A four-year-old landmark law that was supposed to bring profound changes in the lives of India’s tribal and forest-dwelling peoples has failed to deliver on that promise.

According to activists and government officials alike, the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act – better known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 – has remained nothing more than ink on paper as general confusion, corruption, and an intransigent forest department ...
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India is the seventh largest country in the world and Asia's second largest nation with an area of 3,287,263 square km. The Indian mainland stretches from 8 4' to 37 6' N latitude and from 68 7' to 97 25' E longitude Figure 1. It has a land frontier of some 15,200 kilometers and a coastline of 7,516 km (Government of India, 1985). India's northern frontiers are with Xizang (Tibet) in the Peoples Republic of China, Nepal and Bhutan. In the north-west, India borders on Pakistan; in the north-ea...
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A great variety of endangered wildlife species end up feeding the illegal market for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) thanks to poor enforcement in stopping the trade, say experts and activists.

"The Chinese market is like a 'black hole' sucking in wildlife products from neighbouring countries," said Peter Pueschel, head of global Wildlife Trade Programme at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), in an e-mail interview with IPS.

India, China's neighbour to the south, is most at r...
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