Akash Naoghare

Often we see ourselves as rebels, often we see ourselves as righteous human beings, sometime we want to be a revolutionary too, such is a time we are living in. The system itself has become a nexus of crony capitalist, corrupt leaders and traders of humanity.  We try to vent out this righteous rebellion and ethical side of ours through various means like wearing T-Shirt printed with Che Guevara or Bhagat Singh or Gandhi. Often we opt for social media ; we post pictures of rev olutionaries with their quotes, we post some Shero-Shayaris from Manto and similar people because they wrote about the injustice in the world and how unequal the society has become. But even after all this, the big question still remains unanswered, "Do all such things really help ? Or do all such things just pacify our sour conscious by giving us a feel-good factor of us doing something worthwhile." I reckon it makes no point at the end of it all when we fail to take stand in the times of utmost ne...

Babarao is on the verge of being driven out of his home, a forested patch in this part of Vidarbha(Aamgaon, Wardha). Reason: forest conservation. The elderly man was annoyed by the approach of the forest department or authorities who feel that people are and should not be part of the ecosystem. I had an opportunity over the past few months to interact with the pastoralists – traditional herders or cattle keepers – in and around Vidarbha on the challenges they face in the context of changing climate and demographic changes, vis a vis a modern development paradigm. And each time I heard a new group, I was convinced the situation was more or less the same. All the people with whom I interacted repeated the same story “the forest department and urban people’s quest of Tiger conservation is paving way for so many socio economic problems, same forest department who doesn’t even know the actual scientific meaning of Forest or Jungle.” A Forest or a Jungle is area which is a habitat for d...