FORESTS AND WELFARE
Jairam Ramesh’s book reveals Indira Gandhi’s love for nature, her anguish at its destruction, and her efforts to conserve it
A few years ago, while interviewing Jairam Ramesh, who had just been appointed minister for environment, he told me that former Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi was his talisman in environment and wildlife matters. For most who thought they knew all there was to know about Mrs Gandhi, his statement may seem puzzling. History highlights Gandhi’s excesses during the Emergency and applauds her for the Bangladesh Liberation War. Missing from the narrative is another enduring legacy without which India would be poorer: a healthier environment and a wealth of forests. It is a gap that Jairam Ramesh’s meticulously-researched book fills admirably. This focused biography reveals the Iron Lady’s love for nature, and her efforts to conserve it. It is easy but churlish to assume that Gandhi’s conservationist leanings were the indulgence of a powerful woman. She was guided by the firm belief that it was short sighted, and not in the interest of the people to whittle away at the forest cover. In that she was a woman ahead of her time, raising the issue of Climate Change long before it entered the political lexicon.
Her initiative in launching India’s celebrated Project Tiger is well known. Equally successful was Project Crocodile that reversed the drastic decline of crocodiles and gharials. Rare was the wild animal that Gandhi did not champion: she revived the endemic dancing deer (sangai) by engaging with the chief minister of Manipur, while taking immediate steps to stop the horrific slaughter of olive ridley turtles off the Odisha coast, including pressing the Coast Guard into the service of protecting them. She was to help create and save many Protected Areas such as the Borivali National Park, which today serves as Mumbai’s lungs. Another famous save was the Silent Valley in Kerala. This, and a few other cases cited reveal that Gandhi differed from her father’s perception of big dams always being ‘the temples of modern India’.
A Life in Nature is a sound testimony of Gandhi’s globally unparalleled environment leadership. The only other world leader who comes close is former US President Theodore Roosevelt. The book is wellcrafted and fills a vacuum by powerfully presenting a little-known facet of a muchstudied Prime Minister. As a Congressman, and a Gandhi-family loyalist, Ramesh does eulogize the former PM. Blessedly, though, he stops short of fawning prose and even critiques a few of her notso-green decisions. His trademark humour is evident in this classic: “I was unable to get some of her (Gandhi’s) letters to her younger son Sanjay - his widow told me that ‘deemaks’ (termites) have eaten them away over the years.” This biography comes at an opportune time with India’s wildlife in dire straits, and an environment basket case. Gandhi’s stewardship is as endangered in the political arena today as the species she championed, and at no time in history has the need for it been so acute. One wishes, though, that Jairam Ramesh had also addressed the question of why his party - whether in power or in the opposition – has shed the environmental legacy of its most powerful, charismatic leader.