Setback to environmentalists? Adani signs major rail contract for Aussie coalmine project

By A Representative

In what appears to be a major setback for environmentalists in Australia, India’s powerful Adani Group, close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has announced a $100 million rail contract with the Martinus Rail for the 16.5 billion Australian dollar Carmichael coal-mining project. The contract took place amidst continuing protests against the project, with pickets being organized at different sites.
Calling it “a major win”, Adani Mining CEO Lucas Dow said that more than $450 million worth of contracts have been awarded for the Carmichael project. In an Adani communique, forwarded to Counterview, Dow was quoted as saying, “We will deliver jobs and economic benefits for the regions.” The project is being implemented in the Queensland state.
Martinus Rail’s managing director Treaven Martinus was quoted as saying that they were “keen to ensure regional communities saw the benefits of the significant contract”, promising to fulfil “Adani’s commitments to regional jobs”, even as “upholding the highest standards of project delivery across environmental and safety conditions.”
Martinus Rail claims to a large-scale railway construction contractor with a focus on delivering regional railways for mining and government clients across Australia and New Zealand.
Meanwhile, the Adani Group asked “regional candidates and businesses are encouraged to apply or register their interest online”, insisting, “We strongly encourage jobseekers and suppliers to register their details via Adani’s website.”
“People can also use our employment and supplier portals to see Adani’s, and our contractors’, jobs and work packages being advertised as we progress construction of the Carmichael Project”, said Dow.

The farmer's burden: How oil, war, and climate are rewriting the price of food

By Vikas Meshram The scorching flames of the Middle East conflict are now slowly reaching the kitchens of ordinary people. The true price of this war is paid in daily markets, vegetable shops, and in the shattered minds of farmers. Expensive crude oil, skyrocketing fertilizer prices, and rising agricultural costs are together creating the conditions for global food inflation — and this crisis is directly tied to what people eat and drink every day.

India's nuclear euphoria: The hard economics policymakers ignore

By Shankar Sharma* There is a sort of newfound euphoria sweeping India with respect to nuclear power — and in particular, Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). In political speeches, policy documents, and newspaper editorials, the word "nuclear" has acquired a fresh, almost romantic glow, as though a technology once synonymous with catastrophe at Chernobyl and Fukushima has been quietly reinvented. To be sure, the challenges of climate change and India's growing electricity demand are real and urgent. But enthusiasm is not a substitute for analysis. A hard look at the global evidence, the domestic cost picture, and the practical hurdles of nuclear deployment raises questions that this national conversation urgently needs to confront.

Beyond the 'silent relocation' narrative in Bangladesh's Chittagong Hill Tracts

By Dr. Mohammad Asaduzzaman* In recent years, a narrative has emerged from the rugged and forested terrain of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), portraying the region as the site of a “silent relocation” — a mass forced migration of Bangladesh’s non-Muslim ethnic communities into neighboring India and Myanmar.

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