Sunderlal Bahuguna with his wife, Vimla
A look back at Sunderlal Bahuguna’s journey on the path of social activism and the beginnings of the Chipko movement:-
FROM 1973 to 1979, the mountain regions of what was then Uttar Pradesh (now Uttarakhand) witnessed several agitations to save forests from the axe.
These agitations gained fame as the Chipko movement and eventually forced the government to ban the commercial felling of trees. But the Chipko movement had already been scripted in 1967.
The late Sunderlal Bahuguna, who left politics and dedicated his life to social service, came up with the idea of focussing on forest conservation while the folk singer Ghanshyam Sailani came up with the name Chipko for the movement through a song he wrote.
He also introduced the philosophy of “Ecology is the permanent economy”.
Let us look at some of the events that laid the basis for the movement in the 1970s. On May 30, 1930, residents of the area gathered at Tiladi, Barkot, on the banks of the Yamuna, demanding to be allowed to use wood and fodder from the forest free of cost.
The King of Tehri thought of the forest as his personal property and had his army open fire on the protesters, killing 17 people. Many people jumped into the Yamuna to save themselves and many were swept away; 80 people were put behind bars.
To pay his respects to the people who were martyred in Tiladi while fighting for their rights to the forest, on May 30, 1967, Sunderlal Bahuguna decided to declare May 30 as forest day.
He appealed to everyone besides his Sarvodayi (the title the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave coined for social workers who followed the Gandhian philosophy) colleagues to join him.
In 1968, Sunderlal Bahuguna brought out a booklet titled Parvatiya vikas aur van neeti (Mountain Development and Forest Policy) to commemorate the day.
It said that forest, agriculture, animal husbandry and cottage industries should provide at least 300 days of employment throughout the year.
With the establishment of the Shaheed Smarak(martyr’s memorial) at Tiladi in 1969, Sunderlal Bahuguna along with his Sarvodayi colleagues took an oath to protect the forests. Meanwhile, he rushed from Garhwal to Kumaon to join a movement that from 1969 to 1971 campaigned for a liquor ban in the State. After the government imposed a liquor ban in the hills in 1971, Bahuguna returned to his quest to protect the forests.
On December 11, 1972, the first procession for a radical change in the forest system took place in the town of Purola near Barkot. A large number of villagers took part. The next day a huge procession was taken out in Uttarkashi in which Janakavi (folk singer) Ghanshyam Sailani, Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna participated.
After that, Sunderlal Bahuguna walked to spread the message of the Chipko movement across Uttarakhand. He started his journey from Simlasu on the auspicious day of Deepavali, October 25, in 1973, with the blessings of Swami Chidananda, his spiritual guru and the head of the Divine Life Society.
Speaking on the occasion, Swami Chidananda, who had arrived from Munikireti, said: “I see the power to spread the great message of Indian culture in this 120-day journey.”
Sunderlal Bahuguna made his birthplace, Marora village, the first stop in his yatra. He had left the village at the age of 13 after differences with the royal family. The village was full of royal devotee diwans, but Sunderlal Bahuguna had become a disciple of Suman, who opposed the monarchy.
When he did not get support from his family, he left the village. Later, Sunderlal Bahuguna settled in Silyara village of Ghansali where he set up the Parvatiya Navjeevan Mandal Ashram. Later, he left the ashram to protest against the dam on the Bhagirathi in Tehri.
On the yatra, Sunderlal Bahuguna reached Kafkot via Ravaain, Jaunpur, Jaunsar Bawar, Rudraprayag, Sukhtal, Gwaldam and Tharali in Chamoli. Through Dharmaghar, Pithoragarh, Almora, Nainital, he measured the whole of Uttarakhand on foot. He completed his journey of 1,400 km on February 22, 1974, at Munikireti.
He was accompanied by his Sarvodayi colleagues such as Ghanshyam Sailani, Anand Singh Bisht and Surendra Dutt Bhatt. (Anand Singh Bisht was a forest ranger and the father of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath. He died on April 20, 2020, at the age of 89 in New Delhi.
During his travels, Sunderlal Bahuguna came to understand the consequences of forest destruction and the benefits of forest conservation. He saw that trees had the potential to keep the soil fixed and to help in water conservation. He noticed that there were disasters in the areas where deforestation had taken place.
For the British (who spread chir pine trees in the hills) and their Forest Department, the forests had been only a source of wood, lisa (pine resin) and other such products for trading. This approach continued even after Independence. But Sunderlal Bahuguna said that the real products of forests were soil, water and air (oxygen).
He argued that the first use of forests should be for the people living nearby so that they got the food, grass, wood and fodder they needed near them. This would increase the spirit of forest conservation among people. This thinking later led to the slogans of the Chipko movement, including the one mentioned earlier.
The Chipko movement began with the idea of the right of villagers over forests. Then the thinking arose that the forests were being destroyed for commercial exploitation. The contractor cuts many more trees than are allotted to him, for profit. The local people have to bear the loss.
In such a situation, the idea of forest-based employment for the local people was raised through the Forest Cooperative Society. The Uttarakhand Sarvodaya Mandal was established, and Anand Singh Bisht became its president. Sarvodaya sewaks started setting up forest-based industries in their institutions.
Chandi Prasad Bhatt established the Dasholi Gram Swaraj Mandal for the same purpose, but it could not even get five trees for its saw machine, while the Simon Company of Allahabad (now Prayagraj), which manufactures sports goods, was allotted thousands of ash trees in Chamoli district in March 1973.
From the ash tree, the villagers make a bull’s gamble to plough the fields. So when the Simon Company in collaboration with Dehradun’s State-run sports company planned to cut trees in Chamoli, it created a lot of discontent in the village.
Residents of Mandal and Fata villages protested and did not allow the company’s workers to cut trees in the forest. Despite several efforts between June and December, the company could not cut down trees because of the agitation of the residents.
Learning from this incident, the district administration cleverly summoned the men from the villages to the district headquarters in Gopeshwar on the pretext of compensation distribution for roads and gave the contractor a green signal to go ahead with his plan to cut the trees. As a result, the responsibility of saving the trees fell upon the women in the village.
Led by Gaura Devi, the women at Reni near Joshimath forced the labourers who had come to cut the trees to leave empty-handed. They chanted with zeal: “We will not allow our trees to be cut down.”
Seeing the widespread opposition to deforestation, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Hemavati Nandan Bahuguna, invited Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt to Lucknow on April 24, 1974, for a discussion. Sunderlal Bahuguna highlighted his travel experiences and expressed the need for commercial felling of trees in the mountains to be stopped immediately. A committee was constituted under the chairmanship of Virendra Kumar, a professor of forest sciences at Zakir Husain Delhi College, to report on commercial tree felling. While the committee was still on the job, the auction process for cutting trees resumed. In October 1974, Sunderlal Bahuguna sat on a two-week fast to protest against this.
Later, in 1978 and 1979, local people led by Sunderlal Bahuguna did not allow trees to be cut in Adwani, Badiyargarh, Kangad, Lasi and Khurat. Sunderlal Bahuguna and Dhoom Singh Negi sat on fasts in Badiyargarh and Jajal respectively against the repression by the police, who were supporting the contractors. But in the end, the sustained agitation led to the banning of commercial felling for 15 years in this part of the Himalaya.
Activists from the ashram in Silyara
Sunderlal Bahuguna walked 22 miles from Tehri and built a hut in Silyara village, to fulfil a condition for marriage laid down by Vimla Nautiyal, who studied at the Kausani Ashram of Gandhiji’s English disciple Sarla Behn. She told Sunderlal Bahuguna that she would marry him if he “left politics and settled in a remote backward village”. On June 19, 1956, they were married.
The Parvatiya Navjeevan Mandal Ashram that started in the hut became the centre of Gandhiji’s principle of non-violence. This is where many Gandhian activists emerged, including Dhoom Singh Negi, Ghanshyam Sailani, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Dharmanand Nautiyal, Surendra Dutt Bhatt, Bhavani Bhai, Kunwar Prasoon, Vijay Jardhari, Pratap Shikhar and Pandurang Hegde.
They later launched several movements with Sunderlal Bahuguna and independently. The children of most of the workers had their primary education at the ashram in Silyara.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.