For the tribals and the poor, "Green Hunt" is nothing else but a united front of state and mining corporations to grab their land and rich natural resources by silencing the voices of those who fight for their homeland rights. The state, the tribals and the poor believe, is in nexus with the designs of the multinational and Transnational corporations. The Honourable Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, had said that sacred hills do not give people food to eat or clothes to wear. That is why he explains that the state has decided to modernise and industrialise the tribal belt to provide food, clothing and employment. The only question the tribals are raising is whether they have any say over the model of development that the state has decided to impose on them. Can the state along with the corporations decide what kind of development they should adopt in a democracy? What has happened to the tribal self-rule law?

-with only 16% vote share of Jharkhand’s population JMM-BJP-AJSU-JDU combine has formed the govt -

When Sibu Soren and his two deputies were sworn in on 30^th December, the print and electronic media spoke of a ‘popular govt’ being formed. The question is: how popular is a popular govt? The following data offer some insights to point out that it is far from true:

Of Jharkhand’s population of 2 crore 70 lakh, the registered voter base is 1 crore 73 lakh. In the last Assembly election, only 95 lakh persons voted, a turn out of 55%. Of this the JMM-BJP-AJSU-JDU combine secured 46%, and of the total eligible voters 25%, and of the total population 16%. So 16% will rule over 100% of Jharkhand population!

A Brahmin priest in 24 Parganas in West Bengal forbids non-Brahmins from crossing his path as he carries the 'Narayana Shila', a stone worshipped as Lord Narayana.

The latest session of the UN Human Rights Council, which concluded on Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary, has challenged India's 13-year-old position on caste. This is because of Nepal's unexpected endorsement of a proposal to expand the definition of descent-based discrimination to include caste.

India's predicament may be bad. But it is worsened by its shifting position on equating caste with race as a form of descent-based discrimination. India spared no effort to keep caste out of the resolution adopted at the 2001 Durban conference against racism. But there was a time it insisted -- at another UN forum – on the similarity between caste and race. But that was more than 40 years ago and it was a time when India was upholding the Mahatma's legacy and was in the forefront of the international campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

Here are India's flip-flops on caste as a form of descent-based discrimination:

· In 1965, India proposed the historic amendment to introduce descent in the "Convention on Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination" or CERD. It cited its own experience with caste. K C Pant moved the amendment as a member of the Indian delegation and admitted that "certain groups, though of the same racial stock and ethnic origin as their fellow citizens, had for centuries been relegated by the caste system to a miserable and downtrodden condition".

It gives me great pleasure to inaugurate this international seminar organised by the Institute for Human Development. The choice of the theme is appropriate. It covers a range of issues of local, national and global importance relating to the well-being of Adivasi communities in India.

A look at recent history provides a perspective. The political, social and cultural heterogeneity of India was amply reflected in the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly. The Objectives Resolution was tabled by Jawaharlal Nehru in December 1946. It sought to secure social, economic and political justice, equality of status, of opportunity, and before the law to all the people and promised adequate safeguards for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and depressed and other backward classes. The contours of the debate were quantified by Jaipal Singh of Chotanagpur who, speaking on behalf of, as he put it, “millions of unknown hordes… unrecognised warriors of freedom, the original people of India who have variously been known as backward tribes, primitive tribes, criminal tribes and everything else”, supported the Resolution.

Jaipal Singh also gave vent to long standing grievances and articulated the problem candidly: