UNEARTH – The Viewsletter – February 2018

Report

Report of Gender Samvad 

Gender Samvad, a three day event on  respect and equality of women in Indian society and their rightful human rights in their personal and professional fronts, the journey of educating the Indian crowd about women equality, awareness towards the social and criminal justice pertaining in the crowd halted to discuss solutions for these issues. Read More

The state of Odisha is known for its mineral wealth in the country. It is corroborated by the presence of India’s 92% of chromite, 92% of nickel, 52% of bauxite, 44% of manganese, 33% of iron-ore, and 24% of coal reserves in the state. In addition, many other minerals like limestone, dolomite, tin, vanadium, lead, gold, etc., are also found here. This abundant mineral wealth has attracted number of industries such as thermal power plants, iron/steel including sponge iron plants, aluminium smelters, ferro-alloys and coal washeries functional in the region. Read More

Coal reserves are primarily found in the Eastern India in states of Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and predominantly in North-East regions like Assam and Meghalaya. Despite the presence of coal reserves, commercial mining is not practiced in the North-Eastern regions because of terrain’s unsuitability as well as nature of coal deposits. Open mining cannot be practiced due to the added difficulties. Further, the coal found in North-East contains lots of sulfur. This overall reduces the energy efficiency and therefore this type of coal is categorized as bad quality of coal. Read More

Report

Report of Ban Asbestos Meeting (19-20 January 2019)

The first network meeting of Indian Ban Asbestos Network (iBAN) was conducted in New Delhi at the Secretariat’s office. The objective of the meeting was two-fold; first, to present and review on the work done by the network in last one year. Second, to make an action plan for the coming year and in long term. Read More

The legal emergence of District Mineral Foundation from the 2015 MMDR amendment Act and its implementation framework rolled out in September 2015 or scheme called PMKKKY (Pradhan Mantri Khanij Kshetra Kalyan Yojna) threw light on two things; one that it is an extension of schemes for which some financing mechanism has been found and secondly that welfare of the affected by their identification & earmarking affected areas is expected. PMKKKY guidelines begin by outlining criteria for ‘Identification of affected areas and people to be covered under PMKKKY.’ DMFs were to be set up in each such district which is affected by mining and each state needed to frame rules but in compliance to the scheme. Read More

Participatory Planning of Workbook

Environics Trust is aiming to develop a workbook on Panna and Chhatarpur districts for further informative planning and execution of governmental and non-governmental schemes and practises. The meeting started with the purpose and meaning of workbook. Workbook is a collection of data presented with various mediums (charts, maps, tables) for a better understanding of the prevailing problems and the suggestive solutions. Thus it is also a tool to study spatial data (read ground information), especially when enough data is not available, we can study and observe correlative data. Read More

We welcome all suggestions and questions from our readers. A feedback from all will be much appreciated. In case there are any questions or clarification with regards to the content present in this issue, please email us at addresses below.

Editorial Team:
Arun K Singh – arunsings@gmail.com