Environmental Studies

Rarely do Indian environmental discourses examine nature through the lens of caste. Mukul Sharma shows how caste and nature are intimately connected. He compares Dalit meanings of environment to ideas and practices of neo-Brahmanism and certain mainstreams of environmental thought. Showing how Dalit experiences of environment are ridden with metaphors of pollution, impurity, and dirt, the author is able to bring forth new dimensions on both environment and Dalits, without valourizing the latter’s standpoint. The Dalits pose a critical challenge to Indian environmentalism, which has, until now, marginalized such linkages between caste and nature.

This paper focuses on the shifting contours of the anti-Tehri dam movement in the past three decades. It examines the changing declarations of environmentalists, especially Sunderlal Bahuguna and other leaders of the movement on the one hand, and the involvement of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in the anti-dam politics on the other. Exploring the evocations of nature, religion and nation in different phases by these two groups of actors, it argues that through a regular use of certain mythical beliefs and simplified dichotomies, there was an inadvertent collaboration between green and saffron. The Tehri dam became a means of combining sacredness with impulse, gravity of high politics with solemnity of daily worship, and nature with nationalism.

A nna Hazare's programme of watershed development in Ralegan Siddhi merits attention not only for its environmental impact but also due to its comprehensive and multifaceted nature. It gives us insights into the ways in which an individual and his organisation can play a central role in reshaping rural life. In Hazare's case, the elusive but crucial element is one of " moral authority " that can only be exercised due to a large degree of consent and conservatism. Yet, almost all accounts on this subject, largely celebratory in nature, do not examine the ideology and politics of this experiment. These are crucial not only to know the present and the future of the " green villages " , but also to interrogate certain brands of environmentalisms. This paper is focused mainly on understanding how exactly the rural environmental concerns in the journey of Anna Hazare and Ralegan Siddhi are articulated within a coherent ideological framework, to acquire their legitimacy and authority, which are fed by, and fed into, some dominant political cultures of the state. Any political theory and practice, built on this framework, can open the possibilities of a strengthening of the conservative forces. Certainly, the ideology of a rural organisation or a movement and its appeal is not based on a single plank. In the case of Anna Hazare and his programme, though the developmental and the environmental works form the core of its ideological structures, it includes other issues as well. At times it provides a different scale of activities to its audience, but eventually reinforces its principal ideological framework. Some understanding of the ideological DNA of the green villagers and the fellow environmental travellers also gives us an idea as to what elements of this endeavour and ideology motivate villagers and environmentalists.

This book examines contemporary environmental issues and movements in independent India on the one hand, and the development of Hindu conservative ideology and politics on the other. It includes the first thorough investigation of Anna Hazare’s movement in Maharashtra.
Mukul Sharma argues that these two social currents—environmental conservation and Hindu politics—have forged bonds which reveal the hijacking of environmentalism by conservative and retrograde worldviews. This, he says, constitutes a major aspect of hinterland political life which neither academics nor journalists have seriously analysed. Environmentalism and politics cannot be seen as separate from each other, for environmental issues are being defined in new ways by an anti-secular form of Hinduism. In turn, Hindu ideologues are gaining mileage for their ideology by espousing major environmental projects.
Anna Hazare’s impact is studied in detail through a careful field investigation of his environmental initiative in Ralegan Siddhi. Sunderlal Bahuguna’s opposition to the Tehri Dam in the Garhwal Himalaya is outlined with great anthropological subtlety. And the regeneration of Vrindavan’s urban and riverine hygiene by internationally funded NGOs is subjected to a historical scrutiny that includes an examination of how Lord Krishna has been redefined as the great god of conservation.
Sharma discusses Nazi Germany and fascist appropriations of environmentalism in Europe to contextualize Hindu conservative nationalists within a larger universe. By pinpointing the communal and authoritarian discourses within some of the new social movements, his book alters the way in which we look at everyday life in the subcontinent. For, says Sharma, at stake in this intermeshing of environmental Green and Hindu Saffron is nothing less than the way Indians understand their humanity.

Images of West, as a source of all hope, a place of luxury, affluence and ease, persist in the popular Indian imagination. On the other hand, most countries of the South principally appear in the western media either as sites of violence, or places of expanding markets. Similarly, within the South, there is hardly any exposure to issues, other than the political, prevalent in the southern world. Everyday issues of livelihood in developed, developing or our neighbouring countries are usually absent from our mental horizon. This one-dimensional exchange and orientation reinforces a simplistic and damaging falsification of the relationship between North and South and between South and South.
Challenging stereotyped coverage and images, No Borders is a journey of an Indian journalist through many countries of developed and developing world between 1990-2004, unravelling certain concerns and issues hardly known to the Indian readers. Part-reportage and part-research, through various pieces, along with photographs, it explores developmental issues and initiatives taken by the common people, trade unions, farmers and women organisations, peoples’ movements and civil society bodies in present-day USA, UK, Germany, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Brazil, Nigeria, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Some of these reports were published in leading Hindi/English magazines/newspapers of India (notably Frontline, EPW, Navbharat Times); others are new; several have been updated, translated, revised.
To give a sample, in UK, a large number of coalfields were closed and thousands of mineworkers were made redundant under the Thatcher regime. How the deserted coalfields and the redundant mineworkers coped with the changing situation and in one locality, formed their own cooperative to revive their coalfields against all odds, narrate the reports from the coalfields of UK. Here only, under the new labour regime, Liverpool dockworkers had to go for the longest ever strike in the history of the country, which they lost. In Germany, even after the unification, various boundaries remain. For example, homelessness has become a serious problem. In this situation, the concept of community homes is gaining ground in some rural and urban areas.
In USA, drug abuse is a huge concern. On this pretext, a new drug policy came into existence, targeting the poor population within the country and poor countries of the world. Protesting against this policy, civil society organisations in many places are successfully tackling this burning issue. Malaysia, an Asian tiger, is going along with developed countries in its growth rate and economic prosperity. However, in provinces like Penang, crime against women and especially rape cases are alarmingly high. The emergent women’s movement in the country finds it a struggle to tackle these issues.
Countries like South Africa, Brazil and Nigeria are struggling with issues of use, distribution and conservation of natural resources, and the local, poor population is demanding their just share in land, water, forest and oil. In Namibia, multilateral aid institutions are appropriating the use of natural resources, against the wishes of the villagers. South Africa and Brazil are struggling for land reforms. The OAU Model Law to govern biodiversity is taking roots in Zimbabwe against dictates of the World Intellectual Property Organisation and WTO. In Nigeria and Indonesia, there are vibrant movements emerging on oil and mineral resources and they are challenging the giant multinationals. Sea resources have become a bone of contention between the fisherfolk of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and very few people know that now every year, hundreds of coastal fisherfolk of these countries are being jailed or killed in army operations.
Evoking places, both rural and urban, land and sea, and drawing on the personal accounts of activists and organisations from across the countries, these reports provide a first-hand account of movements and socio-economic issues in the contemporary world. At a subtext, these stories also challenge other representations. For instance, there is sometimes a colonial hang up, packaged and marketed in new forms. There is a triumphant globalism, coming from the developed world. There is occasionally an unexamined acceptance of given clichés, ideas and images by the media. What often gets suppressed here are the pains, sacrifices, concerns and initiatives of people in their everyday lives.
These stories bridge these lacunae, by covering a different arena. They provide fragments of the diversity of developmental issues and responses around the world, through the eyes of an Indian journalist. They will be of interest to a wide range of general audiences, including movement groups, trade unions, media people, activists and social scientists.

3005 We're Prisoners of War, Chacko said. Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter.