[E-rundbrief] Info 1232 - V. Shiva: India - destroying nature and culture

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 1232 - Vandana Shiva (Indien): Why are we so 
rapidly destroying nature and culture in India?

Bad Ischl, 27.6.2013

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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Why are we so rapidly destroying nature and culture in India?

By Dr Vandana Shiva

24.6.2013

I write this column on World Environment Day, 5th June , 2013 from 
Bhutan where I am working with the Government on the transition to 
100% Organic Bhutan. I am also working with the Bhutan Government  to 
redefine the economic paradigm to focus on the happiness and well- 
being of its people and the health of its environment,instead of 
narrowly defined growth as GDP.

80% of Bhutan is forest. All streams and rivers are healthy and 
living. And this is a result of a conscious policy to protect nature 
and culture. From the local to the national level policies are 
dedicated to “promotion of sustainable socioeconomic development, 
preservation and promotion of culture and conservation of 
bio-diversity in pursuit of a happy society.”

In the beautiful valley of Bumthang in central Bhutan, the government 
plans to set up a Gross National Happiness Centre, and I have been 
invited to be on its Executive Council.

To reach the site of the centre which is surrounded by protected 
conifer forests we had to cross the gushing river in a basket on a 
rope bridge.

The forests and rivers took me back to my childhood in Garhwal and 
Kumaon where my father served as a forest conservator, and we trekked 
across the Himalaya through healthy  forests and across gushing rivers 
and streams. I could not have imagined as a child that our precious 
forests and rivers which have sustained us through the centuries would 
disappear in my lifetime because we would blindly start chasing a 
mirage of growth.

Forty years ago, the women of Garhwal stood up for their forests  and 
started the Chipko movement. They said that the real gifts of the 
forests were soil ,water and pure air, not timber,resin and revenue. 
After the 1978 floods, the government was forced to recognize that the 
costs of deforestation in terms of floods was much higher than the 
revenues collected from logging. In 1981, a ban was put on logging 
above 1000 metres in the Ganga catchment.

In 1982, the Ministry of environment asked us to do a study on the 
ecological impact of mining in the Doon Valley. In the 20 years of 
mining, I had watched our streams and rivers disappear.

  Our study showed that the limestone left in the mountains 
contributed more to the economy than its extraction through mining, 
because limestone is an  aquifer and holds water in its cavities and 
caves. Friends of the Doon  mobilized citizens of Doon Valley .In 
1983,the Supreme ordered the closure of the limestone mines, and all 
the polluting industry dependent of it. Doon Valley was declared an 
ecologically sensitive zone, and a Green Valley.

30 years later ,  in violation of all laws,  the Chief Minister of 
Uttarakhand signed an MOU with Coca Cola to set up a plant in village 
Charba in Western Doon. Where ever Coca Cola goes, it brings a water 
famine and pollution. This was the case in Plachimada in Kerala, where 
women started a movement and shut down the Coca Cola plant.This is the 
case in Mehdiganj near Varanasi .Each plant uses 1.5 to 2 million 
liters of water per day. This can create scarcity in the most water 
abundant region.

On 29th May 2013, citizens from across India and Doon Valley joined a 
solidarity rally of the Charba community to stop the Coca Cola plant. 
More than 1200 people traveled from the Dakpather barrage on the 
Yamuna , from where Coca Cola is supposed to take water , to the 
village where it wants to set up its plant. On the way , the community 
participated in a Chipko movement by tying rakhis on trees that would 
have to be cut to make way for Coca Cola.

Today our forests and rivers are dying. And as a society we don’t seem 
to care, even though every community whose land, forests and water are 
being grabbed are rising in revolt . It is probably the biggest 
ecological movement in our history.

  Tagore had called the Indian civilization the Aranya Sanskriti, and 
distinguished us from the Western industrial societies based on brick 
and mortar. The economic  and political powers do not think twice 
about chopping down forests for mines , and trees for concrete jungles.

The Government has been caught in multiple scams, including Coal-gate. 
For its illegal coal mines, the government has been willing to invade 
our protected forests and the homes of our forest communities. When 
the protector becomes the predator, how can India’s forests survive? 
And when the tribal’s and forest dwellers try to protect their forest 
homes from the predatory invasions of a corporate state, should we not 
pause and think about the future of our forests, our tribal’s, our 
democracy and the principles that made us an “aranya sanskriti”. 
Should we not look deeper at the roots of violence in our tribal areas?

How could we so completely have forgotten the foundations of our 
sustenance, our forests and rivers?

How could we have forgotten what it means to be a forest civilization 
and a civilization where rivers are our sacred mothers?

Why do mining corporations , real estate corporations, dam 
corporations (and they are the same corporations) get priority over 
India’s Constitution and laws, the fundamental rights of Indian 
citizens, and environmental laws meant to protect nature? How have 
reached a situation where the Government rewards ecological criminals 
, and criminalises citizens working in defense of their ecosystems and 
the livelihoods and sustenance they provide?

There are after all Forest Conservation laws meant to protect our 
forests. There is a Panchayati Raj Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 
,PESA, that recognizes the rights of tribal communities , and their 
sovereignty over their land and forests.

The justification is always “growth”.However, no short term economic 
policy can trump the long term economic policy of protecting the 
ecological foundations of all economy. Everywhere in the world , 
specially in Bhutan,the scam of “growth” is being recognized. All it 
measures is commercialization and commodification of resources, and 
hence is actually the rate of extraction of resources from local 
ecosystems and local communities. In  should therefore be interpreted 
as measuring ecological destruction and  the creation of poverty, not 
as measuring wealth. The real meaning of “wealth” is well being. A 
process that destroys nature and dispossesses local communities , and 
hence destroys well being, cannot be  justified as wealth creating. 
What it does lead to as a result of ecological and social exploitation 
, and the conversion of nature’s resources into cash, is the 
concentration of cash in the hand of a few.

And this cash can then be used for kickbacks and buying political 
influence, to further erode nature, people’s rights and  democracy.

This is the vicious cycle we have got trapped in . And only people’s 
movements in the defense of nature and their rights can break out of it.

Dr. Vandana Shiva
Navdanya/Research Foundation for Science Technology & Ecology
A-60 Hauz Khas,
New Delhi 110016 INDIA
www.navdanya.org

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