ENVIRONMENTAL

MOVEMENTS
-GAIL OMVEDT
AN INTRODUCTION
• An environmental movement can be defined as a social or political
movement, for the conservation of the environment or for the improvement
of the state of the environment.
• Environmental movements are a struggle against resource degradation, they
can be divided as material, ideological and political expressions
• Indian environmental movements are often organized by the group of
victims of environmental destructions.
JHARKHAND: The First Red-Green Movement
• The united movement of mine workers, tribals and low caste peasants in the hilly
districts of South Bihar and adjoining districts.(1972-75)
• The Industrialization Problems:
▪ Grabbing the lands of local population,
▪ Destroying the forests through deforestation,
▪ Turning local men into unskilled workers and their women into prostitutes.

• This “Jharkhand” region became a symbol of the way in which the realm of capitalist
production and accumulation was extracting resources and exploiting labour,
destroying natural resources and dominating whole communities.
• Jharkhand presented a difference between the Industrial sector and the Agricultural
sector in a more vivid sense than the rest of the country.

• The industrialists, managers, merchants, moneylenders, contractors, and even skilled

workers in mines and factories were outsiders—north Biharis, Bengalis, Maharashtrians,
Punjabis—and these viewed the locals as backward “adivasis”.

• Those clearly classed as “tribal,” those ambiguously “tribal,” and those (dalits and
others) not considered “tribal” at all were now coming together again as Jharkhandis,
inhabitants of the forest region of Jharkhand.

• The formation of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, 1972.

• Tribals joined by militant organization of mine workers under A. K. Roy and mahato
community leader Benod Bihari Mahto.

• By 1974, on “Jharkhand day,” the struggle could field a huge demonstration of workers
and peasants with red and green flags flying and slogans of Jharkhand-Lalkhand, “the
forest land shall become a red land.”
• A. K. Roy’s views:
o “Internal colonialism” Inequality began from the feudal period and was structured by
caste.
o He also excorciated left organizations for being dominated by middle-class intellectuals.

• The Jharkhand movement in practice was bringing forward many of the new
movement issues.

• The vision of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha:

• The local water resources would be tapped to provide irrigation and to provide increasing
quantity of organic manure.
• Each village would have a grain- bank.
• Village disputes would be settled in the village itself to avoid litigious expenses and to
foster horizontal solidarity.
• Each village would run a night-school
• The status of women would be elevated through ban on child marriage, polygamy, wife
beating and indiscriminate divorce.
• The movement would ultimately aim at the creation of an autonomous state of Jharkhand.
•The paradox of the situation in India is here the revolutionary philosophy is in
the hands of the reactionary class while the reactionary philosophy has kept
the revolutionary class submerged while the productive downtrodden, the
Harijans and Adivasis meekly tail behind the ruling class.

• The Jharkhand movement in practice was bringing forward many of the new
movement issues, from the peasant-worker alliance to the problems of caste
and gender and even those of environmentalism.
THE CHIPKO MOVEMENT:
• A peasants’ movement, a women’s movement, an ecology movement: the Chipko movement of the
Himalayan foothill regions of Tehri Garwhal in Uttar Pradesh was all of these, as well as the most
famous of India’s “new social movements” in recent times.

•The area, as its historian Ramchandra Guha (himself a participant in the Chipko debates) has noted, had a history
of peasant resistance to British-imposed commercialization.

• While these were not theorized at the time as ecological, they did represent the peasantry ’s subsistence
oriented attitudes to the forests and opposition to the devastations that commercial forestry wrought on their
lives, and they did reflect the relative egalitarianism (both in terms of caste and gender) of Himalayan peasant
communities.

• By 1960s environmental pressures of deforestation were building up and it was a disastrous 1970 flood of the
Alaknanda River that woke people to take action on the problems.

•The whole region was dominated by the Gandhian trend in the national movement, and Gandhian workers in
the area had built up a series of Gram Swarajya Sanghs that sought to develop alternative technology to use
forest products to provide local employment.
• Sunderlal Bahuguna, working in the Bhagirathi Valley, took the initiative, and projected the issue on a national and
even an international level as an ecological one.

• The main contention of this movement is that the main gift of the Himalayas to the nation is water and its function
is to produce, maintain and improve soil structure.

• Bahuguna was an ecological radical who on the one hand was often voicing women’s concerns and on the other
came to almost reject an agricultural economy altogether on the grounds that it took more land to feed people
with grain than with tree products.

• These trends in the movement gave rise to ideological-academic debates that are still going on. One has related to
how much Chipko was in fact a women’s movement.

• The debate over the “feminist” character of the movement has converged with another one, over the differing
ideological trends within it.

• Later Marxist studies of the Chipko movement have continued to see the development of an “ecological”
perspective as a kind of imposition over the “class” movement of a peasantry said to be oriented to issues of
survival; ecology is placed in opposition to “the economic.” Marxism was almost coming to mean a negation of
ecological issues.
Drought, Deforestation and Desertification
• Ordinary working people started to rise against the devastation of environment done by capitalists
and industrialists.

• Environmental movements first developed in India as a movement started by rural poor.

• Sheep’s had to be taken further for grazing and fish workers also went farther into the sea for
catching fishes. They had to face a lot of struggle.

• Thus, because of Deforestation, Desertification, peasants and tribal persons were struggling to
survive.

• Environmental movements were peasant movements as much as the new farmer’s movement but
with a different focus – that was immediate survival in the face of a threat to their traditional way of
life.
• The new environmental movements which emerged did so on a localised basis, but they were
equivalent to mass movements. They involved masses but on a small scale.
• These movements had a more peasant population rather than proletarian population.

• Industrial working class was also affected by environmental degradation and pollution.

• In the long run, both middle - class employees and toilers were faced with the need to change and develop
their strategies for sustainable development.

• As there was too much environmental destruction, anti-dam movements also began to gather force.

• Many contended that the projects did not provide “welfare” at all, but were part of a process of simply
plundering the forests.

•Various events like of Baliapal Missile Testing Range, Aluminium Mining Project by BALCO, protest over Silent
Valley Project (a medium size dam in Kerala), all of them showed the people’s mass resistance towards the
government or the entities in charge of it.

•Flooding of gangetic plains was also an eye-opener for many people.

•Former Government Expert-B.B. Vohra was against the deforestation and technologies of Green Revolution
development and he created awareness among the common masses by writing about it in 1980’s.
Kerela Fish Workers’ Struggle
•Following India’s independence, need for modernization and mechanization of the fisheries in Kerala
was felt, so in 1953 the Indo-Norwegian Project (INP) began with the aim of improving the
infrastructure and practices of the fishworkers.
•In 1960s there was an increase in international demand for prawns, leading the government to promote
export-oriented prawn fisheries. Mechanised boats were built and training programmes for fisherman
on the use of ‘trawl nets’ were introduced. High rate of investment allowed the entry of merchants into
the fisheries sector.
•This had drastic repercussions for the coastal ecosystem and the livelihoods of the fishworkers as they
could no more fish efficiently by their traditional methods. The bottom trawlers began destroying the
sea floor, threatening the survival of juvenile fish. In fact, Kerala marine fish production was declining
from 4 lakh tons in 1973 to 2.68 in 1980-81. Between 1970-85. More than 50 fishermen were killed due
to attacks from mechanised boats.
•They felt an urgent need to organise themselves into a cooperative group against this exploitation. The
priests and nuns began to go to work among the poor communities. Tom Kocherry, later to become a leader
of the movement, began simply with working among a particularly low-status fishing community, getting
involved to form cooperatives. Women also were active, getting involved in organizing quite early; the women
themselves handled the marketing of the fish

•After a number of indefinite hunger strikes a single bench of Kerala high court put a ban on monsoon
trawling operations in 1989. Later even the Supreme Court supported the ban
Gail Omvedt’s Perspective
• Campaign marches by priests and nuns, rallies, road blocks were organized very
systematically. It was beyond doubt that the agitation has a political orientation
judging by the tenor of the statements being made by the leaders, particularly some
of the priests and nuns who visualize a "socialist society free from oppression." The
response it evoked made the authorities sit up.
• The agitation of the fishing communities against mechanized trawling fought both
Congress-controlled and CPI(M)-dominated state governments; it arose in the late
1970s and resulted in a law banning mechanized trawlers in 1989.
• Throughout there was both confrontation and cooperation with the left. “Critical
collaboration" was the term used by one of the fasting nuns in 1984 and as Kocherry
put it, "We are certainly not Marxist. We may follow the leftist ideology, but that does
not make 3. 4. us Marxist.”
• These fish folks were part of a diffuse but widespread development of a mass-based
Indian environmentalism that was rising out of popular experience with ecological
devastation in the 1970s and 1980s
 Consumption of the rich
•Middle-class environmentalism started rising quickly and effectively at the end of 1970s
•The first organizational expression it took was in the people’s science movements.
• No central importance was given to environmental issues in beginning and were definitely
no green.
•The aim of people’s science movement is to popularize science and scientific outlook
among common people.
•It informs the common people on what science is being done, how and why, i.e., analyzing
policies, educating people and mobilizing public opinion on issues.
• Kerala Shastriya Sahitya Parishad (Kerala Science Literature Conference, or KSSP), working since 1964.

• mass based organization of science teachers and professionals

• it carries village camping’s and produce a wide variety of popular science literature
• it gave strongest opposition to the silent valley project in Kerala

• A meeting took place in Anandwan in october 1979.

• Maharashtrians who had participated in the meeting joined the guardians, other scientists and mass organization
• Activists debated in Anandvan meeting on ----orientation of workers and peasants -orientation of middle class
issues--and much to deal with social science

• In February 1980

• idea of people science became popular because of distribution of cellophane spectacles to view the eclipse and in
April activists who were controlling the work of Sharmik Sanghatna in Dhule held a successful science fair in one of
the predominant tribal villages
• in the same year Lok Vidnyan Sanghatna was founded on june 15.
• A mixture of Naxalite influenced young intellectuals and old Gandhians founded a “Patriotic People’s Science and
Technology” (PPST) group at a meeting in June 1980.
• In the first issue of their bulletin, which came out in December, the Kanpur group summarized their debate as centering
around the issue of the relation of science and technology to imperialism—a rather different focus of concern from that in
Maharashtra.

• They noted that modern science and technology is a instrument of exploitation but there were arguments as to wheather
in the absence of imperialist stranglehold, science and technology can be harnessed to serve the society or be agenuine
means of social development. *In October 1982

• An “Vidnyan Yatra” organized as a massive campaign to bring “science to the people” with programs in every district of
the state featured anti superstition campaigns
• a number of slide shows, and propaganda against the nuclear bomb with a feature on Hiroshima.
• The Maharashtra Vidnyan yatra also included programs dealing with issues or irrigation and drougt
• while the Madras PPST group was led to look at traditional technology, particularly as it related to agriculture and the
preservation of environmental resources in its study of Science and Technology

• In Sangli district of Maharashtra encounters and confrontation with the local peasantry, just getting mobilized on
antidrought issues, began to force at least some LVS activists to transcend their original assumptions that a beneficial
store of knowledge called “science” existed, which they only had to make available to a backward and superstition-ridden
people.
• A local Vidyan Yatra was organized in 1984

• It not only did a debate among outside activists and the peasants, but the science activists found that they had a
little actually to tell the peasants about the ways od removing drought .
• While this encounters and debates were going on -- it was the Citizens Reports on the Indian Environment that
provided a major intellectual articulation of environmental concerns,wirh impressive coverage and wide polularity.

• It was guided by Anil Agrawal who had attended the 1972 stockholm conference on environmental issues and returned
to India to found the center for Science and Environment in Delhi.

• In 1979 -the first Citizens Report was produced with imppressive input of material from groups and individuals working
all over the country , and with sections ranging from land to dams to industry.

• The report had a major impact because of its subsidized cheap edition and Hindi translation ~the second report was
even more thorough and it included a final section on "Ploitics of Environment".

• In that section Agrawal and others took up broader issues of analysis.

• Their main trust was -----a critique of industrialization --a condemnation of imperialism -- and a focus on consumerism
as the main enemy .
DRAWBACKS:

• did not take position on the issue of science and technology.

• had a tendency to adopt the traditional Marxist avoidance of the peasantry

• defined the groups most affected by environmental destruction only by as "artisans", nomads, tribals, fisherfolk
and women from almost all landless, marginal, and small farm households .

• Neglected teh role of exploitation and production as determinant factors.

• tendeed to look to state action to remedy the problems that it accused state policy of causig.

• Inspite of "consumerist" idealogy, the Indian environmentalism was clearly growing with a critique of
imperialism and with a strong base in popular movements of the toiling people.
People’s Science, Patriotic Science and
Seeking Truth:
•Publication of “statement of scientific temper” in 1981 gave emergence to a debate.
•There was an assumption that secularism, development and relief to socio- economic
inequality can be brought by the technology and planning by the elites.
• Rajendra Prasad criticized this for the lack of “class perspective”.
•The emerging environmentalist and the alternate-development trend however, took a
different tack.
•Ashish Nandey published an article entitled “humanistic temper” where he criticised
modern science and technology.
•Madras group of PPST (Patriotic and People oriented Science and Technology), also
criticized it and linked it to imperialism and growing popular movements.
•Ramchandra Guha casted PPST group and Ashish Nandey into the same group to
criticize it.
• The activists associated with PSST group in Kanpur gave this support. Sunil Sahashrabudhe theorized the split
described by Sharad Joshi as between “Bharat” and “India” as one between “Westernized” and “boycotted”
India.

• PPST was focusing its challenge against imperialism.

• PPST was focusing its challenge against imperialism.

• In Bombay from 1979-80, Krantiba Phule Sanskritic Manch: -

1. began to perform street plays and hold celebrations attacking the brahmanic values.

2. argued, against the dominant tendency of the Lok Vidnyan Sanghatana in the state, that a science
movement should include the “social sciences” as well as natural sciences.

3. associated themselves with the peasants of drought-stricken southern Maharashtra in seeking a solution
to the ongoing onslaughts of drought.

• This satya shodhak or “truth-seeking” tendency thus brought Marxist and anticaste tendencies together with
an environmentalist perspective.
Conclusion
TWO MAIN IDEOLOGIES

Gandhian Ideology: Social and Economic development of individual as well as society,

simultaneously, in accordance with the principles of truth and non-violence.

Marxist Ideology: Marxists believe that the workers of the world must unite and free
themselves form the capitalist oppression to create a world run by and for the
working class.
 TWO MAIN ENEMIES

CAPITALISM: Capitalism treats the nature as either an inexhaustible supply of resources or

a waste dump. Capital’s need for constant growth has led to the interruption of complex
natural cycles that took millions of years to develop.
M. K. Gandhi-”The Earth has enough for everybody’s needs but not enough for
everybody’s greed”.
INDUSTRIALIZATION: With the rapid development in industries, following was its effect on
the environment:
•AIR: The industries would release all types of harmful gases into the environment without
thinking about the aftereffects of such.
•WATER: Industries often dumped waste products in the rivers and oceans. This resulted in
depletion of aquatic life and aquatic habitats.
•LAND: Contamination of lands due to dumping of lead and other harmful metals.
•HABITAT: Cutting down of trees and forests led to a destruction of habitats of animals.
CONCLUSION:
The Environmental movement arose because the people of India, in both the cities and the
villages, of all castes and classes and genders, were affected by the ecological destruction of
world capitalism.

•The environmental movement and the farmers’ movement could be seen as two major
wings of a broad peasant movement in India that arose against the exploitation and
destruction resulting from the incorporation of the peasantry into the world capitalist
system.

•Generally left intellectuals have argued that the farmers’ movement has been based on
cash-cropping “rich and middle peasants,” belonging to upper and middle castes,
representing a specific exploiting class category; in contrast, they have seen the
environmental movement as based on subsistence-oriented poor peasants, usually tribals
and Dalits.
•The environmental movement was based not simply on tribal subsistence peasants;

• in Baliapal, for instance, there was a wide range of caste Hindu peasants, laborers, and fishworkers fighting
the takeover of their land in a productive market economy;

• in the Chipko region itself, the peasants actually involved in the movement were upper-caste Hindus
(brahmans and rajputs), while the low castes in the area, the traditionally landless service castes, frequently
became dependent on the services of Green Revolution government technocrats when they did get land.

• A similar movement in Karnataka, the Appiko movement, was based on cultivating brahman castes. Both
movements had their “economistic” aspects and both had a thrust to challenging the system as inherently
destructive and posing an alternative model of development.

•3 Archeological zone of India:

• River Valleys and Coastal Deltas: Highly inegalitarian but productive
• Plateaus and Grasslands: Relatively more egalitarian
• Hilly and Mountainous region: Most egalitarian
• The environmental movement arose primarily in the third region.
• This relatively gave the movements a more of a “tribal” component and a more egalitarian community
base. Similarly, the farmer’s movement was les likely to arise in the polarized region, but when it did, they
were both weaker and more based on rural upper caste.
• Peasants, workers, and nomads were then joined by these middle-class intellectual activists.
• The first articulation of the local movements as a single movement challenging modern industrial system
itself the was by Gandhians. They were prominent as activists in many localized movements and drew on
Gandhi to formulate the Indian version of the “deep ecology”.
• In theorizing “consumerism” as the main aspect of environmental destruction, they had a tendency to
idealize subsistence-oriented “tribals” in contrast to the “cash-crop oriented” caste Hindu peasants,
presenting only the former as the victims of development, the latter as almost its progenitors.
• In contrast, Marxists came into the environmental movement with a strong ideological orientation to the
exploited masses and to liberation through struggle.

• But at the same time, their tendency to see subsistence production or petty commodity production as
nonproletarian and to ignore the issues raised about the nature of technology (the forces of production)
meant that environmental movements, as such, were seen as “nonclass” and thus “nonpolitical”
movements.

• To Marxists, an opposition to large scale industrial development was anti-working class, and they often
argued that those raising issues of alternative development were opposing progress from a traditionalist
perspective and aimed at “going back to the Stone Age.”
Emergence of New Movements
• Environmental movements do not make a direct reference to Gandhi, although the methods that
many of them adopt and the discourse that is moulded in their wake often contain Gandhian elements.
•The Marxist also entered into the environmental movements, but their main reason was to get a
political advantage over the Capitalist state
•The next organization who entered the environmental movement where the Naxalites, who argued
that environmental destruction can be solved by breaking away from Imperialist system.
•It also argued that people see issues of ecology, deforestation, big dam projects as a means to protect
their livelihood from Imperialist and Capitalist.
•Environmentalist however believed that it was not just the Profit system that caused ecological damage
but also the failures of the Socialist State.
•Even the tempting aspect of People’s control given by the Marxist and the Naxalite failed as an
alternative to the Gandhian environmental movement
• Despite the local Nature of the Environmental movements, an international stance was taken.
Environmentalists clashed with international bodies like the World bank and the GATT [WTO] against their
Imperialist approach, extensive usage and discriminating nature.

• In India also International issues on Environment were taking hold. It was believed that the consumption
habits of the “West” were more severe to the environment than the steady Encroachment on forest lands
by few Impoverished Peasants.

• The International aspect gained more hold due to the Tragic Bhopal Gas Incident which was the caused
by the careless practices of Union Carbide Plant an MNC.

• This event started a struggle to get the right amount of compensation, right way of investigation and
proper justice against the wrong doers. This event showed the true nature of MNC and Capitalist
development. And started newer forms of environmental struggles
Thank You