A month into protests against stone crushers mining in the agriculturally-rich Maletha gram sabha, the women of the village have decided to spearhead the campaign. They have taken the lead to demand the State government to cancel the licences of five stone crushers. [more]
The 2013 floods washed away their men out on job in Uttarakhand’s Kedar valley. A year and a half later, as the numbness injected by the catastrophe begins to wear off, the women are waking up to the pain of an uncertain future without breadwinners.…
The remote Indian mountain village of Deoli-Benigram has no cars and no electricity. And it hardly has any men — they were washed away by deadly floods last year. [more]
The Askot-Arakot Abhiyan – a people’s initiative to study changes in Uttarakhand every 10 years – concluded in Aarakot, thus, continuing a five-decade-old tradition of understanding the people and the villages in the State. [more]
The report also asked for rejection of projects encompassing critical wildlife habitats, high biological diversity and animal movement corridors, as well as projects to be built above 2,500 metres due to unpredictable glacial and paraglacial activities. [more]
Ramachandra Guha Hindustan Times, April 26, 2014 On May 25, 1974, four young men set out on a long march across the Himalayas. They were activists in the Uttarakhand Andolan, a popular movement that asked for a separate state to be constituted from the hill…
In their anxiety to restore normalcy in Uttarakhand, both the central and state governments are refusing to face the real reasons behind the devastation caused after the recent floods. These include misplaced development priorities that ignored the ecological fragility of the region. To reduce the…
A state created to safeguard the hill people, has become a graveyard of pilgrims and local aspirations in just over a decade. Jay Mazoomdaar and Avalok Langer map the catastrophe. [more]
Over a fortnight after the flash-floods, while many villages remain inaccessible by road, tragic stories are emerging from areas where dirt tracks have been opened up. About seven kilometres from Guptkashi, the six-odd hamlets that comprise the Deoli-Bramhagram panchayat have reported 57 men missing, and…