Indira Gandhi on environment.

Since man first discovered that he could use nature for his own purposes he has been interfering with his environment. Man is a part of nature and only one of the many species who inhabit the earth. But he has treated it as his colony to exploit it. The scale of his intervention has now grown to a point where it has produced vast and disruptive changes which have already modified our existence more profoundly than any earlier human activity. Hence, the ecological problems with which we are now concerned embrace diverse aspects ranging from the economic, social, psychological problems of human settlements to the management and use of natural resources and the conservation of natural habitats. The earlier attitude of scorn has changed but some people still regard conservation and concern for ecology as something of a fad. Why worry if few tigers and rhinos and a few plant species are wiped out? Your agenda paper gives the answer. 'An environment in which animals and plants become extinct is not safe for the human being either.' Besides, this attitude of mind is the same which regards one species of human being as superior to another.