Tribal villages in Aarey Forest, Mumbai Subarban, have no electricity 72 years after freedom

By A Representative
Naushacha Pada, an old Adivasi village of Aarey Forest, as also other villages within the precincts of the Mumbai Veterinary College, Goregaon East, have no electricity even 72 years after India's Independence. Noticing this, a social activist Cassandra Nazareth, has begun an online petition, addressed to district collector, Mumbai Suburban, Sachin Kurve, says, she noticed this when she visited the village as part of a Swacch Bharat & Open Defecation Free campaign.
"Even though the village is a stone’s throw from the bustling Western Express Highway of Mumbai and in spite of there being a tar road with street lights within touching distance of the Adivasi huts, the Adivasis have no electricity", petition said, adding, This glaring injustice shook me. Visits to the many other Adivasi villages of Aarey Forest showed the same pattern."
She says, "The Government quarters were electrified, whereas the indigenous Warli tribes, living in the Aarey forest for generations, were in the dark. The 100-year-old Vanicha Pada has an unused electric substation set up 2 years ago, yet today, the village has no electricity", adding, “'We need a No Objection Certificate from the Government' is what Reliance Energy told me, as being the reason for not granting power connections to these villages."

Comments

Gujarat Sachivalaya blacklists, denies entry to woman social activist: Will NHRC probe?

By Kantilal Parmar* I have approached the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking an independent, impartial, and transparent investigation into a serious incident that took place at the Gujarat Secretariat in Gandhinagar on August 18, 2026. The matter concerns social activist and women’s rights leader Chandrikaben Solanki, who, according to the information available to me, was denied an entry pass to the Secretariat when she went there to meet Gujarat’s Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, Dr. Manishaben Vakil, to raise an issue concerning social justice.

Ample evidence of child labour in South Gujarat's cash rich sugarcane belt: Study

By Rajiv Shah A recent German government-funded study , undertaken jointly by the NGO Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, which mainly deals examines the working conditions of migrant workers in the cash-rich sugarcane zone of South Gujarat, has gone a long way to suggest large scale prevalence of child labour during the harvesting season.

Right to walk, right to livelihood: Clearing footpaths 'can't mean' clearing out the urban poor

By Aseem Mishra* India’s cities are locked in a quiet but intensifying struggle over one of their most contested public spaces: the footpath. For pedestrians, a footpath is basic infrastructure—a strip of ground that should allow people to move safely, independently and with dignity. For millions of informal workers, the same stretch of pavement is a workplace, a source of daily income and often the difference between survival and destitution.

Counterview

Search This Blog