Environmental Movements in India · environmental movements and those that have been successful have received strong support from opposition political parties. Keywords: environmental

Copyright © 2015 SAGE Publications www.sagepublications.com(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC)Vol 31(2): 249–280. DOI: 10.1177/0169796X15576172

Environmental Movements in India

Arun Kumar Nayak Department of Political Science, Government Degree College, Santirbazar,

Tripura, India

ABSTRACT

The study of environmental movements has become one of the important dis-courses in academics and it has a number of aspects. This article investigates the determinant factors of success and failure of environmental movements in India based on a comparative analysis of the colonial regime, postindependence regime, and the more recent era of liberalization. During the colonial period, all the movements were suppressed by the authoritarian British regime except the movement in Kumaun and Garhwal, due to its strategic importance as a border region. Similarly, the democratic regime of India suppressed many movements in the early postindependence era. However, starting in the mid-1970s, environmental movements began to achieve some success, when these movements were supported by various national and international human rights groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and activists. The movements during the 1960s and 1970s were suppressed by the democratic state, because they did not have this kind of support. The factors that were responsible for the success of the environmental movements in the late 1970s and 1980s have not produced as much success in the more recent era of liberalization. The rising nexus and collaboration between the state and multinational corporations have led to the suppression of more recent environmental movements and those that have been successful have received strong support from opposition political parties.

Keywords: environmental movements, ecological degradation, liberalization, tribals, India

Introduction

Conflicts over forests and other natural resources have been widespread across human history. During the preindustrial period, conflicts were based for the most part on competing property claims. However, in the industrial era or modern world, conflicts have become sharper against the

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250 Journal of Developing Societies 31, 2 (2015): 249–280

backdrop of increasing resource use triggered by the capitalist mode of production. The expansion of the resource base in industrial societies has rested upon access to land and natural resources, which were previously controlled by hunter-gatherer and peasant societies. Industrial societies have given rise to individualism accompanied by a tremendous expansion in the role of the state in regulating individual transactions. The old more flexible systems of customary law are being replaced by state-induced rigid systems of codified laws, which has completely delegitimized community-based systems of access to and control of natural resources.

Scientific methods of forests management provide a good illustration of state control and how states have taken over responsibility for forest protection and production. The industrial societies have rejected the hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist view of humans as part of a com-munity of living beings and they have emphatically asserted that they have every right to exploit natural resources for their well-being. The ideology of conquest over nature in the modern world has resulted in a radical change of the natural landscape and as a result there have been clashes between indigenous/tribal peoples and the state system of forest management and resource use.

In this context, this article describes the nature of resource use in dif-ferent societies, its impacts on the indigenous people, and the continuing conflicts that have given rise to environmental movements in India. The environmental movements in India are not new, they emerged when the British colonial government-initiated developmental projects in the name of scientific forest management, which took away the resources of the livelihood of the tribal peoples and dispossessed them from their land. Colonial policies have continued in postindependence India. State developmental projects such as large-scale dam projects, mining, and industries have created the main conditions that have shaped the environmental movements in India. Among these movements, the most prominent movements are the Chipko movement, the Appiko move-ment, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada) movement, and the Silent Valley movement.

The huge amount of foreign direct investments (FDIs) in India in the era of liberalization has attracted a large number of industrial and mining projects. Their impacts on the environment and the large-scale displacement and dispossession of the tribals (tribal peoples) from their traditional lands have contributed to an accelerating number of environmental movements in India.



Journal of Developing Societies 31, 2 (2015): 249–280

Nayak: Environmental Movements in India 251

The History of Resource Use

The Marxist concept of mode of production is useful for understanding the genesis of environmental movements across the world and India in particular. Using a Marxian perspective, societies can be classified according to their technologies and relations of production. The con-cept of mode of resource use refers to the use of flora, fauna, water, and minerals. With respect to relations of production, it focuses on the forms of property, management, and control, and allocation and distribution of goods, which govern the utilization of natural resources in different soci-eties and historical periods. Moreover, with regard to productive forces, it analyzes the varying technologies of resource exploitation, conversion, and transportation that characterize different societies. Accordingly, four distinct modes of resource use can be identified. They are hunting and gathering, nomadic pastoralism, settled cultivation, and industry (Gadgil & Guha, 2003, pp. 11–68).

The largest period of human history has been spent within the gathering mode of resource use. During this period, the mainstay of livelihood was hunting wild animals and gathering vegetables. Gathering continues to be significant during the phase of shifting cultivation as well. The gatherers with their limited knowledge base had little human control over the natu-ral environment and thus nature followed its own capricious ways. With the passage of time, gatherers began to domesticate plants and animals and nomadic pastoralism evolved as a distinctive mode of resource use. During this period, the nomadic pastoral peoples were moved from one place to another and used animal energy to eke out their livelihood. It is obvious that the flow of resources was over a larger distance than in the hunter-gatherer societies.

As far as their ecological impact was concerned, the nomadic pastorals contributed comparatively speaking to more ecological degradation than the hunter-gatherer societies, since the former expanded their activi-ties to larger distances. Gradually, human societies learned to cultivate plants and domesticate animals, which began about 10,000 years ago, and settled cultivation emerged as a new mode of resource use. The ecological impact of the peasant mode of resource use took place as the march of agriculture extended to a significant proportion of formerly forested lands, which were converted into cultivated lands. However, most agricultural societies have maintained an approximate equilibrium with their envi-ronment, dominated by “local production for local use,” and have only




made moderate levels of impact in transforming the natural landscape and bringing about gradual changes in the composition of the biological communities they have impacted (ibid., pp. 14–39).

The latest mode of resource use, which appeared just about 200 years ago, is large-scale industry. This is only about one-fiftieth of the time that Homo sapiens have spent husbanding plants and animals, and one-two hundredths of the time period of hunter-gatherer societies. Nevertheless, the ecological impacts of this industrial mode have been enormous. Over the last three centuries, industrial societies have steadily expanded their resource base and the process of the intensification of resource use has led to the continual overuse and exhaustion of many resources. As mentioned, the expansion of the resource base of industrial societies has rested upon access to the land and natural resources, which were earlier controlled by hunter- gatherer and peasant societies. The industrial societies have given rise to individualism and the tremendous expansion of the role of the state in regulating individual transactions.

In the sphere of social life, traditional customary laws have been replaced by state-induced systems of codified laws. The emergence of the modern industrial state has delegitimized village-based systems of land access and control. Forest management provides a good illustration of state control and states took over the responsibility of forest protec-tion and production. The ideology of conquest over nature and modern lifestyle has resulted in a radical change of landscape of the globe. As a result, social strife and conflict have emerged. One of the best documented of such conflicts is the clash that took place between the indigenous hunter-gatherers and shifting cultivators of the so-called New World and the European colonists practicing an altogether different system of agriculture and resource use (ibid., pp. 44–64).

British Colonialism and Control of Forestlands

British colonialism and other forms of Western imperialism in general have profoundly altered the world’s ecology and contributed to large-scale environmental degradation. They have not only reshaped the social, ecological, and demographic characteristics of the habitats they conquered but also ensured that the ensuing ecological changes would primarily benefit Europe. The conquest of these new conquered territories meant that the 24 acres of land available to each European at the time of Columbus’ voyage soon increased to 120 acres of land per European.





Europe’s worldwide control over natural resources contributed greatly to its industrial growth. As a result, the Western imperialist countries established their political hegemony over non-European countries and captured the markets in these countries for their manufactured products (Gadgil & Guha, 2003, pp. 113–145; Guha & Gadgil, 1989, pp. 141–177).

By around 1860, Britain had emerged as the world leader in deforesta-tion, devastating its own woodlands, the forests of Ireland, South Africa, and the north-eastern United States to draw timber for shipbuilding, iron ore for smelting, and large tracts of land for cash-crop farming. With oak forests vanishing in England, a permanent supply of durable timber was required for the Royal Navy as the safety of the empire depended on its wooden walls. Indian teak, the most durable of shipbuilding timbers, saved England during the war with Napoleon and the later maritime expansion. Ships were built in dockyards in Surat and on the Malabar Coast of India and the importation of teakwood into England increased from 1,278,000 tonnes in 1778 to 4,937,000 tonnes in 1860 (not counting the teakwood that went to the Royal Navy). In the 1880s, the British admiralty began requesting the Indian department of forestry to supply the Royal Navy with Madras and Burma teak (ibid.).

The process of deforestation greatly intensified in the early years of during which the railway networks were built after about 1853. The pace of railway expansion went from 1,349 kilometers of track in 1860 to 51,658 kilometers of track in 1910. Railway requirements were the first and by far the most formidable of the forces thinning the Indian forests. There were only three Indian timbers (teak, sal, and deodar) that were strong enough to be utilized in building railway sleepers (crossties). Sal and teak were available in peninsular India and the deodar forests were in the western Himalayas. The deodar of the Sutlej and Yamuna valleys was rapidly exhausted. With the inception of the Indian forest depart-ment, over 6,500,000 deodar sleepers were supplied from the Yamuna forests alone between 1869 and 1885 (ibid.).

The British government formed the forest department in the year 1864, with the help of experts from Germany, the country that was the lead-ing European nations in forest management. The first inspector general of forests, Dietrich Brandis, was a botanist at Bonn University before his assignment in India. The main objective of the imperial government was to check the deforestation and forging legal mechanisms to assert and safeguard state control over forests. It was in this dual sense that the railways constituted the crucial watershed with respect to forest




management in India. The first attempt made by the imperial govern-ment to exercise a monopoly over the country’s forests was the Indian Forest Act of 1865. It facilitated the acquisition of those areas that were earmarked for railway supplies.

However, this act was replaced 13 years later by a far more compre-hensive piece of legislation, known as Indian Forest Act of 1878. This act provided three classes of forests (reserved forests, protected forests, and village forests). “Reserved forests” were fully protected by the gov-ernment and all activities were prohibited unless specifically permitted. “Protected forests” were also controlled by the state, but with a limited degree of protection. However, given the increased commercial demand for forest products, the protected forests were gradually converted into reserved forests, where the state could exercise greater control. Thus, the 14,000 square miles of state forest in 1878 (the year the act was passed) increased to 56,000 square miles of reserve forests and 20,000 square miles of protected forests in 1890. The corresponding figure a decade later was increased 81,400 and 3,300 square miles, respectively. The third category of forests, “village forests,” was meant for the village commu-nity. Although this kind of forests was not controlled by the state, the act retained the right to regulate the extraction and transit of forest produce and prescribe a detailed set of penalties for the violation of the act (ibid.).

The Indian Forest Act of 1878 provided the underpinnings for the “sci-entific” management of India’s forests, enabling the working of compact blocks of forest for commercial timber production. The forest adminis-tration of the British extended the area of reserved forests about 99,000 square miles in 1947. At the same time, the forest department generated adequate revenues too. This was stimulated by the requirements of urban centers for fuelwood, furniture, building timber, etc. The supply of forest products was facilitated by the improved communications of railways. Thus, the Himalayan forests provided bamboo, sal, and several species of conifer for the urban markets of Punjab and the United Provinces, and for the military cantonments and hill stations that were a creation of colonial rule. The teak export trade continued, over one million pounds sterling worth of teakwood were imported annually to Britain. The development of minor forest products (MFPs) also was taken up in the twentieth century for different industrial uses. India was the only source in the empire of several valuable MFPs, like resin, and turpentine, tan-ning materials, such as kath myrabolans and essential oils. Foreign trade in these products showed a rapid rise. For example, the export trade in





shellac was valued at more than two and half million pounds during the war years of 1917–1918 (ibid.).

The imperial government made use of India’s forests during the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, timber and bamboos were supplied for the construction of bridges, piers, wharves, buildings, huts, and ships. During this period, 228,076 tonnes of timber (excluding railway sleep-ers/crossties) and 50,000 tonnes of fodder grass were exported to help military operations in Egypt and Iraq. Approximately 1.7 million cubic feet of timber (mostly teak) were exported annually between 1914 and 1919, and the indigenous resin industry proved to be a great boon at a time when American and French supplies were unavailable. The impact of the Second World War was more severely felt on the forests of the subcontinent. To meet the exigencies of the war, large-scale deforesta-tion took place in the remotest corner of the Himalayas and the Western Ghats (ibid.).

The British government further promulgated an act known as the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. Under this act, the colonial government gave itself the power to acquire private land for public purposes. “Land acquisition” literally means the acquisition of land for some public purpose by a gov-ernment agency from individual landowners, as authorized by the law, after paying a government-fixed compensation to cover the losses incurred by landowners for surrendering their land to the concerned government agency. The Forest Act extinguished the existing rights and interests of people in India’s forests and curtailed access of communities to the use of forest resources while the Land Acquisition Act deprived them of their land, the principal source of livelihood (Saxena, 2008, pp. 351–410).

The act gave the state unlimited power over the land within the colonial territory. It gave the state the right to invoke this right for the “public good” and the consequent compulsory acquisition of the land could not be legally challenged or resisted by any person or community. The doctrine of “eminent domain” in India goes back to this power for the acquisition of land (Bartolome et al., 2000, p. 9; Baxi, 1989, pp. 164–171; Fernandes, 1998; Hemadri, 1999, pp. xxxii–xxxiv; Ramanathan, 1995; Sharma, 2003, pp. 907–910). This law has continued in force in inde-pendent India. It justifies the concept of “public domain,” by which the British colonial government was able to legitimize its control over land. The main objective of the act was to acquire land for railways, the expansion of trade routes, conversion of the forests and pasture land into plantations of tea, coffee, rubber, and indigo, the establishment of




army cantonments and ordinance factories, construction of dams and canals, etc., and in these cases, the worst victims were mostly the forest-dwelling communities, tribal communities, and the farmers (Fernandes & Paranjpya, 1997, pp. 8–9).

Thus, when the colonial state asserted control over woodlands, which were earlier controlled by local communities, and proceeded to use these forests for commercial timber production, it represented an intervention in the day-to-day life of Indian villages, which was unprecedented in its scope. Second, the colonial state radically redefined property rights and imposed a system of forest management and control, which resulted in conflict with the earlier system of local use and control. Finally, it altered the forest ecology by promoting commercial species (teak, pine, and deodar) in different ecological zones, which were invariable of very little use to rural population. The species they replaced (e.g., oak and terminalia) were intensively used for fuel, fodder, leaf manure, and small timber. Thus, colonial forestry and land acquisition caused the intensification of conflicts over forestland and the people began to protest and various movements took place in different parts of the country against the colonial government (Gadgil & Guha, 2003, pp. 113–145; Guha & Gadgil, 1989, pp. 141–177).

Land Dispossession and Protest Movements during the Colonial Period

The Indian Forest Act of 1878 was a comprehensive piece of legislation, which allowed the state to expand the commercial exploitation of the forests and it put curbs on local use for subsistence. The denial of forest rights provoked countrywide protests. Several protests and movements were raised against the colonial forestry – in Chota Nagpur in 1893, in Bastar in 1910, in Gudem-Rampa in 1879–1880 and again in 1922–1923, in Midnapur in 1920, and in Adilabad in 1940. These movements were extended to many parts of the country and thousands of villages were involved in this movement, but these movements were put down and suppressed by the armed forces of the colonial government (Guha, 2001, pp. 213–238).

Various organizations raised their voices against the act. In 1878, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, a nationalist organization in western India vehe-mently opposed the Forest Act. Although this organization was middle class, it consistently fought for the rights of the cultivators. It argued that





the act grossly violated the customary rights of the people, who were very much dependent on the forest economy. The Sabha not only opposed the Forest Act, which claimed the colonial government took excessive control of the forests, but also offered a more constructive alternative. It argued that the forests should be maintained by the Indian villagers, if the villagers were rewarded and commended for conserving their patches of forestland, instead of ejecting them from their traditional for-estlands. The Sabha advocated a far more democratic structure of forest management than that envisaged by the colonial government (ibid.).

Jotirau Phule, a leading social reformer, bitterly opposed the act. He himself was a gardener by caste and very much concerned about the problems of the agricultural class. Three years after the Forest Act was passed, he described the impact of the forest department on the livelihood of farmers and pastoralists in the Deccan countryside. He said that in the olden days, the landholders’ subsistence economy was not sufficient on cultivation alone; therefore, they used to eat wild fruits and roots to sus-tain their livelihood. They were also dependent on the village ground for rearing their cows and goats and thereby happily living in their ancestral villages. However, the cunning imperial government used their foreign brains to erect a great superstructure called the forest department and the poor farmers do not even have place to breathe anywhere on the surface of the earth (ibid.).

Similarly, Verrier Elwin, a brilliant Oxford scholar and a pioneer of ecological anthropology criticized the Forest Act and advocated for the cause of the agriculturalists, communities of hunter-gatherers, swidden cultivators, and the tribals. He argued that all tribals had deep knowledge of wild plants and animals. He said some could even read the great vol-ume of nature like an “open book.” For the swidden agriculturalists, he said the forests and farms had an especial bond with the natural world. They think themselves to be the children of Dharti Mata (mother earth), fed and loved by her. The idea of heaven shared by the Gond tribe was “miles and miles of forests without any forest guards.” In the year 1941, he wrote that the reservation of forests was a very serious blow to the tribal peoples. During the year 1933–1934, there were 27,000 forest offences registered in the Central Provinces of Berar alone. It is obvious that the large number of offences would not have occurred, if the forest act would not have been introduced. A forest officer told him that “Our laws are such kind that every villager breaks one forest law everyday of his life” (ibid.).




Elwin’s writings were equally addressed to the colonial state and to the Congress nationalists. The Congress members were not equally sensitive to the rights of the tribals. Elwin reminded them, “the aboriginals are the real swedeshi (indigenous) people of India.” He was deeply distressed when a Congress report on tribals followed the British authorities in ask-ing for a ban on shifting cultivation. After independence, Verrier Elwin became the first foreigner to be granted citizenship of free India. In 1954, he was appointed as Advisor on Tribal Affairs to the Government of India (with special reference to the North-East Frontier Agency). He wrote with some bitterness of how tribals were unfairly blamed for the destruction of forests. He said there was constant propaganda that the tribal people were destroying the forests, but it was astonishing to know how they could destroy the forest, since they owned no trucks; they hardly had even a bullock cart; the utmost that they carry away was a head load of produce for sale to maintain their families and that was without a license. The most that they wanted was wood to keep them warm in the winter months, to reconstruct and repair their huts, and carry on their small-scale cottage industries. They needed wood as fuel for cooking, but they need very little wood, since they did not cook that much. He called attention to how the landlords violated the forest rules and devastated vast tracts of forestland right in front of the forest officers (ibid.).

Control and commercialization were the main objectives of the Indian Forest Act 1878 and this has remained the dominant motif of state forest policy, in both the colonial and postcolonial periods. This policy has seri-ously ignored village needs, demands, and interests. Therefore, several peasant movements have protested against the state forest policy. There were major peasant movements in 1904, 1906, 1916, 1921, 1930, and 1942. However, all these movements were suppressed by the British regime besides the movement of Kumaun and Garhwal in the 1921 (Guha, 1999, pp. 35–48, 99–131, 2001, pp. 213–238).

The movement in Kumaun and Garhwal that took place in 1921 was the most significant forest protest movement during the colonial regime. The Kumaun and Garhwal hills of present-day Uttar Pradesh con-tain the best softwood in the subcontinent. Between 1869 and 1885, some 6.5 million railway sleepers (crossties), made from deodar were exported from the valley of Yamuna, in the princely state of Tehri Garhwal. The Kumaun division is located adjoining the east of Tehri Garhwal, which was rich in chir pine. The British administration continuously lumbered the area with chir between 1910 and 1920, and cutting these trees for resin





increased from 260,000 to 2,135,000 trees. These pine trees of the Central Himalaya were the only source of oleoresin, ideal for industrial applica-tions. Similarly, the timber of deodar, chir, fir, and spruce constituted a strategically valuable resource for the colonial state, which it exploited for profit to service Britain’s military campaign during both the First and Second World Wars (ibid.).

The movement at first took the shape of labor strikes, which crippled the administration and burned a large area of pine forests. Hundreds and thousands of resin channels were destroyed. The movement was largely joined by soldiers who had fought for the British in the First World War. Kumaun and Garhwal had a large number of brave soldiers working in the British Army and they thought that the forest regulation was a bitter betrayal of their interests by the British for whom they had risked their lives in the First World War. The movement got popular support and it was a direct challenge to the colonial government over the forest areas. In the wake of popular protests, a magisterial critique of government for-est policy was published by Govind Ballabh Pant, a rising lawyer from a peasant household in Almora. He was one of the great nationalists, who became the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh soon after the independence of India. In his booklet of 1922 (The Forest Problem of Kumaun), he logi-cally offered the solution to end the conflict between the forest dependent people and the government.

After the popular protests in 1921, the Government of the United Provinces set up the Kumaun Forest Grievances Committee and made a survey of the area. On the basis of evidence it collected, the committee concluded that “any attempt to strictly enforce the forest rules would lead to riots and bloodsheds.” It thus divided the existing reserved forests into two categories. The first one was Class I, which were to be managed not by the forest officials but by the local civil administration (more sym-pathetic to rural needs). The second category of forest was Class II, con-stituting the commercially valuable wooded areas, which were to remain under the control of the Forest Department. A policy was passed in 1930, which allowed for the formation of van panchayat councils for village forests. There are now 4,000 van panchayats in Kumaun and Garhwal, covering an area of just less than half a million hectares. Indications are that it has worked remarkably well in both forest protection and develop-ment. The implementation of the van panchayat system in Kumaun and Garhwal constitutes the only network of village forest areas mandated by law in India. This concession was made by the colonial state, because




it was worried it was losing control in a sensitive and strategically impor-tant border region, and it was not replicated elsewhere. The Kumaun hills border both Nepal and Tibet, which were not under British suzerainty, but where the British had strong trading and political interests (ibid.).

By contrast, the Land Acquisition Act 1894 was a comprehensive piece of legislation, which allowed the state to acquire private land for public purpose all over the country, and allowed the state to the dispossess the inhabitants of their lands and displace a large number of people from their homes and their main source of livelihood. There is ample histori-cal evidence of the displacement of people from their lands during the British colonial period (Ramanathan, 2008, pp. 27–38).

The protests against the Mulshi Dam were the first struggle against the large-scale displacement that took place in India in 1927 as a result of the Mulshi Dam hydroelectric project located in western India, in the former Bombay Presidency (about 20 kilometers southwest of Poona). The struggle was a great landmark in the history of opposition to invol-untary displacement of people from their land in India. The project was owned by the corporate industrial conglomerate of the Tata family, and was commissioned in 1920. A total of 11,000 people were displaced and alienated from their traditional paddy fields as a result of this project. The indigenous Malva men, women, and children staged a satyagraha nonviolent protest to stop the work on the dam site, but they failed to stop the project. At last, several hundred people were arrested and the struggle lasted for two and a half years. The autocratic British regime suppressed this movement (Fernandes & Paranjpya, 1997, pp. 1–34).

Protests and Movements during the Early Postindependence Period

The Indian Forest Act of 1865 and the Land Acquisition Act 1894 established absolute state control over the forests and dispossession of the land in the name of the public good so that land could be converted into state property. Thus, the communities dependent on forests for their livelihood lost their source of livelihood and customary rights (Fernandes & Paranjpya, 1997, pp. 8–9). These acts continued in force after India’s political independence and the power of “eminent domain” meant to acquire private land for public purposes was included in articles 31A and 298 of the new Indian Constitution. Forests were initially placed on the State List of the Constitution of India, but the 42nd Amendment Act of the Constitution transferred the country’s forest resources from the





State List to the so-called Concurrent List, which gives both the central and state governments authority to make laws relating to India’s forests. The ongoing process of centralization of administration by these govern-ments and their control over forestland has further extended the process of the displacement of people and from their lands and the traditional sources of their livelihoods (Upadhyay & Upadhyay, 2002, pp. 12, 19).

The ideology of “development” that took root during the colonial period has imposed a superstructure of ideas, institutions, and a legal rationality for capturing control over the entire forested area of India, by which the forest-dwelling communities have lost their customary rights. The structure and mode of the colonial paradigm of tribal exploitation was continued in the postindependence India, which has been repack-aged as modern “development” and ideologically projected as a national aspiration. This paradigm has been extended and executed in different projects, schemes, and programs, but the ideological underpinnings have remained the same. The colonial pattern of extinguishment of the rights of forest-dwelling communities is strikingly similar in the post-colonial period, as witnessed by the enactment of the Forest Policy of 1962 and the Wild Life Protection Act of 1972, which downgraded the “privileges” of the people involved to a “concession” given by the state. This assault was continued through the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 and the National Forest Policy of 1988, which curtailed the concessions given by the state earlier (Gopalkrishnan, 2011, pp. 62–69; Saxena, 2005, pp. 263–273; Upadhyay & Upadhyay, 2002).

The National Forest Policy of 1988 was significant in terms of both forest conservation and the protection of the livelihoods of the forest communities. It established the national goal of keeping one-third of the land area for forests and it incorporated specific provisions to safeguard the rights of tribal and other local people. The policy was therefore a significant departure from the long-standing forest management practices, which emphasized commercial exploitation and raising revenues for the state. However, the state governments have failed to implement the policy correctly and have used it to reduce the rights of the tribal people. The panchayat system of elected local councils extended in the Scheduled Areas Act of 1996, commonly known as the PESA, has been another major move to recognize the rights of the tribal people to the natural resources that they are supposed to manage and upon which they depend for their livelihood. However, the act has not been implemented properly, and the community management of forests remains merely a promise.




The most worrisome aspect is the leading role of the state, which has been handing over tribal lands to industries and corporations in violation of the Constitution and national laws. In fact, despite the opposition from the tribal people, the forest areas in Odisha and other mineral-rich states are allocating lands to corporate interests so that they can invest in mining and other extractive projects (Mathur, 2009, pp. 163–192).

Further, the regulatory circular of the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) on May 5, 2002 gave another blow to the customary rights of the forest-dwelling communities. This regulation directed all the state governments and union territories to “evict” forest-dwelling com-munities, by branding them as “encroachers.” The forest departments of the state governments have brutally evicted tribals from 152,000 hectares of land and destroyed their dwelling units and crops, in some places by using elephants. The forestlands have been gradually liberated from the tribal people and transferred to industrial and mining projects. In Odisha alone, 40 percent of the forestland is estimated to have been diverted in this manner (Gopalkrishnan, 2011, pp. 62–69; Saxena, 2005, pp. 263–273; Upadhyay & Upadhyay, 2002). Hence, a number of campaigns and protests have occurred to restore the rights of the forest-dwelling com-munities and in response to this the Government of India enacted a new act in 2006 entitled the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006.

This act fulfilled the long overdue recognition of the rights of the sched-uled tribes (STs) and forest dwellers to the land they have occupied for centuries. It will save them from being treated as encroachers and evicted from their land for development purposes without compensation, as has often happened in the past. The act also is designed to prevent the use of forestland for development projects, such as, mining, dams, and indus-trial plants without the consent of the gram sabhas (village assemblies). However, the implementation of this law has failed on various grounds.

Tribal and forest-dwelling people will not get the rights to forestland automatically. Only those families who have been primarily residing in forest areas for three generations (nearly 75 years) will be entitled and the verification procedures to determine eligibility are not simple and very difficult for the government administrations concerned. Therefore, the implementation of this law is not going to be smooth. Second, in many cases, politically connected people manipulate the gram sabhas village councils to obtain land for commercial purposes. Third, the implementa-tion of the act will be further complicated as it confronts legal challenges.





The contention of some petitioners is that the large-scale distribution of forestland will be against the national forest policy, as it will be difficult to keep at least one-third of the total area under a forest cover (Mathur, 2009, pp. 163–192).

There has been a systematic opening up of tribal areas for various types of developmental projects since independence, which has caused large-scale displacement and dispossession of land. As indicated, this has been happening since British colonial rule and has intensified in the decades of planned development since India’s independence. The process of eco-nomic globalization has further intensified this process of dispossession and displacement. Earlier, the pace of penetration was limited and only confined to the state-driven pattern of development. However, the rate of displacement has increased manyfold, since the Indian economy was liberalized in the 1990s and it has attracted large-scale FDI since then. The pace of industrial and mining activities has accelerated to a great extent in states such as Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh, and caused large-scale deforestation, displacement of people, and loss of livelihood (Saxena, 2005, pp. 263–273). Since the onset of liberalization, privatization, and globalization (LPG), the areas inhabited by indigenous people have been subjected to incessant social unrests and protests. The current form of LPG development is creating wealth and ravaging the environment at the cost of the livelihoods and security of the indigenous people.

The government believes that the investment made by multinational corporations (MNCs) in the industrial and mining activities will increase export earnings and accelerate the country’s economic growth, which will in turn develop basic infrastructure and bring about progressive socio-economic transformation of the indigenous population. However, in the name of development, it is causing the massive displacement of human population and decimation of the sources of sustainable livelihood of forest-dwelling communities (Meher, 2009, pp. 457–480).

It is estimated that 21,300,000 people were displaced in the period 1950–1991, as a result of various development projects, such as, dams, mines, industries and roads. It has been estimated that the current phase of displacement will surpass the earlier phases. According to govern-ment records, 75 percent of those displaced are still not resettled and rehabilitated. This is indeed a sad reflection of the government’s sincerity and responsibility. Such involuntary displacement is traumatic to say the least. The experience of the last 50 years has demonstrated that both the




project authorities and the government administration as a whole have proved to be incompetent in reducing the trauma of displacement. The administration has violated individual and group rights while implement-ing the resettlement plans.

The degree of suffering experienced by those victims cannot be compensated in terms of monetary values. Even if, in many cases, com-pensation is given for their lost properties, it is too late and too little for them and they feel defeated and helpless. Almost all the developmental projects are set up in remote peripheral areas, where the tribal, ethnic minorities, and pastoralist communities live, and restoration of their socioeconomic status has rarely taken place. It is a cruel irony that during nearly 60 years after political independence, the Government of India did not promulgate a national policy on resettlement and rehabilitation for the displaced people. It is due to the lack of awareness on the part of the country’s policy makers and their unwillingness to rehabilitate the displaced (Fernandes & Paranjpya, 1997, pp. 1–34).

It has been pointed out that the majority of the displaced belong to the poor and deprived classes. Almost 40 percent of the displaced are from STs and 20 percent belong to scheduled castes (SCs) of untouchables and other lower castes. It is significant that the tribal people account for just 8 percent of India’s total population, but they account for 40 percent of the total displaced population in India. Although the constitution of India provides for equal opportunity for all her citizens by providing special protection to the poorer sectors of the population (SCs and STs), they have been marginalized in the process of “national development.” Uprooted from their ancestral land, they are forced to migrate to urban areas in search of employment and have often become landless laborers (Patwardhan, 1999, pp. 1–12).

The sources of livelihood (fodder, fuelwood, fiber, and fruits) of indig-enous people are closely associated with the forestland; they rely on a number of activities, including hunting, fishing, gathering, and shifting cultivation. They also cultivate their ethnic agricultural products in the forestland, suited to the climatic conditions of these areas. In comparison to other sections of the society, they also tend to be more vulnerable, as they often lack formal rights to the area, on which they depend on for their subsistence. The absence of legal right over their traditional land, therefore, has deprived them from compensations and any form of resettlement or rehabilitation. It has become too complex for them to sustain themselves, when their livelihood pattern has shifted from a “for-





est economy” to the non-forest economy (Jena, 1998, p. 822; Mahapatra, 1991, pp. 272–273; Shylendra, 2002, pp. 3289–3290).

The indigenous people living in the rural areas often do not have formal education and face language barriers, cultural obstacles, and racial preju-dice as well as lack financial resources and social and political contacts to influence the decisions that are made in the national and regional capitals (Inter-American Development Bank, 1998, pp. 26–27). They remain deprived of justice due to negligence and their incapacity to fight for their rights. Structural inequalities, cultural dissonance, discrimi-nation, and economic and political marginalization are the main factors responsible for their marginalization (World Commission on Dams, 2000, p. 110).

In the postindependence era, environmental movements have contin-ued to make progress toward defining a model of sustainable development to replace the current resource-intensive model of development that has created severe ecological damage. There is also now a new political struggle for safeguarding the interests of the poor and the marginalized. Among the main environmental movements are the protest movement against the Hirakud Dam, the Chipko movement, the Save the Bhagirathi River and Stop the Tehri project movements in Uttar Pradesh, and the Save the Narmada movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan) in Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. There have also been movements against mining in the Gandhamardan Hills in Odisha, the Appiko movement in the Western Ghats, the campaign against the Silent Valley project in Kerala, and opposition to the Gumti Dam in Tripura, etc. (Karan, 1994, p. 32).

Conventional political theory generally regards protests and more pacifistic forms of political participation as distinct and contradictory forms of action, yet they can be complementary in a democracy. Protest movements may contribute to the legitimacy of democratic governance, as they significantly enhance the interaction between the rulers and the ruled. As a more assertive mode of political participation, they put more pressure on the state authorities. At the same time, however, the type or the form of government in a country also affects the number and inten-sity of such protests. The structure and ethos of a democratic regime, as against an authoritarian regime, generally is more responsive to pro-tests. Consequently, protests movements in a democracy are more exten-sive and less violent than those under an authoritarian rule (Swain, 1997, pp. 830–832). In this context, we examine how the democratic regime of India has responded to the environmental protests and movements that have arisen since the political independence of India.




The protests against the Hirakud Dam, which was the first multipur-pose river valley project in postindependence in India, were based on large-scale opposition from the local population, when it was decided to build the dam at Hirakud. Radhakrishna Biswas Rai, a government minister, first announced that the construction of Hirakud Dam would save the delta from the ravages of floods and protect the most fertile land and thickly populated region of Odisha. As the first notification came in 13 September 1946 for acquisition of the land in 95 villages, strikes were organized in the town of Sambalpur. This provoked the local people to ask why the people of Sambalpur should suffer for the coastal people. It was irrational to displace a large number of people from Sambalpur district in order to save the prosperous coastal delta from floods. It was opposed by M.G. Rangaiya, the former chief engineer of Mysore. He subsequently released a 26-page report and submitted his reasons for the opposition of the dam at Hirakud. The argument made by him was that the dam would destabilize Odisha’s economy due to the absence of any proper estimate of the costs and benefits of the dam’s construction. The local leaders along with some bureaucrats took an active role in opposing the dam construction. In the last week of May 1947, a satyagraha campaign of civil disobedience was started under the leadership of Danardan Pujari and his wife Kamala Devi in Sambalpur to stop the construction of the Hirakud Dam. However, they were arrested on the first day of the satyagraha and the movement was suppressed by the new democratic regime of India (Nayak, 2010, pp. 69–73).

The Chipko movement emerged as one of the strongest forms of opposition to environmental degradation in the 1970s in the Himalayan region of Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand). It is relatively an inacces-sible land of precipitous slopes, thin and fragile soils, and ample amount of water and forests, populated by subsistence farmers who derived a secure livelihood through their diligence and skills in a combination of terrace agriculture and animal husbandry. After the Indian–Chinese bor-der conflict of 1962, an extensive network of roads was built throughout the region by the Government of India. The motive was clearly strategic; however, it caused severe environmental degradations wrought by road construction. The massive erosion of soil and landslides, blast shocks, degradation of forests and water sources, decimation of firewood, and massive social–economic dislocation of the local populace forced them to protest against the government.





The protests were further incited by the construction of the Tehri Dam on the Bhagirathi River. This dam is the largest earth-filled dam in Asia, and has submerged thousands of acres of land and forests and displaced about 40,000 people. It was vehemently opposed by local people and also by experts on the grounds of the local topography, seismic conditions, and probability of high siltation. Again, mass tourism in places such as Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotro, and Jumnotri has flourished to a great extent in this region and has greatly affected the local environment. The effects of tourism on the environment and local people received little or no attention by the government. Therefore, the exploitation of the forest by outside entrepreneurs with government approval has been the source of conflict between the Uttarakhand villages and the state forest depart-ment. The Chipko movement emerged as a unique method to prevent the government from cutting trees.

The word Chipko means to stick to or to hug the protected the trees so that they cannot be cut. The movement’s activists embrace the tree trunks to interpose their bodies between the trees and the tree cutters. More than a dozen incidents of confrontation occurred during the 1970s. Each confrontation was nonviolent and successful and the success of the movements led to increasing national and international publicity and recognition. Going from village to village, the Chipko activists prepared for each confrontation by informing people of the movement’s purpose and inviting their participations (Karan, 1994, pp. 34–37; Nabhi, 2006, pp. 128–131).

The movement has had an integrative effect at the national level by bringing together people from various regions of a very diverse country and by providing a prototype of the methods and types of organization appropriate for addressing similar problems elsewhere in India. In 1983, these methods and organization were followed to oppose reckless, illegal logging especially in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. This movement was popularly known in Karnataka as the Appiko movement. During the past century, there has been a progres-sive encroachment by the state on the rights and privileges of the people who depend on forest resources. The people have resisted this encroach-ment in various parts of India, mainly through the Gandhian nonco-operative method of civil disobedience protests, known as satyagraha (ibid., pp. 40–41).

The most celebrated anti-dam protest in India is the mega Sardar Sarovar Project over the River Narmada (Karan, 1994, pp. 37–39; Nabhi,




2006, pp. 124–135). The Narmada Valley is the site of one of the world’s largest multipurpose water projects: the Narmada River Development Project, which involves the construction of 30 large dams and many small ones on the river and its 51 main tributaries. It was proposed to transform the valley and the lives of its residents and to increase food production and hydropower production in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. However, there was no detailed assessment of the overall environmental and social effects of the Narmada project. It was estimated that these dams and reservoirs would displace about one million people and submerge 350,000 hectares of forestland and 200,000 hectares of agricultural land. Major opposition arose against the construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam by tribal groups, since this project was supposed to submerge almost 40,000 hectares of land and 250 villages.

The Narmada movement began in the 1980s as a struggle for the just resettlement of people being displaced by the Sardar Sarovar Dam. A number of protests were organized under the charismatic leadership of activist Medha Patkar in 1988. The movement is known as Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada River) and was supported by the local people. The strategy of resistance was borrowed from the Gandhian tactic of satyagraha nonviolent civil disobedience campaigns, the refusal to cooperate with project authorities, the blocking of all project-related works, and the refusal to leave their villages. Further, the movement was strengthened by extensive studies on the adverse social and environmen-tal impacts of big dams. Activists and intellectuals from India and other parts of the world expressed solidarity with the struggle. The Narmada Bachao Andolan was directed not only against the dams constructed over the River Narmada, its influence spread to other parts of India. It led to the withdrawal of the Rathong Chu project in Sikkim in 1997 and the Bedthi project in 1998. Determined protests have led to the review of the rehabilitation package for the Tehri and Koel Karo projects. By ensuring these voices, these movements have succeeded in compelling governments, at both the central and state levels, and powerful funding agencies such as the World Bank to rethink their policies on displace-ment and rehabilitation (Centre for Science and Environment, 1999, pp. 136–141; Hemadri, 1999, pp. xxvi–xxvii).

The Silent Valley movement in Kerala in the 1980s was the first sig-nificant victory for the anti-dam movement. The Silent Valley, one of the few remaining undisturbed rain forest areas in India, lies in the Malabar region, the least developed section of the state of Kerala, at the south-





ern end of the Western Ghats. This region is a sanctuary for many rare species of plants, ferns, and endangered fauna that survive in the valley. During the early 1960s, the state government began planning a dam for the Kunthipuzha River, which flows through the valley, to generate hydroelectricity as the basis for regional development. This project offers a classic example of the trade-offs between protection of the environment and economic development.

The opposition in the state was led by the Kerala People’s Science Movement, a network of rural school teachers and local citizens, who brought about a sharp focus on the ecological consequences of this devel-opment project, specifically the possible extinction of rare species that have evolved over millions of years (ibid., pp. 39–40). A large number of people would have been displaced from their ancestral land and from the source of their livelihoods. The opposition came mainly from envi-ronmentalists who opposed the prospective destruction of the country’s undisturbed areas of rainforest. The active support and involvement of international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the International Union for Conversation of Nature (IUCN) focused international attention on this project and exerted heavy pressure on the Indian government to stop the construction of the Silent Valley project.

As a result, the Government of India ordered the project to stop in 1983 (Centre for Science and Environment, 1999, p. 134; Nabhi, 2006, pp. 131–133). The success of the Silent Valley opposition boosted the morale of dam opponents in other parts of India. In this project, envi-ronmental consequences were the central focus rather than displacement of the local population. However, alliances between environmentalists, scientists, and tribal rights activists succeeded in securing the shutdown of not only the Silent Valley project but also the Bhopalpatnam, Inchampalli, and Bodhghat projects proposed for the Godavari and Indravati rivers (Hemadri, 1999, p. xxvi).

The strength, vibrancy, and success of these movements have resulted in significant improvements in the resettlement and rehabilitation process in India. There was no specific policy by either the central or the state governments to address the issue of displaced people, when the Indian state initiated development projects in different parts of the country after independence (Pandey, 1998, p. 9). After displacing about 40 million persons during 45 years of planned development, the Government of India finally realized the need to formulate a rehabilitation policy for displaced




persons (Fernandes, 1997, p. 35), when it found that over 40 percent of the displaced people during this 45-year period were tribals.

For the first time in postindependence India, a rehabilitation policy was formulated in 1993. It was drafted under both internal and external pressures. The internal pressures include: (a) the rise of movements and protests marked by a growing militancy, (b) increased national aware-ness of the problems of displacement, and (c) the demand for protection of constitutional rights. The external pressures include: (a) international environmental concerns raised by the Rio Conference in 1992, (b) the concerns raised by Human Rights Conventions, and (c) the pressure from international funding sources such as the World Bank (Asian Indigenous Tribal People Network, 2006; Fernandes, 1997, p. 36, 1998, p. 2703, 2004, p. 1191; Kujur, 2005, pp. 138–151; Ministry of Rural Development, 2004). These factors forced the Government of India to enact new policies, especially the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation, and Resettlement Act, 2013.

There have been lots of environmental protests and movements against numerous developmental projects since independence. Like the colonial government, the democratic regime of postcolonial India suppressed most of the movements in the 1960s and 1970s. It is only since the mid-1970s onwards that popular social movements have achieved any success and put significant pressure on the government to bring about reforms and halt projects. Because the domestic protests and movements have wid-ened their networks and coalitions with allies, in both the domestic and transnational spheres, they have increasingly forced the government to listen to their protests.

Table 1 shows that the transnational human rights organizations doubled in the decade between 1973 and 1983, growing from 41 to 79, and then shot up in the next decade to reach 190 in 1993. Transnational NGOs on the environment, human rights, and development issues increased tremendously during the decade from 1983 to 1993. The increasing bonds

Table 1. The Growth of Transnational Nongovernmental Advocacy Organizations

Issue Areas 1953 1963 1973 1983 1993

Human Rights 33 38 41 79 190Environment 2 5 10 26 123Development 3 2 7 13 47

Source: Khagram (2004, p. 12).





between the First-World and Third-World NGOs have empowered these NGOs and given them considerable legitimacy (Khagram, 2004, pp. 11–12).

Although the nature of the domestic opposition to the Hirakud Dam was strikingly similar to the other domestic anti-dam struggles that emerged in greater numbers in India during the 1970s, such as, the Chipko movement, Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada), and the Silent Valley movement, it failed to prosper due to the absence of NGOs, transnational allied advocacy networks, legitimized global norms on human rights, indigenous peoples, and the environmental lobbies. The domestic resistance to the Hirakud Dam was politically too weak to influence the India’s democratic regime to either halt or even revise the plans for the Hirakud project (Khagram, 2004, pp. 36–37). Besides the failure to attract a larger alliance, the resistance to Hirakud Dam was overshadowed by the nationalistic rhetoric of nation building in these years following independence (Hemadri, 1999, p. xxvi). The resistance to Hirakud Dam has since been justified because none of the objectives of the project – flood management, hydropower production, irrigation, and navigation have been fulfilled even 50 years after its completion (Nayak, 2010, pp. 69–73).

Protests and Movements in the Liberalization Era

The processes of globalization have greatly increased the pressure. Earlier, the pace of penetration was limited by the availability of resources and the state-driven pattern of development. With the liberalization of India’s economy, there are huge FDIs in India, especially in the industrial and mining sectors. In Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Andhra Pradesh, which constitute the hub of the central tribal belt, the state governments have signed a number of memoranda of understanding (MOUs) with pri-vate corporations for development projects, which have and will displace a large number of people since these proposals would require thousands of acres of land and simultaneously destroy huge areas of forest resource. It has been observed that one-fifth of the total tribal population is already displaced. The displacement of people in the liberalization era surpasses the displacement of earlier phases. The tribal population from Jharkhand has dropped from 60 percent in 1911 to 27.63 percent in 1991 (Saxena, 2005, pp. 266–267).

Since the onset of the current era of economic liberalization, the tribal or the indigenous people have been involved in incessant protests and




movements against these development projects. The sustainable liveli-hoods of these people is now under extreme threat. It is argued that the investments by MNCs in mineral-based industries in the tribal region, which are rich in natural resources, will increase export earnings and accelerate economic growth, which in turn will bring about the progressive socioeconomic transformation of the indigenous population. A significant aspect of these developments is that the tribals who have all along resisted the efforts of the state to dispossess them of their lands are now pitted against large capitalist corporations, both national and international. The combined power of the state and corporate capital is too much for the tribals to take on by themselves. These so-called development proj-ects adversely affect every facet of tribal life and their control over the means of production they need for their survival (land, forests, capital, and technology) (Meher, 2009, pp. 457–480; Saxena, 2005, pp. 266–267).

The tribal belt of the Koraput, Bolangir, and Kalahandi (KBK) districts in Odisha has experienced massive tribal unrest and protests since 1990s. The majestic plateaus of the northwest part of the present Rayagada district in Odisha contain almost one-third of the bauxite deposits in India. These plateaus have nearly 1,000 perennial streams and consider-able dense forests. The region is primarily inhibited by indigenous tribal people, who are very much dependent on the forest-covered mountains in the region for their livelihood. The perennial streams are necessary for local agriculture during the period of droughts or scanty rain and they have become the lifeline of the tribal people. However, the self-sustaining livelihood of the tribals is now at stake. The land inhabited by them is increasingly being encroached upon by various MNCs that seek to exploit the large bauxite deposits in the region. Among all the MNCs, there are two major companies (Utkal Alumina International Limited and Vedanta Alumina Limited (VAL)) that have signed MOUs with the government of Odisha to mine bauxite from the plateaus (Meher, 2009, pp. 460–462).

In 1993, Odisha started its plan to set up aluminum plants in the mineral-rich area of Kashipur. The Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL) company signed an MOU with the government of Odisha to mine bauxite in the Baphlimali hill region and process the bauxite in a big refinery at Ramibeda. The UAIL project was to displace more than 5,000 families in nearly 100 villages. However, it was supposed to pro-vide employment for about 1,000 people, but none of the employment opportunities would be for the 5,000 tribal families affected by the project. The mining activities were set to destroy the forest habitats and ecosys-





tems with perennial water streams that provide the natural resources needed for the survival and livelihood of more the tribal families in more than 14 villages. In the period between 1998 and 2000, the tribal people resisted the UAIL project and the movement was particularly vigorous in the Kashipur block. It was not only against UAIL but also against the bauxite mining projects of Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd. (BALCO), Larsen & Toubro (L&T), and Sterlite Industries India Ltd. (SIIL) in the same area.

The local movement was supported by various activists’ organizations, local and international NGOs. The activist organizations were Prakrutika Sampada Surakhya Parishad (PSSP) of Kasipur, Bashundhara Surakhya Samiti (BSS), Vanasampada Surakhya Samitis (in the villages of Kashipur bloc) and Baphlimali Surakhya Samiti at Kashipur, and Chasi Mulia Sangha of Rayagada/Koraput. Local NGOs such as Agragamee, the Laxman Nayak Society, Ankuran, and the Weaker Section Integrated Development Agency (WIDA), and international NGOs such as Action Aid, Care India, Hivos, and Norwatch supported the movement. In spite of huge protests and support across all quarters, the government of Odisha gave no response to the movement. The major activists working with the people of Kashipur area, namely, Rabi Pradhan, Saroj Mohanty, Vidhya Das, and Deba Ranjan Sarangi were severely harassed by the state police. These activists were booked under the provisions of the National Security Act (NSA). Non-bailable warrants were issued for some activists such as Prafulla Samantara, president of Lokashakti Abhiyan and Achyut Das, president of the NGO Agragamee. The company was permitted to start work on this project and the work has been continuing in full swing while the movement has declined (Pattnaik, 2013, pp. 53–78).

The London-based company VAL proposed to mine the baux-ite reserve of the Niyamgiri Hills in the Lanjigarh Tehsil area of the Kalahandi district of Odisha jointly with the Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC). According to the agreement, the company has set up an Alumina refinery plant at Lanjigarh. The aggregate investment of the project was approximately 4,000 crores and for this purpose 723.43 hectares of land was required by VAL. Out of which 232.75 hectares was private land and most of the lands belonged to the Kondh tribe and these lands are considered forestland. Twelve villages of the gram panchayat in Lanjigarh and Batelima will be affected by the proposed aluminum refinery at Lanjigarh. From these villages, 60 families were supposed to be displaced and the land of 302 families acquired for the project. However, in reality,




the project displaced 102 families and 1,220 families lost their land. As a result, there was resistance and a movement was formed by the tribals, who were forcibly evicted from their land.

The Kondh tribes are primarily dependent on the forests of the Niyamgiri hills for their livelihood and thus the proposed bauxite mining is a great threat to their source of livelihood. The movement was not only about the displacement of tribal people but also about the violation of environmental laws and forest conservation. The extensive mining in the Niyamgiri Mountains threatens the entire ecosystem and the drying up of the rivers flowing from the mountains. Further, it is also a violation of the 1996 Act of Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA). The movement was supported by the Lok Shakti Abhiyan (LSA) of Lanjigarh, the Niyamgiri Surakshya Samity (NSS) in Lanjigarh, the Green Kalahandi, the Niyamgiri Bachao Samity (NBS), the Niyamgiri Surakshya Abhiyan (NSA), the Samajbadi Jana Parishad (SJP), and the Kalahandi Sachetan Nagarik Manch in Lanjigarh (ibid.).

The VAL company bribed key people in the governments at both the center and the state levels and in a hurried manner, an application was made to the MOEF that gave the company forest clearance on March 28, 2005 (although the MOEF had denied forest clearance on September 22, 2004). The severity of the protests and movement against the project forced the National Environmental Appellate Authority on the September 17, 2010 to suspend the environmental clearance given to VAL. The Government of Odisha thus made a desper-ate appeal to the Supreme Court in April 2011 against the withdrawal of environmental clearance to VAL. On April 18, 2013, the Supreme Court ordered gram sabhas village meetings to be held in the 12 villages in the area to determine the views of the forest dwellers on mining in their area. It was the first environmental referendum in the history of India and the gram sabhas gave their verdict against the proposed mining at Lanjigarh by VAL (ibid.).

If we examine the dynamics of the protests and movements in Kashipur and Lanjigarh, the results are contrasting. Although the causes of the protests and movements have been the same and the movements received support from various national and international NGOs, human rights organizations, and activists, the movement in Kashipur failed and the movement in Lanjigarh succeeded. The contrasting outcomes raise questions about the factors that determine the success and failures of these kinds of struggles. In Kashipur, mainstream political parties such





as the Congress party, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed an All-Party Committee to support the project and to act in favor of the project, they engaged a private army that threatened the tribal people to leave their land so that the transnational corpora-tion could proceed with the contracts for construction. Both the ruling party and the opposition parties supported the project and they easily suppressed the environmental movement and its supporters. The nexus between the state and Utkal Alumina International Limited (UAIL) and their countermovement strategy resulted in the suppression of the people’s movement (ibid.).

Like the movements of Kashipur, the movement in Lanjigarh received widespread support from various national and international environmen-tal NGOs, human rights organizations, and activists. However, the most important aspect of the success of this movement was that it received the full support of the opposition parties in the state such as the Congress party and Communist Party of India – Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML). The leaders of these opposition parties in this state were very active in the resistance movement. This project provoked a serious political conflict between the ruling political party the BJD and the opposition Congress party. The BJD supported the project and advocated the development of the area for increased revenue and employment generation through mega projects such as the VAL project.

The opposition parties pointed out the serious impacts on the ecosys-tem and the biodiversity of the Niyamgiri mountains, even though they supported the industrial policy of the state in the legislative assembly. The local (Lanjigarh) tribal member of the legislative assembly (MLA), who was also Odisha’s minister in charge of tribal development, helped to organize some tribals into staging a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court in favor of the company project. However, interestingly, the member of parliament (MP) seat in the 2009 national general election went to the opposition party (the Congress party). The new MP, Bhakta Charan Das from Kalahandi, mobilized support among the Congress party leadership and pro-Congress intellectuals in the capital of New Delhi against the project. Thus, the Congress party that was in charge of the central government at the time decided to stall the VAL project. Like the movement in Kashipur, in Lanjigarh there was a nexus between the government leaders in charge of the state government in Odisha and the VAL company and together they mobilized a counter strategy to sup-press the opposition movement, but the opposition parties and especially




the Congress party were able to place a huge amount of pressure on the ruling government in Odisha to stop the project (ibid.).

Conclusion

The genesis of environmental movements in India is best understood if we utilize the Marxian concepts of mode of production and relations of production. Resources are used in all types of societies (hunter- gathering, nomadic pastoralism, settled cultivation, and industrial capi-talist). However, the contemporary mode of resource use in industrial capitalist society has greatly impacted the natural ecology over the last 200 years, and environmental movements have grown in importance with the evolution of industrial capitalist society. These movements raised their heads during the colonial period in India and have continued in the postcolonial/independence period and the more recent liberalization era. Looking at various environmental movements during these periods, we see that the tribals or the indigenous people have been suppressed and their sources of livelihood have been taken away by the state apparatus, be it under the colonial or postcolonial regimes. The march of capitalism and the rise of individualism have been accompanied by a tremendous expansion in the role of the state, which has delegitimized community-based systems of access to and control of natural resources.

What the protest movements in postindependence India demonstrate is that they can contribute to the legitimacy of democratic governance, since they significantly enhance the interaction between the rulers and the ruled. However, the form of government in a country also affects the number and intensity of such protests. The structure and ethos of a democratic regime, as against an authoritarian one, tends to better address and respond to popular protests. Popular protest movements in a democracy tend to be less deadly than those under an authoritarian rule. In this regard, looking at the protests and movements during the period of colonial rule in India, nearly all the movements were suppressed and the forest resources were increasingly plundered, while the sources of tribal people’s livelihoods were eliminated. The voices of the indigenous people were not heard by the authoritarian colonial government. The only movement that succeeded was in Kumaun and Garhwal, because the colonial government was concerned it might lose control over the local population in a sensitive and strategically important border region.

Looking at the movements in India during the immediate postindepen-dence period (democratic regime), most of the environmental movements





were suppressed by the postcolonial state. Very few movements were successful. Almost all the movements soon after India’s independence during the 1960s and 1970s were suppressed in the name of nation build-ing. However, starting in the mid-1970s, a few movements started to gain success such as the Chipko movement, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada) movement and the Silent Valley movement, when these movements were supported by various national and international human rights groups, environmental groups, NGOs, and activists.

Coming to the present era of liberalization since the 1990s, a large number of protests and environmental movements have been taking place all over India. Most of the movements are focused on the indus-trial and mining sectors, which have received a huge amount of foreign investment and have placed a huge impact on the natural environment, where the tribal people’s livelihoods are at stake. Although nearly all of the environmental movements have received substantial support from national and international human rights and environmental NGOs and activists, only some of these movements have had any success. An analysis of the movements in Kashipur and Lanjigarh shows that those movements that succeed tend to have the strong support of opposition political parties. On the other hand, where there is no support of opposi-tion political parties and there are close ties between the state and trans-national corporations, it is easier for the state to suppress environmental movements.

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Arun Kumar Nayak is presently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, Government Degree College, Santir Bazar, Tripura. His wide interests of research include dynamics of development, marginalization, human rights, and social movements. He has been writing extensively on these issues and many of his articles were published in reputed journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly, Social Change, Journal of Peace Studies, Social Action, Man & Development, and South Asia Politics. [email: [email protected]]



Environmental Movements in India · environmental movements and those that have been successful have received strong support from opposition political parties. Keywords: environmental

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