to save the FRA in an ongoing case

March 8, 2019 | Janhavi Mittal

Aarey Adivasis: ‘Then we lost this land of ours’

The 3,200 acre Aarey tract in north Mumbai was once home to 27 Adivasi hamlets. But over the years, several projects have taken over large portions of this land, including a dairy processing unit and a ‘film city’. The latest claimant is a car shed for the Mumbai Metro

October 24, 2019 | Aakanksha

No stranger to struggle in Sonbhadra

Sukalo Gond, veteran Adivasi activist in UP’s Majhouli village, says the road ahead is long – tomorrow, July 24, the Supreme Court will decide on the eviction of over a million Adivasis across India

July 23, 2019 | Sweta Daga

Forced out of the forest and into uncertainty

The Adivasis of Talgaon, in the Panna Tiger Reserve's core area, had to give up their traditional livelihoods when they were relocated. They now live without land titles, rations and schools – fearing further eviction.

December 12, 2018 | Maithreyi Kamalanathan

At the cutting edge of forest rights struggles

'For the first time in my life, I felt strong', says Sukalo Gond, about bringing together her Adivasi community to demand their land and forest rights in Majhouli village in Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh

November 1, 2018 | Sweta Daga

'I knew I was going to jail that day…'

When Adivasis fight to reclaim traditional forest rights and land, the fallout can include imprisonment, which is especially hard for women – as it has been for Rajkumari and Sukalo of Uttar Pradesh's Sonbhadra district.

October 30, 2018 | Sweta Daga

‘This land is mine. I will get it back’

Many Adivasis have lost their land in Uttarakhand. But Kamla Devi of Pindari village and Mangola Singh of Nandpur are resisting usury, fraud and gender prejudice to get back their farmland and secure their rights

October 4, 2018 | Puja Awasthi

‘Take us, it is better than taking our land’

Women who become strong voices in land and forest rights struggles are often most at risk of violence, false charges and imprisonment – as are Lalti Devi and Shoba Bharti, two Dalit activists of UP's Sonbhadra district.

July 31, 2018 | Sweta Daga

‘Forest officials cut and take away our crop’

On May 3, to follow-up on the landmark Long March from Nashik to Mumbai, 35,000 Adivasi farmers gathered in Dahanu for a victory rally, signalling their determination to continue the fight for their demands.

May 10, 2018 | Siddharth Adelkar

‘The mountain, forest and streams are our gods’

The Adivasis of the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha won a victory in 2013 against mining, but the threats to their ancestral land remain. Rajkishor Sunani, poet-activist, sang about at the recent Niyamgiri festival

April 20, 2018 |  Purusottam Thakur

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

India State of Forest Report 2017

The India State of Forest Report 2017 is published by the Forest Survey of India, a national organisation under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. This biennial report, published since 1987, maps the changes in forest cover across the country.

12 February 2018 | Forest Survey of India

Zuiliani’s basket of firewood

A wood-gatherer at work in a mountain-top forest in Hmuifang, Mizoram

January 24, 2017 | David C. Vanlalfakawma and T. R. Shankar Raman

How to steal a 79,000-crore rupee forest

In seven Keonjhar villages, Adivasi consent is manufactured to turn their forest into an iron ore mine

February 26, 2016 |  Chitrangada Choudhury

Not Just A Coal Block

Chhattisgarh's Hasdeo Arand forest tract is threatened by the government's hasty auctioning of coal blocks for mining, despite strong opposition from local Adivasi groups and environmental activists

January 2, 2015 | Chitrangada Choudhury

A mutiny in coal-rich Orissa

Rural anger in mineral belt reveals India's flawed development policies

December 18, 2014 | Chitrangada Choudhury

The poet-singer of Dhinkia

Back To South Korea (Go Back POSCO)

September 20, 2014 | Purusottam Thakur

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was enacted on December 29, 2006, and thereafter amended in 2012. It is often referred to as the Forest Rights Act.

December 29, 2006 | Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India