He was born Bhimrao on April 14, 1891, at Mhow in Central India in an austere and religious Mahar family with a military service background and considerable respect for education. In school (Satara and Bombay), college (Bombay), service under the Maharaja of Baroda (briefly in 1913 and again between July and November 1917) and study abroad (Columbia University, the London School of Economics, Gray’s Inn, the University of Bonn), he displayed a scholarly orientation, a commitment to the life of the mind and trained intellectual gifts that no other national figure in Indian politics could match over this century.
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He benefited from opportunities which had just opened up, which none in his family (or, for that matter, in the recorded history of his people) had access to over the centuries; yet every one of his academic, intellectual and professional achievements was hard earned, in social battle, against entrenched oppression, discrimination and anti-human prejudice.
By the time he was finished with his formal studies in the early 1920s, Dr Ambedkar had acquired qualifications that surpassed the M.A., Ph.D., M.Sc. (Econ), D.Sc. (Econ), Barrister-at-law he had added, by right, to his name and title; the young man had been through a real life educational experience which most people (including the most renowned scholars) do not manage to acquire in a lifetime.
There may be various opinions on the formidable range of issues and controversies in which Dr Ambedkar figured as a protagonist over 40 years of his public life—which can be said to have begun with the sharp and insightful paper on “The Castes in India, Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development” which he did for Dr Goldenweiser’s anthropology seminar in New York in May 1916.
He was a searchingly honest, challenging, analytical eclectic liberal thinker who was attracted to utilitarianism (and eventually to Buddhism) in philosophy and to the ideals of the French Revolution as much as to the socially forward-looking and humanistic elements and values in Indian culture and civilisation over the millennia.
He delved into the Marxist classics… but was not persuaded either by the revolutionary theory or the practice. He was emphatically opposed to Gandhism and to the Congress ideology, although on some social issues he shared common points with Jawaharlal Nehru—who badly let down his Minister of Law on the Hindu Code Bill in the early 1950s.
Right from his early days, Ambedkar made a mark as a restless and courageous experimenter who, obviously, did not always get it right in the matter of trade-offs (and did not claim to). He fell in love with ideas as a socially oppressed and humiliated schoolboy who refused to be taken for a ride by anyone, including Baroda’s royalty. Throughout his life (which ended on December 6, 1956, a couple of months after he publicly embraced Buddhism along with his followers), he was interested in the big picture.
But the boy who was socially barred from playing cricket with his schoolmates in Satara (by the curse of untouchability) never took his eye off the ball. He concentrated in his public life on attainable, practical goals and never became too big to go into specifics, details, doubts, books, the problems of ordinary people, especially the lowliest of the low in Indian society.
What is absolutely clear is that Dr Ambedkar represented, in the truly national sense, the profound side of the socio-political struggle which formed an irrepressible part of the nationalist movement, although it was not often understood (by conservatism and orthodoxy in politics) to be such. Politically moderate, he tended towards radicalism and uncompromising struggle in the social arena in which he generalled many battles.
His lifelong concern with religion, morality and justice in the idealistic sense was marked by a restlessly serious attempt to get the intellectual, social and political measure of these things. He did not believe in class analysis, but intuitively and intellectually grasped the link between caste and class in India.
Ideologically, Dr Ambedkar occupied the “centre”, frequently the space right of centre, but at times he moved sharply the other way, to the radical side. This happened especially when his ideas, campaigns and political organisational work were backed by powerful mass movements (in the “radical” second half of the 1930s, for example, during the 1938 workers’ struggle in Bombay against the anti-strike Bill).
He was the builder of the Independent Labour Party, which did not take off in an all-India sense, but yielded some valuable political, ideological and organisational lessons to the Opposition round the nation. Despite his chairmanship of the Constitution Draft Committee in the Constituent Assembly and his stint in the Union Ministry under Nehru, Dr Ambedkar can be considered as a founder of non-Congressism in Indian politics.
Even while championing social egalitarianism and popular liberties and criticising the sway of big business and landlordism, campaigning for social and economic democracy, he remained a conscious ideological and political adversary of Marxism and Communism—for the basic reason that he found them challenging in the same way he found Buddhism inspiring.
He had a number of interesting things to say about tricky national problems—Kashmir, language, nationhood, citizenship, ethnicity and so on—and his analysis lit up the field for a proper democratic understanding of federalism and Centre-State relations in India.
On international questions and foreign policy, his approach was that of a centrist-conservative dissenting from non-alignment and from the Nehruvian world view. The social and class basis of the following he commanded; the non-philanthropic, non-petitioning nature of his social questioning; his passion for social justice and democratic liberties; his openness to modern, scientific and rational ideas, his unyielding secularism and progressive views on a number of questions, especially on the condition and future of women and on what it took to make a civil society; his great intellectual gifts and wide-ranging interests; his ability to concentrate on attainable, practical goals and his constructive sense of realism—these marked him out as a unique kind of leader.
Dr Ambedkar emphasised the anti-social, anti-progress character of an unjust social order as well as its vital connection, through networks of force and ideology, with political power.
One battle in which social orthodoxy and opportunist politics allied to defeat progress was the instructive fight over the Hindu Code Bill in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The leading author of the Constitution led the effort to institute a reasonably forward-looking and egalitarian Hindu Code law (especially from the standpoint of women), but it was sabotaged by orthodox elements. The Congress party, despite Nehru’s claim to rationality and progressivism, refused to support the Bill.
His solid contribution to institution-building apart, he had a great deal to say about democracy as a real way of life and about citizens’ rights, about authoritarianism and also about a healthy democratic political system. He detested hereditary, dynastic rule and a one-party system. “To have popular government run by a single party is to let democracy become a mere form for despotism to play its parts from behind it,” is a typical Ambedkar formulation.
He warned: “Despotism does not cease to be despotism because it is elective. The real guarantee against despotism is to confront it with the possibility of its dethronement, of its being laid low, of its being superseded by a rival party.” Dr Ambedkar clearly had little use for political stability premised on a single party’s rule, or on a social philosophy of “letting sleeping dogs lie”.
Two other political principles which he focussed on have been honoured in their systematic and cynical violation over the years. Do not lay liberties at the feet of a great man; in politics, bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation. Make political democracy a social democracy; resolve the contradictions, else they will undermine, or blow up, democracy itself. Over a historic century, the many-sided achievement of Dr Ambedkar inspires awe.
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- 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.
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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.