The green crusader

The 1970s under Indira Gandhi were the best thing to have happened to India's environment

THOUGH I never had any direct contact with Indira Gandhi, I remember the time when she and I were fighting for the same goal. In the 1970s, the Kerala Sasthra Sahithya Parishad (kssp), of which I was a part, was campaigning to save Silent Valley, located in the Western Ghats in the state’s Palakkad district on the border with Tamil Nadu. kssp was protesting against the state government’s move to construct a dam on the Kuntipuzha River that flowed through the region. The Kerala State Electricity Board (kseb) had proposed the dam in 1970. kssp had executed a wide and far-reaching campaign among the public so that pressure could be exerted on the state government to rescind the project. Besides us, the project’s other opponents included the World Wildlife Fund (wwf) for Nature.

We won a victory of sorts when the Kerala High Court issued a stay order on the project. But the kseb fought on, with illegal means. It bribed the state’s political parties, giving them S1 lakh each, to gain their acquiescence.

The whole issue was being reported in the national media. Incensed by the reports, Indira Gandhi stepped in. She contacted the leadership of the Congress Party that was ruling the state. She argued with them on the people’s objections to the project as well as the dangers of constructing the dam. Finally, the Kerala government was forced to abandon the project. Some years later, the area was declared a national park. It would be safe to say that, had she not played her part, there would have been an ugly dam at the location.

Silent Valley is just one of the feathers in the cap of Indira Gandhi, the environmentalist. But this is also a side of her that very few know about in this country. Though she was first and foremost a political figure and did not have any formal educational qualification in the discipline of environmental studies, she had inherited a love for the environment and nature from her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, and her uncle, Kailash Nath Kaul. Yes, Nehruvian India did not produce any green legislation (unlike Indira Gandhi’s India) despite Jawaharlal Nehru’s nature-loving streak. However, one cannot ascribe any particular reason to why this was so. In any case, I leave it to the historians.

But on Indira Gandhi and the environment, there are no doubts at all. She was an avid reader of everything about nature and as prime minister, had experts from the field as her friends, Salim Ali, for instance. She had great respect for him and considered him as a person who should be supported by the people of India so that the wildlife, rivers and forests are cared for. This is best understood by her espousal of Project Tiger. There are many voices

in the wildlife sector today who grumble about the extra attention that the tiger receives at the cost of other species. But Indira Gandhi and her advisors had surely not envisioned it that way. If you want to protect the tiger, you have to protect the area where it lives. That means you have to protect the entire forest, as well as rivers and the adjoining environment. So the tiger at that time became an instrument through which the government could popularise and educate people about all these issues. It was never about the tiger alone.

Indira Gandhi never compromised on her love for nature, even at the cost of development. Yes, she did give a go-ahead to the construction of Indian Oil Corporation’s Mathura refinery despite it being a known threat to the Taj Mahal and to the Keoladeo National Park. She also started Karnataka’s Kudremukh iron ore mining project in partnership with Iran, which was termed an ecological disaster. But I would look at the flip side. Because she was knowledgeable about the environment and was a powerful person, she was able to use her influence to mitigate the impact of these projects on their respective regions.

Whatever her shortcomings, the India of the 1970s under Indira Gandhi was still the best thing to have happened to India’s environment. All the requisite conditions were there. A powerful leader with an interest in nature, her rather “dictatorial streak” as well as her brute majority in Parliament. Moreover, none of our parliamentarians or politicians were well-educated about the importance of forests or wildlife conservation at that time. Indira Gandhi’s leadership in these matters was, indeed, a blessing of sorts.

I also reject the canard that she dealt a serious blow to the nascent climate change movement with her remarks at the United Nations Conference in 1972 in Sweden. Her (in)famous line, “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?” has been used by critics to say that she did not sup-port the concept of equity in climate action and that she laid the blame of pollution and, consequently, climate change, on the doorstep of the poor. Let me state here that equity in the climate change context was non-existent at the time and only became prominent later on.

Indira Gandhi’s legacy as an environmentalist is still with us. It is a pity that the governments that succeeded her, most of them owing allegiance to her own party, did not follow her footsteps. It only goes to show that they did not truly imbibe her ideas. That is indeed the challenge facing all of us in India, not just politicians. We can only do justice to Indira Gandhi, the green crusader, by being green ourselves. On this, there are no two views.

IT IS A PITY THAT THE GOVERNMENTS THAT SUCCEEDED HER, MOST OF THEM OWING ALLEGIANCE TO HER OWN PARTY, DID NOT FOLLOW HER FOOTSTEPS. IT SHOWS THAT THEY DID NOT TRULY IMBIBE HER IDEAS