In the post-Gandhian era, environmental problems surfaced at a breakneck speed with large-scale and indiscriminate industrialisation leading to environmental hazards and degradations. Mahatma Gandhi’s critique of modernity reveals his concern about the emergence of a social order that exploits nature for short-term gains. He had written widely about the need for human beings to exercise restraint with respect to the use of natural resources. His “counter-thinking” is now increasingly becoming a mainstream thought with greater awareness of the environmental problems.
Troubled by unrestricted industrialism and materialism, Gandhi had foreseen a time when the resources of the earth will not be enough to meet the growing demands of the people.
Understanding Gandhi
GANDHI’s Vision and Values is meant to be a serious exploration into the contemporary meaning of Hind Swaraj and the kind of possibility it indicates for agricultural practices in rural India. Hind Swaraj herein refers to Gandhi’s text and also to India’s last 50 years as an independent country.
In recent times, the significance of Hind Swaraj for an understanding of Gandhi’s thought has come to be widely recognised. Vivek Pinto’s book is perhaps among the first few to attempt a serious and comprehensive examination of the significance of Hind Swaraj for agriculture and life in rural India. For that, it merits serious attention.
The principal concern, in the words of the author, is to see if it would be possible to reconstruct a “harmonious, poverty-free, non-violent and self-reliant society” on the basis of ethical principles marked by Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and his experiments with the agricultural communities.
Pinto’s argument unfolds at three related planes. The first section explores the cognitive significance of Hind Swaraj as a text. Another section seeks to clarify the significance of Gandhi’s own attempts, as also of various individuals, to work out in practice the basic principles marked in Hind Swaraj. The third section is a “Gandhian critique” of the experiment with planned agricultural development in independent India.
If one were to present Pinto’s work as a coherent argument, one could begin by saying that the third section is really the starting point of the argument. It spells out in distressing detail the worsening condition of agriculture in India. Most of the people still depend on agriculture and nearly 40 percent of them live below the poverty line.
After Independence, India chose to adopt the path of planned development. It was seen as a more humane and speedier way of securing a decent living for the millions of poor in the country. But, 50 years later, agricultural productivity still remains low.
Most of these grim details about peasant life and agriculture are fairly well-known. What is relevant is to see how the author proceeds to establish a kind of link between Gandhi’s text, his experiments and the present state of agriculture in the country.
Gandhi, while rejecting modern civilisation as a mode of life and work, invoked agriculture, charkha and the village as metaphors for sane human living. Pinto seeks out the implications of Hind Swaraj for agriculture as it could be practised in India. The citations from Gandhi’s writings on swadeshi as an idea of service and sensitivity to the needs of proximate communities is appropriate. The varied range of writings and case studies make interesting reading.
To Gandhi, the practice of agriculture signified a promise of limitless reach. The act of breaking and tending the soil carried within it an ageless quality. It signified a mode of work and being which, while sustaining life, could nurture an ultimate sense of meaning and worth. At this point, one could perhaps question the Hind Swaraj principles on two accounts:
– What is one to read into the fact that Gandhi, the creator of institutions, never sought to create one devoted specially to the practice and science of agriculture; and
– What about Gandhi’s silence on the practice of shifting cultivation, which at several levels is so close to the fundamental principles of Hind Swaraj?
Gandhian model of development
Mahatma Gandhi never used the words environment protection. However what he said and did makes him an environmentalist. His writings are replete with remarks on the excesses of industrial society. Political psychologist and social theorist Ashis Nandy has written extensively on Gandhi. In a freewheeling chat with Kaushik Das Gupta he spoke on Gandhi’s vision of social change, his critique of industrialisation and the way movements draw inspiration from Gandhi.
We often talk of two visions of development, the Gandhian vision and the Nehruvian vision. What is the fundamental difference between the two?
The Nehruvian concept is the dominant concept of development. Gandhi never used the word development. The word was first used by the US president Harry S Truman in 1949. Yes, people often talk of the Gandhian model of development. But if such a model is genuinely Gandhian then it is not about development. And if it’s about development, then bringing in Gandhi is an exercise in legitimising something alien to Gandhi’s vision.
Social change is possible without development. Society did not stop changing before the idea of development was coined. President Truman was not such a great thinker that the concept he enunciated is indispensable to human societies.
Many activists who are against big developmental projects talk of following the Gandhian way. Your comments
Yes. They draw inspiration from Gandhi to resist aspects of development that does not tally with the Gandhian vision. In one way they are humanising Gandhi. All social change is not development. The fundamental aspects of development—for example unending industrialisation, unending urbanisation, unending consumption—are not justifiable according to the Gandhian way.
Gandhians have tried to take head on some major assumptions of development. Those who challenge key aspects of development are doing us a service. They are resisting the framework in which we are caught.
Many of the solutions to the current environmental problems are actually within the purview of industrialised society. But there are others who talk of a path other than that of industrialisation. Is Gandhi’s vision in sync with such alternatives?
Gandhian vision is now seen as an inspiration, as a source, for many enterprises that offer alternative to industrialisation. These movements began in the 1980s.
None of the greatest Gandhians of today belong to India. In fact, the greatest Gandhians of our times have not read Gandhi that carefully. They perhaps read his works after people started calling them Gandhians.
Lech Walesa, the Polish shipyard trade unionist who later headed Poland’s non-Communist government, read Gandhi after people started calling him Gandhian. So did Benito Aquino. Gandhism has become a part of the process that offers alternatives to industrialisation. There are as many varieties of Gandhians as Marxists or liberals. Gandhi is a contemporary hero who is accessible—he was not a religious leader, yet religion has a big part in his politics, he was an ascetic but open to practical ways.
A lot of the de-growth movement, which believes progress is possible without economic growth, takes inspiration from Gandhi. Your comments?
I won’t use the word ‘progress’ because that is a contaminated word. The colonisers used the word progress. But yes, positive social change is possible without economic growth. And Gandhi has been an inspiration for such movements. However, we should also remember that most of the de-growth movement has taken place in societies which are over-consuming, exploiting nature and over-arming themselves—all these are hardly markers of good life.
I don’t think the hedonism associated with globalised capitalism is conducive to human happiness. Many communities have lived in poverty—but not destitution—and they haven’t been unhappy about it.
There are alternative visions but there is little by way of putting them into practice—except the endeavours of a few grassroots organisations. Your comments?
They have not been put into practice because our regimes are technocratic. Our solutions are technocratic. Technocrats go by the development textbooks. They do not keep elbow room for alternatives.
Yes, many with alternative vision keep away from the party-based political system. But they are part of the political process. The movement against dams is part of our political process. We need a group outside party politics to rate parties, rate individual candidates on yardsticks of honesty. We need an impartial agency to do that. For example, Uttar Pradesh has a system where bureaucrats vote on who the most corrupt bureaucrat is.
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
- Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund.
- LEAF is supported by transnational corporations (TNCs) like Unilever plc, Amazon.com, Inc, Nestle, Airbnb, Inc as well as Emergent, a US-based non-profit.
- The world lost more than 10 million hectares of primary tropical forest cover last year, an area roughly the size of Switzerland.
- Ending tropical and subtropical forest loss by 2030 is a crucial part of meeting global climate, biodiversity and sustainable development goals. Protecting tropical forests offers one of the biggest opportunities for climate action in the coming decade.
- Tropical forests are massive carbon sinks and by investing in their protection, public and private players are likely to stock up on their carbon credits.
- The LEAF coalition initiative is a step towards concretising the aims and objectives of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism.
- REDD+ was created by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It monetised the value of carbon locked up in the tropical forests of most developing countries, thereby propelling these countries to help mitigate climate change.
- It is a unique initiative as it seeks to help developing countries in battling the double-edged sword of development versus ecological commitment.
- The initiative comes at a crucial time. The tropics have lost close to 12.2 million hectares (mha) of tree cover last year according to global estimates released by Global Forest Watch.
- Of this, a loss of 4.2 mha occurred within humid tropical primary forests alone. It should come as no surprise that most of these lost forests were located in the developing countries of Latin America, Africa and South Asia.
- Brazil has fared dismally on the parameter of ‘annual primary forest loss’ among all countries. It has lost 1.7 mha of primary forests that are rich storehouse of carbon. India’s estimated loss in 2020 stands at 20.8 kilo hectares.
- Between 2002-2020, Brazil’s total area of humid primary forest reduced by 7.7 per cent while India’s reduced by 3.4 per cent.
- Although the loss in India is not as drastic as in Brazil, its position is nevertheless precarious. For India, this loss is equivalent to 951 metric tonnes worth carbon dioxide emissions released in the atmosphere.
- It is important to draw comparisons between Brazil and India as both countries have adopted a rather lackadaisical attitude towards deforestation-induced climate change. The Brazilian government hardly did anything to control the massive fires that gutted the Amazon rainforest in 2019.
- It is mostly around May that forest fires peak in India. However, this year India, witnessed massive forest fires in early March in states like Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram among others.
- The European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service claimed that 0.2 metric tonnes of carbon was emitted in the Uttarakhand forest fires.
- Implementation of the LEAF Coalition plan will help pump in fresh rigour among developing countries like India, that are reluctant to recognise the contributions of their forest dwelling populations in mitigating climate change.
- With the deadline for proposal submission fast approaching, India needs to act swiftly on a revised strategy.
- Although India has pledged to carry out its REDD+ commitments, it is impossible to do so without seeking knowledge from its forest dwelling population.
Context:-
At the recently concluded Leaders’ Summit on Climate in April 2021, Lowering Emissions by Accelerating Forest Finance (LEAF) Coalition, a collective of the United States, United Kingdom and Norway governments, came up with a $1 billion fund plan that shall be offered to countries committed to arrest the decline of their tropical forests by 2030.
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]What is LEAF Coalition?
Why LEAF Coalition?
Brazil & India
According to the UN-REDD programme, after the energy sector, deforestation accounts for massive carbon emissions — close to 11 per cent — in the atmosphere. Rapid urbanisation and commercialisation of forest produce are the main causes behind rampant deforestation across tropical forests.
Tribes, Forests and Government
Disregarding climate change as a valid excuse for the fires, Indian government officials were quick to lay the blame for deforestation on activities of forest dwellers and even labelled them “mischievous elements” and “unwanted elements”.
Policy makers around the world have emphasised the role of indigenous tribes and local communities in checking deforestation. These communities depend on forests for their survival as well as livelihood. Hence, they understand the need to protect forests. However, by posing legitimate environmental concerns as obstacles to real development, governments of developing countries swiftly avoid protection of forests and rights of forest dwellers.
For instance, the Government of India has not been forthcoming in recognising the socio-economic, civil, political or even cultural rights of forest dwellers. According to data from the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs in December, 2020 over 55 per cent of this population has still not been granted either individual or community ownership of their lands.
To make matters worse, the government has undertaken systematic and sustained measures to render the landmark Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 ineffective in its implementation. The Act had sought to legitimise claims of forest dwellers on occupied forest land.
Various government decisions have seriously undermined the position of indigenous people within India. These include proposing amendments to the obsolete Indian Forest Act, 1927 that give forest officials the power to take away forest dwellers’ rights and to even use firearms with impunity.
There is also the Supreme Court’s order of February, 2019 directing state governments to evict illegal encroachers of forest land or millions of forest dwellers inhabiting forests since generations as a measure to conserve wildlife. Finally, there is the lack of data on novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) deaths among the forest dwelling population;
Tardy administration, insufficient supervision, apathetic attitude and a lack of political intent defeat the cause of forest dwelling populations in India, thereby directly affecting efforts at arresting deforestation.
Way Forward
Tuntiak Katan, a global indigenous leader from Ecuador and general coordinator of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, aptly indicated the next steps at the Climate Summit:
“The first step is recognition of land rights. The second step is the recognition of the contributions of local communities and indigenous communities, meaning the contributions of indigenous peoples.We also need recognition of traditional knowledge practices in order to fight climate change”
Perhaps India can begin by taking the first step.