Word: orissa
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Every year, in late February, the Dongria Kondh tribe of the eastern Indian state of Orissa gathers at the top of Niyamgiri mountain to celebrate the annual festival of Niyam Raja, the king of the mountain. This year's celebration began on Feb. 20 with a three-hour climb to the summit. Women in white silk saris danced and sang, adorned with wooden jewelry, flowers and tiny knives tucked into their hair as a reminder of their daily confrontation with the forest. Hundreds of Dongria then shared a communal feast of rice and lentils in honor of nature and their...
...country tries to extract and exploit the mineral wealth in its forests and mountains. India allows state governments to appropriate land for use by private companies provided the people displaced are compensated and resettled. People living on that land cannot object once the state acquires it, and in Orissa the authorities have approved 54 projects worth $46 billion. That process has already displaced 1.4 million people in the state since 2001, according to India's Rural Development Ministry. The Dongria are challenging this policy in the courts. Says Prafulla Samantara, an activist in Orissa and one of the original petitioners...
...PURI, INDIA Bring Your Own Film Festival A beach in India's Orissa state is hardly the French Riviera, but this alternative gathering of barefoot filmmakers has managed to stagger through to its ninth year. While the Pink House Hotel is the official venue, screenings and happenings are also held in outdoor tents. As the name implies, BYOFF is an all-embracing affair: for a small registration fee, anyone can submit a movie, in any format and about pretty much anything, and there are no juries or awards. At the time of writing we were unable to confirm dates...
...trafficking, "particularly bonded labor." According to a 2001 census, an estimated 185, 595 children are employed as domestic help and in small roadside eateries, a number that is believed to have grown today. Most child domestic workers in India are trafficked by placement agencies operating in poor states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The agencies pay families in advance for their children and then place them at jobs in cities, tying the child to the agency until he or she pays off the money given to his family. The June court statement issued out of Delhi was over...
...small city of Puri sits in the state of Orissa, an eight-hour train ride down the coast from Kolkata. For the past two months Orissa has been in the papers for arson, intimidation, murder, and forced conversion of its Christian population with the tacit support of the Hinduist state government. This fact has no bearing on my experience of the place, in fact it took part in a very different part of the state. It is provided solely as the context every up-on-the-news Indian might have.Puri is a both a beach town, and a temple town...