Environmentalism and the left

The monsoon of 1991 saw the arrival of Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) activists in Manibeli, a small village on the banks of the Narmada in Maharashtra that was to be submerged as a part of the work on the Sardar Sarovar Dam Project. The activists were there to stop the process the submergence by using the Gandhian technique of satyagraha. The slogan given was 'Doobenge par nahi hatenge' or 'We will drown but we won't move'. In response, the State started the process of submergence in order to induce the villagers to leave the village. But the State was unsuccessful and finally had to resort to police repression to clear the area after several months of satyagraha. The Manibeli satyagraha not only brought the NBA into prominence but also signaled the arrival of the Indian environmental movement as a force to reckon within the larger political landscape.

"The environmental movement' is an umbrella term used to describe a series of local struggles and conflicts that highlight issues of livelihood and ecological security in the development debate, The genesis of the environmental movement lay in the Chipko movement (1973) in Garhwal (U.P.). Between the early 1970s and 1980s, there were several struggles for forest and water rights that raised larger ecological concerns - restoration of community rights in forests, rehabilitation and displacement through large projects, and the unsustainability of large dams and the Green Revolution. Such struggles questioned modern development and conservation ecology pursued by the State and its officials since colonial times. As the Indian environmental movement saw it, the post-colonial rulers had failed to make a break with the colonial model of development, as it continued to push forward the modern capitalist agenda that was responsible for the penury of the masses in general and marginal ized people in particular. They attributed the degradation of the environment to the development of large industry and its mode of resource use in the era of modern development.

Instead, the environmental movement advocated the ideology of 'environmentalism of the poor' which concentrated on making a critique of modern development and reviving the traditional 'self-sufficient village economy'. This form of environmentalism was a significant shift away from the conventional environmentalism of the Indian State that believed in the preservation of the natural habitat through purging it of all human contact. Such conventional environmentalism was reflected in the formation of national parks and sanctuaries with the aim of preserving wildlife and biodiversity in the post colonial era. The Indian environmental movement strongly criticized this tendency, as it tended to divest tribals living on the fringe of the forests of their usufruct rights: They felt that the long-term objectives of resource conservation could only be met by ensuring that the livelihood needs of local people were met. They also stated that local communities were the best suited to conserve their resources because their entire survival depended on the sustainable use of these resources. Therefore the traditional practices were the best methods of guaranteeing the environmental security of a region and conservation was inti mately linked to the revival of traditional rights and institutions.