Soumayan Dutta, Debodeep Banerjee, Subhro Kundu | July 31, 2022 | Published Online
[This article is the second article in a three-article series titled, Environment, Capitalism, and Class Inequalities in India. For the first part, see https://indianresearcher.in/climate-crisis-and-climate-justice-a-global-perspective/]
This article emphasises three inter-connected issues with regard to the ongoing debates on climate and environment in India. It is partly an aim to cover these aspects as an inherently important class concern rather than the ‘gardening romantic’ view of saving nature and claiming to achieve climate equity in the contemporary period. These three aforementioned aspects are the depletion of forestry and related natural resources, the status of solid waste management and tackling air pollution, and the pattern of fuel use across regions of India.
Historically, the first ever instance of a legal framework to protect wildlife and forests came into existence during the early days of British Raj. The intent of the first Indian Forest Act (1865) was largely to monetise the natural resources of India for the good of the empire. In 1927, the forest land and produce acts were consolidated under “Indian forest act (1927)”. Post independence, this legal framework has largely been adopted into free India’s constitution. In the directive principles of state policy, the onus is on both the state and the people to protect and improve the natural environment India has got. Perhaps we would have meandered a way out eventually, had we not been following only the path of “growth-oriented” and more importantly expecting a “trickle down” through the economic policy.
If there ever exists such a thing called environmental consciousness quotient, then this land’s aboriginals will have at least a nuanced way of thought than the so-called upper class ‘elite’ classes. A famous and significant example to solidify our claim here. Even in an independent India, the British legacy of rampant and unplanned deforestation continued.
One of India’s most biologically diverse regions – Uttarakhand (the erstwhile northernmost part of Uttar Pradesh) witnessed an organized mass uprising against rampant deforestation. Renowned Gandhian activist Sundarlal Bahuguna joined the movement and helped the cause immensely. Based on an announcement made in January 1974, the government set out to clear 2500 trees in Reni village, overlooking the banks of Alakananda river on 25th March, 1974. A brief description, instills the importance of how natural resources were part of lives and livelihoods of the working poor in the region. Almost the entire male population of the village was diverted to a fictional compensation worksite on that day. Upon receiving this news, Gaura Devi along with the other females of the village rushed to the spot and hugged the trees to prevent them being felled. In the face of death threats, harshest and choicest of abuse, they refused to give up. They kept their vigil up all night. When news spread in adjoining villages, people poured in numbers. And after a four day standoff between the locals and the contractors, the latter backed off. Eventually the order to deplete the trees was called off. This historic movement gained traction all over the world and is known as the “Chipko Movement” today. Chipko has laid a robust foundation to community-driven ecological restoration and reservation network. But one needs to again reiterate, there is a deep and important dependence of human-nature, particularly and more directly for the rural poor, and a collective action emanates from that singular truth. Today, numerous self-help groups, cooperatives are run which have their roots tracing back to the Chipko Movement.
Forest Cover: Camouflaged Improvement
India, as a nation-state, has been fairly reluctant in protecting and providing equity towards its people, reflecting the same attitude towards the ecological assets. Despite community driven, or sometimes individual efforts have made it to the daily newspapers, we, as a people have rarely shown conviction in protecting our environment or even gain collective consciousness to do so. As a result, the rapid but disoriented growth of suburban area is putting ecological balances to a real test. For example, the number of water bodies in Kolkata (an eastern Indian state) urban agglomeration alone have drastically gone down in recent years. The East Kolkata Wetland area has been in a shrinking mode since the last one and a half decade, albeit more aggressively since the political power rebalancing. However, on an year on year basis, India has recently witnessed marginal increase in the forest cover area.
Figure 1: Year-wise annual tree cover loss in India.
Figure 2: Year-wise categorical driving forces for tree cover loss in India
Figure 1 and figure 2 ideally depict the same incident i.e. year wise tree cover loss in India. However, in figure 2, we do a deeper investigation. While we see a pick of tree cover loss in the year 2016 and 2017, we observe that in has been a consistent phenomenon that forestry has been a consistent dominating factor in the case of tree loss in India. It is important to understand that forestry can be a serious factor in tree cover loss because forestry includes purposeful plantation under the cost of existing tree cover. For example, shifting a tea garden in a part of the rhododendron forest. Although, in plain sight, this is good news, it’s actually not. India has a declared target of having a minimum of 33% forest cover in all its states and union territories as part of the national forest policy 1988. In the last released forest report [cite] of 2021 and 2019, we see a marginal increase in vegetation cover, which shadows a concerning fact that the natural forest cover is on a steady decline – a loss of about 1500 sq km in 2021. Instead, the commercial plantation area has increased by almost 1000 sq. km. This is not exactly compensation. There is no substitute for natural forest cover as that supports intrinsically grown ecological systems.
Over the years, collective awareness about the environmental impact of this rampant growth-oriented outlook has increased, for sure. But on the other hand, corporate greed has also been institutionalised in the form of law amendments and environmental waivers. Loss of natural forest cover is potentially devastating in all sorts of terrains – causing flood, massive soil erosion, irregular monsoons and unpredictable weather, eventually leading to rapid reduction of inhabitable land for the animal population. India has lost about 4.3 percent moderately dense forest cover in the span of 2011 to 2021 – all lost to either landscaping, rampant urbanization attempts or commercial plantations. The totalitarian capitalist nature of the post-2008 era has settled in as a mindset of the urban, semi urban and comparatively well-off villagers. This is driving towards arbitrary (most of the time hampering) loss of greenery, and unplanned patches of semi-urban or industrial clusters. With no or minimal attempts made to rectify the situation, environmental impact of poorly planned industrial areas and bad living conditions can wreak havoc on the environment, physical and mental health of dwellers and workers, thus severely impacting the economy. A particular after-thought would be, the lack of attention towards the Tribal groups are hardly in the discussion sphere, otherwise the government should never had decided to mine unregulated coal and dispossess this population, just because of the profiteering motives associated with coal or any other resources.We are not asserting that one should not mine coals from these places but first we need to understand the concerns of sustainability associated with the lives of numerous tribal groups. An approval, which is consent, that must respect the sentiment of the tribal people for their right to land, the right to conserve the rich culture and wayof life.
These efforts must learn how to use the resources of nature and simultaneously preserve it and how to provide access to the most marginalised sections of the country. These processes must understand that, when lives are intertwined with the natural resources, a top-down approach without least empathy, often corners the concerns of the tribal poor in India.
Waste management and Rag-pickers: A Conjoined class problem
To resolve such a spiralling problem is not an easy feat. And yet, there are few other options left when it comes to tackling environmental hazards in India. The question of environmental impact in a developing nation-state like India is never limited to only loss of green cover alone. Waste and biohazard management issues often spill over out of proportion to make things worse. Most of the time, only immediate and forthcoming ecological impact is considered while evaluating environmental pros and cons of a large industry project/large urbanization. The cost of human lives is almost always reduced to a footnote. Until very recently, the waste pickers (numbering around 15 lakhs households) were not even considered in the process of waste management while they played a pivotal role in the collection, segregation and dumping process of garbage [1] [2]. Without a tinge of exception, waste pickers and collectors belong to the poorest rung of urban and semi urban populace across states. Historically, in a religiously hierarchical society such as India, these workers inevitably are from marginal castes – “untouchables” often in practice. Not having a reliable and planned waste management system directly affects the quality of life of these workers. They fall prey to a variety of skin diseases, lung diseases; prolonged exposure of contaminated water and soil in turn enhances chance of mortality. Thus, a sizable population; rather quite a large community has been suffering the consequences of environmental downturn in recent years. The recent waste management act of 2016 [cite] offers at least acknowledgement to the workers from this informal sector. Minimal support of the public healthcare system could see a drastic improvement in the living conditions of these people.
Almost 30% of India’s solid waste remains unmanaged and is used in landfill. Although the waste management policy formulated in 2016 outlines an integrated approach to resolve this problem, rarely the goal has been met when it comes to environmental impact. Lack of qualified engineers and personnels in this matter is still a blocker in all sense [2]. Post preliminary segregation, 90% residual waste is simply dumped instead of processing it [3]. With explosive growth of metropolitan cities, this problem is only a ticking time bomb. River Yamuna loses its characteristically blueish water the moment it enters the NCR of New Delhi. Almost 8 Crore litres of untreated sewage and chemical waste are dumped into the river every day [4].
Air pollution : Gainers and Losers
Almost everywhere, the question of overall environmental pollution is dominated by air pollution. India is no exception. The average quality of the air we breathe (AQI) is far worse than most of the rest of the world [5]. Some part of it is attributable to the natural geography of India. But most come at the expense of the so-called “development”.
If we pause here for a moment and look at India’s growth story, we observe a similar pattern with respect to the modern capitalist world, albeit historically starting far later, that a handful of individuals or families have become centres of wealth accumulation. The classic capitalist mindset always seeks to minimise cost while expanding rather than prioritizing human needs. In the process, conventional energy sources are harnessed exponentially more than ever before. Thus, caught in a seemingly unending cycle, conventional energy resources remain the biggest polluter. On the global stage, India’s political position stands to only gain if under so many constraints, India actually achieves some or more of the environmental targets. Some of the prime and most achievable pollution reduction targets are:
- India’s green cover increase programme, discussed briefly above. In a nutshell, it’s not going exactly as planned.
- Electric vehicles policy is not uniform throughout the country. Unavailability and question of affordability of electric vehicles in commercial sectors is a hindrance to democratizing pollution-less modes of transport. Lack of government active participation (in the form of PSU or corporate), the EV market may run uncontrollably before it has properly taken off.
- Environmental impact analysis of industries must be made ironclad. Violation of recommended environmental standards must be sufficient to penalise serial offenders. Governments, in the name of progress, must not encourage the destruction of ecological systems. One such recent case is the Mumbai Metro carshed at the expense of a dense portion of Array forest.
Figure 3: Households using clean fuel for cooking in 2019-2020
Two other class factors are popularly identified as causes of air pollution – use of kerosene/woods or coal for cooking and seasonal stub burning. The first problem is mostly limited to poorer people. In figure 3, we see that while 58.6% of households in India are able to use clean fuel for cooking, 14 states including almost the whole of eastern and north eastern part portrays the percentages lower than the national average. From the above figure, it is justifiable to claim that the situation is more alarming for the states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand where the percentages don’t even cross 40%. The situation is more tragic when we see the breakdown of the usage between urban and rural households and there we see a very significant difference between the usage in urban and rural households.
Figure 4: Percentage of rural and urban households using clean fuel for cooking
The Modi government’s ambitious attempt to distribute LPG for free to the poor through Ujjwala Yojana was nothing less than a false, politically motivated scheme. Exorbitant price tags put on petroleum products make them unaffordable to most poor people. There has been an almost 70% drop rate in some states right after free LPG cylinders stop coming.[5]
Figure 5: LPG consumption composition based of social categories
In figure 5, the situation depicts a very cruel picture of the LPG composition. Although we see a sharp increase in LPG consumption over the years, the class categorisation says a different story. The LPG consumption of the general cast consistently outperforms the consumption of the backward classes and the picture is extremely alarming for the ST section; while all the other categories have crossed 70% in terms of LPG usage, the ST section is still stuck at only 58%. The government must focus on this issue. But the ongoing price of LPG cylinders shows no empathy towards the marginalised section.
On the other hand, stub burning is a seasonal hazard, primarily affecting AQI of north India. However, due to the lack of affordable alternatives like controlled burning, stub uprooting, farmers prefer to stick to this age old method. A systematic and planned shift requires efforts to provide the poorest farmers with economically affordable alternatives.
At the end of the day, environmental pollution and hazards are the result of reckless and corporate interest driven development plans and thus would reflect the ever-increasing greed of the corporate. It’s not that the common people are not to be blamed for their part in the game, but since the consequences faced are heavier on their side, a basic awareness is more prevalent among them. It’s that if given a choice, who wouldn’t choose a cleaner and greener life? But are we given the choice at all? Are our basic human rights to breathe clean, drink clean, eat clean are honoured at all? Is it that a cleaner and inclusive social system is no longer within the ambit of rights, and transforms into the question of affordability? Living in a fundamentally different India of 2022, an aware and concerned citizen must raise one’s voice.
For even in an echo chamber, there’s an audience. Chances are that a member of that audience is a regular of other echo chambers too. However, as a cautionary tale, the policies are to be designed scientifically, and all forms of ‘Ecological Sadhguru Romantics’ must not be provided with the existing space that usually wants the poor to suffer while guarding the interests of the dominant classes, keeping the status-quo intact.
Acknowledgement
We sincerely thank Kaustuv Ganguly and Soham Bhattacharya for helping us in preparing this piece.
References
[1] https://cpcb.nic.in
[2] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160764
[3] Satpal Singh et. al – Solid Waste Management in Urban India: Imperatives for Improvement.
[5]https://www.iqair.com/in-en/world-air-quality-ranking
[8] NFHS-5 (National Family Health Survey), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.
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