ENVIRONMENT
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COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
326, V Main, I Block
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Bangalore-560034
India
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D. M. Kalapesi
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LESLIE SAWHNY
PROGRAMME
OF
TRAINING
FOR DEMOCRACY
Number Eight
/-i 68
LESLIE SAWHNY PROGRAMME OF TRAINING
FOR DEMOCRACY
Pamphlet Series
Author
Title
No.
Liberalism
M. R. Masani
*2.
Gandhism
Sugata Dasgupta
3.
Socialism
4.
Communism
*5.
Leadership
*1.
Gen. K. M. Cariappa
6.
Effective Organisation ..
7.
Social Work
Kirtee Shah
*8.
Environment
D. M. Kalapesi
*9.
Democracy—Theory & Practice..
C. R. Irani
*10.
The Role of Mass Media
Mehra Masani
11.
The Role of Education ..
12.
Democracy & Development
S. S. Rangnekar
*13.
Trade Unions in a Democracy ..
V. B. Karnik
14.
India—An Introduction ..
Brig. J. P. Dalvi
15.
The Constitution—Fundamental
Rights ..
Soli Sorabjee
16.
Federalism—Theory & Practice ..
L. M. Singhvi
17.
The Minorities in India ..
V. V. John
*18.
Position of Women
Gauri Deshpande
19.
Youth for Change
Rahul Singh
*20.
Consumerism
M. C. Munshi
* Available at I
<~fX:
Re. 1 /- each.
COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
ENVIRONMENT
By
D. M. Kalapest
INTRODUCTION.
The environmental movement has been late in coming to
this country. Now that it is here, it finds most people unprepared.
They are still unfamiliar with its language, vague about its goals,
ignorant of the full sweep of its implications, and the radical changes
in outlook and attitudes it demands. In those countries where
this movement has made a real impact, it is as if a great gust of
wind has swung all signposts to point in opposite directions to
what they indicated earlier as the roads to progress, modernisation
and civilisation.
It is not surprising then that people should be so confused
in this country, and even the highly educated can barely give an
answer to such questions as: what is the environmental crisis or
what do we mean by a movement for environmental quality ? or
even, what is the environment ? There will be some attempt to
answer these questions in the study, that follows. So let us for
the moment consider the word, crisis, which is so often coupled
with the word, environment.
A crisis can mean a completely exploded situation, that is
beyond saving. It can also mean an extremely critical situation
where it is a matter of touch-and-go, so that any further deteriora
tion can tip the balance and make the end inevitable. However,
a crisis can also mean a turning point, if enough people recognise
the seriousness of a critical situation and sec it as a call to action.
But action, in order to be effective, presupposes knowledge—
precise enough knowledge—as to what thas happened and why;
what needs to be done and how to do it. We can still hope today
that the environmental crisis belongs to this‘'third category of
crises.
In this country, neither our formal nor informal education
prepares us for the tasks that await us, in answering the call to
2
action. Certainly not the hotchpotch of ‘subjects’ that is ladled
out in the name of education at our schools and universities, nor
the information given by our mass media and the books generally
in circulation in this country. We lack what is now considered
essential knowledge today, faced as we are with grave crises in our
own environments and the planetary crisis that grips the world
environment.
In western countries where people are more fully aware of
the nature of this crisis, they have reacted in a number of ways—not
all of them desirable—since panic and mass hysteria is among them.
Nonetheless a great deal of effective action is also in progress.
Here, in this country, there is still an unnatural calm, that signifies
ignorance and indifference. We could do with some rousing
alarms, and fears that stab us wide awake, because the environ
mental crisis is no less grave in this country.
Needless to say environmental problems differ from country
to country and even from place to place in the same country. Yet
there is a certain sameness to the general pattern of problems,
which is why we have a planetary crisis. There is much we can
learn from the problem-solving efforts now being made in other
countries and the citizen-action ideas being experimented with
notable success. In fact the environmental movement is a citizen
action movement par excellence, in countries of its origin. It was
not their governments that took the initiatives but their citizens.
It should be clear from the start that the environmental move
ment is a movement to improve peoples’ quality of life ; and to
express its refusal to accept lower standards of living at all levels
of society and sub-human standards, in the poor and neediest
sections of society.
CHAPTER I.
A Changing Earth
200 million years ago, so geologists say, this earth had one
great landmass which they call Pangaea or ‘all lands’, surrounded
by one, universal ocean, called Panthalassa, or ‘all seas’.
136 million years ago, the great landmass began to split in
two and Laurasia, which was the mass holding together the con
L*l OO
3
tinents of the northern hemisphere, began to drift apart from
Gondwana (or Gondwanaland), which has tvhat are mainly the
continents of the southern hemisphere. Next Gondwana split into
three fragments, of which the smallest was India. The other two
being Africa and South America, Australia and Antartica, still held
together. India can be considered something of a geological
freak, because having become detached from a position somewhere
mid-way in the southern landmass, it began drifting on a long
journey northwards.
65 million years ago, all the continents as we know them
had split and drifted apart—with the exception of Australia and
Antartica, which were the last to separate; and the oceans, as we
know them, had begun to form between the drifting continents.
India had already attached itself to Eurasia, having thrust up
the Himalayas with the force of the impact.
Geographers since the time of Francis Bacon, in the 17th
century, have seen the different continents as pieces in a gigantic
jig-saw puzzle, which if moved around, could be fitted together.
So marked are the correspondences in their contours, that this
could not be regarded as purely accidental.
Geologists, however, were left puzzling over the question
for a long time, right upto the latter half of this century, as to
how such colossal landmasses could move over the earth’s seeming
ly rigid crust which also included the ocean basins. The theory
of ‘continental drift’ formulated in the first quarter of this century
began to gain more general acceptance only very recently as we
gained more evidence to support it in the study of the similarity
of structures, fossil finds, and other characteristics that seemed to
verify the theory that once different continents were~attached. or
very near neighbours.
According to this theory, the earth’s crust is not all one con
tinuous cover, but fragmented. Geologists postulate 20 great
plates of the earth’s crust, which are like gigantic rafts, carrying
the continents and the ocean basins on their back. These move
over a hot semi-plastic layer that has formed as a cover for the
earth’s fiercely hot and molten core. There is no knowledge
yet as to what gives the impulse to such movement. It could be
the spin of the earth as it moves in its orbit.
The plates move, clash and grind together, causing earth
quakes, folds on the surface layers of which the biggest are our
mountain ranges, deep cracks and fissures. The plates are believed
4
to be anything from 30—100 miles in thickness, and thinnest at
the ocean floors, where the most numerous cracks appear and
the substance of the molten core comes welling out. The plates
also tilt and deepen ocean trenches or tilt and subduct (slide under
one another) and when portions of them break off and pierce the
semi-plastic layer, they melt swiftly and explode in volcanic
eruptions. It is the recurrent subduction of the African and
Eurasian plates that is believed to cause eruptions in the Medi
terranean region, through volcanic vents such as the Vesuvius,
Etna and Stromboli.
“If all this sounds like utter fantasy,” says S. W. Matthews,
“so it would have seemed to many geologists only ten years ago.”
A revolutionary change has occurred during the past decade, with
all the substantiating evidence found. As the famous US geophy
sicist, Leon Knopoff points out: “Textbooks arc being rewritten.
Teaching of geology is being totally revised.” And as the leading
Russian geologist, V. V. Beloussov remarks, scientific studies of
recent date not only show the tremendous advances but “the
great excitement that now pervades this field of study.” Most
people, however have remained ignorant of such changes. “It
is as if we have been walking the deck of a ship, eyes down to study
the deck, and have never looked up and around to see that the
ship itself was moving,” says Tuzo Wilson of Toronto University.
The advance in geological and geophysical sciences, new
methods of investigation, and a wide range of precision instruments
now available, serve to provide us today with much accurate in
formation on the geological changes still taking place. For
example, geologists report today that (he Alps arc being thrust
up higher, the Atlantic is widening, the Pacific narrowing and
the Mediterranean shrinking. A great rift is splitting Africa,
and another detaching California from the mainland, west of the
San Andreas Fault.
New islands are emerging, such as the
eight-year-old island of Surtsey in the North Atlantic—para
doxically Iceland is one of the ‘hot spots’ on earth—and some
older islands are sinking. Venice has sunk by 10 inches in the
past 50 years, and Bombay is also believed to be among the
sinking islands of the world.
Some changes along Bombay’s coastline, however, are not
of geological origin. Once Bombay was a (group of islands,
till the drive for ‘reclamation’ began and there is still more
senseless reclamation going on.
It must be remembered that
5
in die battle between the land and the sea, the land cannot win,
because water cannot be displaced. Extensions at some points
of this island have meant that the sea is encroaching deeper into
the coastline at other points, and (besides being a criminal waste
of public funds), this may entail graver risks than can be foreseen.
In the geological time-span of 4 billion years, man’s advent
to the scene is extremely recent, “later than yesterday”, as geolo
gists would say. But man is altering what took millions of years
to develop, “almost overnight” and blindly, without a thought
for consequences.
CHAPTER II
The Human Environment
If we ask, “What is man’s environment?” One answer
would be, the entire earth, or all of the habitable area on earth,
which is also described often as the “Living Earth.” But this
would indicate only his physical environment, which is only one
part of man’s total environment and that part which he shares
with all living beings. The human environment, properly so-called
is a much more complex totality. It is multidimensional, with
physical and non-physical aspects. This is why we attribute so
many kinds of environments to man: the social and economic,
political and ideological, moral and psychological, scientific and
technological, cultural and religious, and so forth. These are
all aspects of a complex totality, and no less real than his physical
environment because they constitute less tangible or intangible
realities.
The word itself, environment, simply means surroundings.
In the case of man, all the surrounding realities arc influenced
and altered by him and, in their turn, they arc powerfully in
fluential in affecting him, and his entire way of life. Man shapes
his environment, and afterward his environment shapes him: his
character, his manner of living, his future. The environment
also serves as a large mirror, too large to be concealed, reflecting
all that is good, bad and indifferent in the character of a people
and revealing not only what it is, but strives to be. We can look
at our environments to discover what kind of people we arc,
6
because it is a mirror that cannot lie.
If we try to sum up what is central to all man/environment
relationships, it can be done in two words—interdependence and
interaction—with man being the more active initiator of changes,
but changes that must in some way change him. Man and envi
ronment must change, more or less, together. If changes are for
the better, they improve his quality of life. If for the worse,
they degrade and demoralise him, oblige him to accept lower
standards of living and an inferior quality of life.
For a long time, man seems to have thought of his environ
ment only in terms of his immediate surroundings, and regarded
the rest of the planet as a remote, vast reality, almost totally un
related to him. Throughout the ages, man has tried to calculate
and conjure up some image of this planet : its shape, size and
properties, and always (till recently) in terms of something limitless
and with unlimited resources. Today, however, human eyes
have seen this planet ‘hung in space’, finite and vulnerable. The
current concept of Spaceship Earth illustrates the truth about
this planet as a fragile craft, of limited capacity, which carries our
human population through its narrow orbit in the vastness of
Space.
This planet has begun to prove increasingly confining to
man and its resources inadequate to supply his growing needs.
We are being constantly reminded today, that there is not room
enough on this planet for indefinite expansion. Serious doubts
are being expressed about there being enough food, fuel or anything
for a much larger human population than this planet already
carries: a population that continues to multiply at the rate of 2%
or 74 million people a year.
Such doubts and fears seem justified when we consider the
limits of the total habitable area on earth and the present state
of its natural resources.
Planet Earth measures 40,000 km. at the circumference and
13,000 km, diametrically, from pole to pole. But the main bulk
of it is inaccessible to man, and cannot support life. Only a thin
outer layer of this planet (proportionately as thin as the skin of an
apple) has life-supporting properties and this is known as the
biosphere or the sphere of life. It contains landmasses that rise
to their maximum height of 9 km only at the highest peak, the
Everest; oceans that reach their maximum depth of 11 km, at
the deepest point in the Pacific ; and an enveloping atmosphere
7
which is viable upto a distance of 24 km, if measured from “the
deepest point where life exists, to the highest point where it can,
without protection, be carried and survive in currents of air.”
Such, then are the limits within which growth is possible,
and they already include the inhospitable deserts of sand, ice
and snow, the frozen heights of mountains, the vast stretches of
arid and semi-arid land, and the great expanses of oceans. This
docs not give us a too ample man-to-land ratio.
As far as we know with any degree of certitude, this planet
is the only one hospitable to man. However far man travels—on
or off this planet—he has to travel in an earth environment.
Whether he is on a jet-plane, a spaceship of the Skylab, he has
to be carried in a strictly enclosed, miniature, earth environment:
with its air, water, food, and other supplies drawn from the earth’s
resources. The astronauts and cosmonauts who have been on
missions to explore space, have not succeeded in discovering (if
ever there was the intention) any alternative accommodation for
our human population in outer space. Since this planet is all
we have for our burgeoning human population, it is important
that we know how it is constituted and functions.
CHAPTER HI.
Life in the Biosphere
The biosphere is constituted of both living and non-living
matter, although the latter is organised for life-giving functions.
The main components of the biosphere are soil, air and water,
more accurately described as the lithosphere or the crust of rocks
covering the earth, and soils derived from it ; the atmosphere or the
layered mass of gases and particulate matter enveloping the
earth ; and the hydrosphere or all the water in the biosphere, in
liquid, solid and gaseous (vapour) form. These component spheres
have their cyclic rhythms of change which intersect, and within
their intersections, there is the biomass or an immense variety of
plant and animal life (including man), which is governed by the
biological cycle.
The biosphere is dynamic, and in a constant flux of change.
Scientists say that changes in the biosphere are mainly the result
8
of constant interaction between living and non-living matter and
of the two, it is living matter which is the more active and efficient
agent of changes. “The atoms of all chemical elements (non
living matter) have passed through living matter innumerable
times in the course of complex cycles. The appearance of the
planet has changed4and it may be considered that it is living matter
that has determined the composition of the atmosphere, sedimen
tary rocks, soil (the lithosphere) and to a great extent, the
hydrosphere.”
Living matter is distributed and dispersed over the earth
in groupings of plant and animal life known as biotic communities,
which vary in size and complexity. Smallest arc the most elemen
tary life-forms, such as the mosses and lichens found on the surface
of rocks ; others are larger and more complex, such as the living
communities of ponds and marshes which, among the more evolved
species, include insects, reptiles, fish, birds and mammals. The
largest and most complex biotic or living communities are those
which inhabit climax forests or grasslands and especially tropical
and subtropical forests and grasslands, and are known by a
more specific name as the biomes.
All existing species are survivors of changes in the biosphere
which resulted in the extinction of other species. For example,
the dinosaur roams die earth no more and neither docs the lystrosaurus, whose remains are found in Africa, Antartica and India
and have served to indicate that at some time in their geological
history, these lands were attached to one another. The surviving
species have all adopted specific environments as their habitats,
and adapted themselves to their climate, structure and other
characteristics. Some biotic communities arc land-based, others
aquatic and others have mixed land-and-aquatic environments.
Some species such as the bear, have adapted themselves to a greater
variety of environments, others are migratory, and like a number
of species of birds, have seasonal habitats.
A living community and its environment constitutes what
is known as an ecosystem, or a unified life-support system, where
in mutual dependence and support, and dependence on the non
living elements, a living community maintains the productivity
of its ecosystem and even ‘creates’ it. For example, soil is not
soil, till living organisms (the microflora and microfauna) have
worked on accumulations of fine grains of rock to create its
fertility and ability to become productive of vegetation. As an
9
environment is made more productive, the capacity of the ecosys
tems is enlarged not only to support a larger population but to
have a greater diversification of species.
Ecology is the science that studies the relationship between
living organisms and their environment, and some of the most
illuminating insights for ecologists have come from the discovery
of “who cats what.” Nature’s food chain is an intricate and
extensive device for the propagation and protection of the natural
environment. Some species seem to have mainly growth-pro
moting functions, others mainly those of preventing over
growth and thus protecting the environment, because when any
species increases to larger numbers than it should, it becomes
destructive, ‘ pest’ species.
Ecosystems change. They can develop from simple to more
complex ones through a natural process known as plant succession.
Land that was once barren can obtain a vegetation cover, passing
through different phases, beginning with a sparse cover of annual
weeds and grasses, then perennial weeds and grasses, till a climax
grassland is achieved. Where climate, fertility of soils and other
characteristics arc favourable, shrubs, bushes and trees can take
over from grasses and later, trees, till a climax forest is achieved.
Changes in the flora of a region have corresponding changes in
the fauna. The animal community is active throughout the
change processes and affected by them. During the transition
stages, when a grassland is giving way to a forest cover, some animal
species are gradually eliminated, those which must have a grass
land habitat and forest-dwellers take over and diversify. However
an animal community can prevent transitional changes and main
tain the existing biotic climax, as in the case of a grassland com
munity, by constant grazing, can prevent its territory from deve
loping into a woodland or forest. With food as their bait, the
different species perform other vital functions.
There are many loops to the food chain, and all of them start
with plant life. If we take grass as a unit of energy, then there
are species which graze on it, others that feed on its decay and
still others that feed on the feeders. Herbivores are the food of
the predators, and the scavengers that follow in their wake to
feed on the remnants of the kill. The latter constitute nature’s
waste-disposal squads.
There is no room for waste in nature’s finely balanced eco
nomy. Food that is in excess of the needs of one community is
10
passed on to another. For example the detritus or decaying grass
which is like a greenish soup in appearance, is carried from coastal
marshes to the ocean by receding tides as food for the plankton
and since plankton is the food of many marine species, ranging
from the mussel to the whale, this starts another loop of the food
chain. Besides all dead matter of plant and animal origin is
biodegradable or subject to decomposition through bacterial action
and species of bacteria known as the reducer , disintegrate organic
waste to reduce them to chemical compounds which arc easily
assimilated by soil, air and water. In this way all waste matter
is constantly being re-cycled for re-use.
Balance, harmony and diversity are characteristics of all
healthy ecosystems. The right ecological balances are maintained
where the inflow of energies and materials is matched by an out
flow that is used up. When ecosystems are in a state of growth.
energies and materials may accumulate, so that the inflow exceeds
the outflow but generally ecosystems are in a state of decline when
there is any imbalance between inflow and outflow. Lack of
sufficient food causes decline as also its excess. For examlpc the
presence of excess nutrients in a lake, encourages an overgrowth
of algae which are heavy consumers of water and eventually turn
a lake into a bog. There is harmony in a living community where
all members are busy performing their allotcd functions and diver
sification is essential, so that there are some species which restore
to the elements what others use up. Nature abhors monoculture
or the cultivation of only one species of crop or livestock because
this improverishes the environment. Man who indulges in mono
culture, has to resort to the use of artificial inputs such as chemical
fertilisers and pesticides.
Each species has a special position’ to maintain in an ecosys
tem. It has what is called its ecological niche or a living space within
which it finds adequate shelter, feeding and breeding ground and
performs its allotted functions. Biologists say that only one species
can occupy a particular ecological niche in a particular environ
ment, so that its role is irreplaceable. If it is destroyed or debili
tated, the whole ecosystem suffers. It may be the one species,
for example, that can fertilize certain species of plants in the living
community.
There is an ecological conundrum which illustrates this point:
“What is the connection between cats and clover ? ” Darwin
observed that that there was only one species of bee large enough
11
to fertilize the red clover, the humble-bee (bumble bee) but that
this bee was also the favourite food of fieldmice, so that if there
are not enough cats to feed on the fieldmicc, then there arc not
enough bees to fertilize the clover. Towards the end of the last
century, attempts to introduce the red clover in New Zealand
nearly failed because the first crops would not produce fertile seed,
till Darwin’s “humble” bees were remembered, and a large con
signment was imported from Britain.
CHAPTER IV
Growth Control
There is both death control and birth control in the natural
order, so that neither the populations of individual species nor the
total population of a living community exceeds the carrying
capacity of its environment. This carrying capacity is determined
by the productivity of an environment and its ability to provide
the survival needs of each species and the total population. The
number that constitutes the optimum growth limit for each species
is determined by the size of its individual members and the demands
they make on the environment. The larger the size of an in
dividual of any species, the lower is the population growth allowed
for it. The seeming overproduction of the smaller species is because
the ‘surplus’ constitutes the food of a number of other species who
keep its number down.
Besides the life cycles (or life-spans) of individual members,
there are larger cycles lasting over a much longer period of years
which bring an entire species to its peak population or steep falls
in its numbers. This rise and fall in the populations of the different
species occurs at different times, so that the total population of a
living community is kept within the carrying capacity of the envi
ronment.
The death control mechanism includes predators, parasites,
disease viruses which check the growth of the prey or host species.
The birth control mechanism includes fixed seasons of mating and
breeding, the tendency to stop breeding if there is not adequate
provision for survival in an environment such as lack of food and
living space, and if there are not enough members of the species
12
left for healthy breeding.
When one considers how well regulated a natural environ
ment can be, man seems to be altogether an odd thing out. He
is practically omnivorous, does not fit comfortably into any ecolo
gical niche, breeds at all times and regardless of unfavourable
conditions. Man needs other species for his survival needs but
no other species seems to need him. As the latest arrival to the
scene, he has been the most disruptive and destructive force in the
natural environment, which seemed to do much better without
him.
As far as the death control mechanism for the human species
is concerned, man can boast of victories in prevention and
cure of a number of diseases, lowered rates of infant mortality and
female mortality during childbirth, and generally longer lifespans. The death control mechanism today include mainly
wars and widespread violence, road accidents, the growing poison
spirals in food, air and water, and all the excesses that can be
summed up under the heading of the stress and strain of modern
life. Man seems to have no natural birth control mechanism
and whille he is still experimenting with his own devices, for the
most part, he continues to breed irresponsibly.
CHAPTER V.
Vital Linkages
One of the most profound ecological insights into the work
ings of nature is that “everything is related to everything else.”
The different natural ecosystems are in some way linked up, and
with unifying forces at work, constitute one ecosystem which is the
entire-life-support system of this planet. All living beings are
caught up in one “great web of life”, a vast and intricate network
through which materials and energies vitally necessary to life, are
constantly communicated. This is why any serious damage,
anywhere in an environment, has more or less grave consequences
everywhere. In the words of the poet:
“From Nature’s chain, whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain alike.”
13
Drought and Hoods which are recurrent scourges in this coun
try arc the result of severe damage to vital links in the chainswithin-chains of natural cycles of renewal. The causes of both
drought and floods add up to an overall condition that is the loss
of the land’s rainfall acceptability. This means that the land has
lost its ability to renew its stores of water during seasons of pre
cipitation, cannot maintain large enough reserves of water to tide
it over the dry season and if there is partial or total failure of seasonal
rains there is more intense drought.
We cannot as yet control
the weather to decide exactly when or how much rain we shall
have during seasons of precipitation. But we can decide how
much of the fall received will be retained by the land in surface
and underground storage. To fight water-famine conditions all
manner of losses should be reduced to the minimum whether they
are through evapotranspiration or evaporation from surface
collections of water and transpiration by trees and other plant
life, sometimes described as the ‘flyoff’; and through excessive
draining away of water from the land with a ‘runoff’ that empties
into the sea. The different types of vegetation cover of the land
serve as watersheds that break the fall and flow of water during
seasonal precipitation to permit shallow seepage of water into the
soil to be retained as soil moisture, deep seepage to reach under
ground storage and collection of water in surface storage as lakes,
ponds, wetlands (marshes and swamps) as well as streams and
rivers. Denudation of the land not only results is destruction of
watersheds but exposes the soil to drastic erosion by wind and
water. Erosion in turn is the cause of sedimentation — of heavy
deposits of silt at the bottom of lakes and reservoirs and in the
beds of streams and rivers, lowering their capacity for holding water
so that during seasonal rains their surrounding areas are rendered
flood-prone. The causes of recurrent drought and floods are
practically the same.
There is a connection also between our large cattle popula
tions and drought. Indiscriminate grazing not only strips the
land of vegetation but the hooves of millions of cattle trampling
the soil, cause dangerous soil compaction and waterlogging,
because soil that is pressed into a solid hardpan cannot absorb
moistures.
Faulty management of watersheds and creation of new
ones without following scientific reforestation and afforestation
methods also results in serious losses. One cannot plant any
14
kind of forest everywhere, and forests do not constitute efficient
watersheds in all regions. In the ‘humid islands’ or regions of
heavy rainfall and particularly where there is steep topography,
only dense enough forests can serve as watersheds. But in the
surrounding matrix, regions of moderate and low rainfall, grassand-bush vegetation is needed for efficient watersheds, and the
planting of forests, particularly with deep-rooted trees, or fast
growing trees such as the eucalyptus, which are heavy consumers
of water increases the aridity of the land.
One can stand under a forest canopy, covered by its great
foliage umbrella and not feel a drop of rain even during a heavy
downpour. Forests are responsible for three types of interception:
they keep out solar radiation, so that lower temperatures reduce
evaporation losses ; they break wind velocity, so the windspecd
in forests is rarely more than 1—2 miles per hour and moist vege
tation is not dried up ; but they also keep out rain. Showers of
upto 0.04 inches may be completely intercepted. As the amount
of rain per shower increases, the amount intercepted or kept out
decreases, because there is a heavier throughfall and stemflow,
that reaches the soil. Net interception losses in forests can vary,
according to the density of forests, from 5—25% of the total
annual rainfall. So forest watersheds must be so managed that
lower evaporation losses are offset by lower interception and
transpiration losses.
However forests alone can serve as watersheds to break the
stormflow down mountainsides. Because the forest cover has
been destroyed in parts of the Himalayan Ranges, unchecked
stormflows are rushing down the mountain slopes swelling streams
and rivers, bursting dams and barrages, and causing floods.
Because of the crodability of steep topography, there is also heavy
sedimentation. At a rough estimate, there would be at least 200
million cubic metres of soil eroded annually in steep topography
areas in this country. Sedimentation is usually signalised
by increasing frequency of floods caused by bank overflow of
rivers, great spillovers from lakes and reservoirs and waterlogging
of agricultural land. High sediment loads of flood waters (usually
high in salt content) frequently smothers crops and dispersed
particles in the sediment seal soil surfaces to cause waterlogging.
Blankets of sediment also cover lakes, reservoirs, rivers and open
wells increasing pollution hazards.
Once cool, moisture laden winds used to blow from the Terai
15
up the Himalayan valleys. The destruction of the once lush
and humid vegetation cover of the Terai, has resulted in warm,
dry, dustladen winds flowing up the valleys decreasing the snowfall
and starving the Himalayan glaciers. For centuries, the deep
and generous glacier cover of the Himalayas has fed the rivers of
the peninsula, including the Indus, Yamuna, Ganga and the
rivers of the Punjab. These glaciers have now been reduced
“to half their length and half their depth.”
Sherpa Tenzing is cited to have remarked to Brig. Gyan
Singh, as they stood watching the sunrise over Kanchenjunga:
“God made the mountains, but man destroyed the forest of Sandakphu.” Forests of pine, oak, and rhododenron have been
cleared to create ‘horticultural belts’ of maize and potato cul
tivation. Ridges of mountains have been denuded and erosion
in the agricultural areas has increased. Erosion is active every
where in this country. Vaster tracts of land have been rendered
arid and semi-arid, and in already arid zones, there are spread
ing deserts. This country now faces a threat of water famine
because of an almost total dependence on seasonal rains in
lands that have lost their rainfall acceptability. Drought and
floods in this country today, are man-made calamities.
Greater disruption and damage has occured in this country in
the past 25 years—“since independence”, as we say ! Wc have
impoverished the country by disregarding our dependence on
nature. Wc need ecological understanding and an ecological
conscience to save or salvage what we can from our general envi
ronmental wreckage.
CHAPTER V.
Man’s Impact on this Planet
Today man has acquired the power of making an ultimate
impact on this planet. The supralethal weapons of war found
in the arsenals of some nations have the power of ‘overkill’ or a
potential for destroying all life on earth. An all out nuclear war
would mean the total destruction of life and human property
A total war using biological and chemical weapons would
not be much less completely destructive. It would be a slower
16
process, destroy all life, but leave human property practically
intact. (If this can be considered an appreciable difference !)
Man is the only species that plots and plans his own destruction.
The ecological crisis is a crisis within a crisis that affects man’s
total environment, namely, the environmental crisis. The signs
of the latter arc found everywhere in the growing stockpiles of
human suffering and frustrations building up everywhere, ready
to explode: world wide unrest, violence and wanton destruction,
acute shortages of essentia] commodities and a host of day-to-day
uncertainties characterize the world today. One does not know
when undertaking air travel, if one will be liighjacked to some
other destination. There are higher rates of crime, juvenile de
linquency, broken homes, and suicides. But the ecological crisis
threatens the possibility of having an environment at all; all the
increasingly unbearable pressures on the world environment now
endanger the total viability of this planet.
Ironically enough, it is only after man has made vast tracts
of the earth barren and unproductive ; poisoned the waters of
lakes, rivers and oceans ; created high levels of pollution in the
atmosphere, that he has now begun to realise that there is such
a thing as a global unity of the environment.
Population Pressures. This is a century of unprecedented
growth and intolerable pressures because with population ex
plosions on one hand, we have seriously diminishing resources
on the other.
Even a cursory glance at previous and present growth rates,
reveals an alarming acceleration. According to a rough estimate,
we started out at the beginning of this era, the 1st century, A.D.,
with a world population of a quarter of a billion. It took 17
centuries for the world population to reach the 1 billion mark,
around 1830. Then in one century, 1830-1930, the world popu
lation doubled to 2 billion. In only three decades after this, in
1960, it was 3.1 billion and in the following decade, by mid-1971,
well past the 3| billion mark. Early in the next, by 1980, we
expect a world population of 4 billion.
Such dramatic increases are still more alarming when one
considers the fact that it is in our so-called Third World (the poverty
belt) with two-thirds of the world population, that on an average,
populations double every 18 years, while the world population as
a whole, doubles every 23 years. It is the few advanced and
affluent nations of the world that are nearing ZPG (Zero Popu
17
lation Growth). B. Pfizer, speaking of the USA, remarks : “The
nation’s birth rate has dropped below zero-growth level. That
means our population will decrease enough, so that 20 years from
now you’ll be able to get a seat on the bus 1”
However population pressures cannot be gauged according
to the weight of numbers alone. Two equally important factors
must also be taken into account : rate of consumption, and urban/
industrial expansion. The few affluent and technologically ad
vanced nations arc pre-eminently consumer societies, with extre
mely high rates of urbanisation and industrialisation and for
these reasons can be considered the most densely populated
countries of the world, because of the pressures on their own and
the world environment for which they are responsible.
The USA, with about 6% of the world population, consumes
33% or one-third of the world’s fuel resources. “It is estimated
that a child born in the USA, during its lifetime, consumes 20
times as much as a child born in India and contributes 50 times as
much pollution of the environment.” The other affluent nations
are not very far behind. Urban and industrial growth go hand-inhand. Urban expansion began with the Industrial Revolution.
In 1800, there were only 50 cities in the world with popu
lations of over 100,000. Today there are nearly a thousand such
‘medium-sized’ cities and a new phenomenon has appeared on the
world scene — the megalopolis or metropolitan cities which
count their populations in millions. To name only a few with the
highest concentrations of population, Shanghai leads the way with
10,820,000 ; followed by Tokyo, with 8,410,000 ; Calcutta,
8,000,000 ; New York, 7,895,000 ; Peking, 7,57 ,000 ; Bombay,
7,000,000. Such great, sprawling human settlements have en
vironmental problems that defy description. But it has been
forecast that if there is an absolute environmental disaster, it will
be in one of the Third World cities where people are able to react
only very marginally and the new pollution-control technology
is barely employed.
If we try to break down the world population according to
regions, Asia is the most heavily burdened continent with a total
population of about 2,104 million or 56.7% of the world total,
and separated by a wide gap from the second largest population,
that of Europe, which is 466 million (12.6%). In both cases,
iminus the USSR. The other regions, in descending order, are as
(follows : Africa, 345 million (9.5%) ; North America, 327
18
million (8.8%) ; the USSR, 245 million (6.6%) ; South America,
195 million (5.3%) and Oceania, 19.7 million (0.5%).
Apart from the tiny states like Malta and Macau which are
100% urban, the highest rates of urbanisation arc found in Belgium,
86.8%; Australia, 85.5%; Sweden, 81.4% Israel, 81.2%;
Uruguay, 80.8%; Canada, 73.6% and the USA, 73.5%.
One can think in terms of ample man-to-land ratios even in
the least populated regions of the world only in terms of en
croaching on land with a natural vegetation cover which needs
to be conserved. Few nations have worked to reclaim arid and
semi-arid lands successfully or like Israel, made the desert bloom
again.
Depletion Of Resources. This is a finite planet, with
limits to all its resources. The resource system can be divided
into—the renewable and non-renewable.
The non-renewable resources are those found in fixed quanti
ties which once exhausted cannot be replenished : such as metals,
non-metallic minerals and fossil fuels. They are in such great
demand in our modem technological societies, that there are acute
shortages already (some artificially created ones), so that plans are
in progress to shift mining operations to the still practically un
touched ocean floor, whatever the risks and phenomenal costs of
such operations. Nations that still have Oil are in a powerful
‘economico-political’ bargaining position, in the arena of world
affairs.
The renewable resources constitute a category of vitallynecessary-to-life resources, namely soil, air and water. These are
only potentially renewable (which is why we said, ‘renewable’ was
a flexible term), depending on the proper functioning of their self
renewing cycles. If this planet is kept in good functioning order,
the natural resources of this category could be indefinitely renewable.
The biomass which plays such a pivotal role in maintaining their
‘renewability’ is itself a resource that falls between the two cate
gories. It remains renewable, if its survival needs are satisfied ;
but it is non-renewable in the sense that once any of the species
has become extinct, it cannot be recreated.
There may be more than enough soil, air and water to
support a larger world population, if the populations of different
regions are well distributed. But heavy concentrations of popula
tions, coupled with grave abuses of all natural resources, has already
created unnatural shortages. And since these are man-made
19
problems, only man can solve them. We said earlier that man
fits into no natural ecological niche. But as the species with the
largest brains and capacity for understanding, he can do Tor the
environment what no other species can.
There is also a great deal of malfunctioning in the natural
order—without man’s intervention—such as earthquakes, other
geological changes, catastrophes such as tidal waves, hurricanes,
typhoons, which disrupt natural cycles and cause vast havoc.
Man alone can predict them and counteract or remedy some
of their effects. Generally man alone can be a world ecosystem
manager, enabling all other species, through the conservation of
their natural environment, to promote the health and productivity
of the earth’s resources, under circumstances prevailing today,
where so much of the natural environment has been forced to
recede before the advance of man-made environments, so that
relatively little of it remains anywhere in the world.
Soil. At present only 10% of the total land surface of the
earth of 136 million square miles, is under cultivation. This
area is rapidly shrinking, not only because more and more of it is
bound up with steel and concrete for urban and industrial ex
pansion, but because of cropped out soils in many regions. Deeper
incursions being made into the 25% of the total land surface that
is still under a natural vegetation cover, our precious wetlands
and watersheds. In India, for example, “25 hectares of forested
and marginal lands were brought under the plough during the
last decade” and approximately, “an area of 800 square kilometres
was turned into sand deserts by travelling dunes.”
Intensive agriculture, monoculture and the wrong kinds of
crop rotations, as well as malpractice still common in this country,
shifting agriculture, has dangerously impoverished soils. Excessive
or unskilful use of agricultural inputs, both chemical pesticides
as well as chemical fertilizers have poisoned soils and destroyed
soil structures. Pest populations arc growing and crop diseases
arc spreading, because ecological balances have been upset.
Excessive and unskilful use of farm machinery and overgrazing
have caused dangerous soil compaction and waterlogging.
The so-called scientific techniques of modern agriculture
have failed to create healthy and productive agroecosystems.
We do not have enough knowledge yet to know just how much
artificial manipulation different soils can stand and practically
no knowledge yet as to how that vital clement in the soil, humus,
20
on which both the fertility and moisture absorbing capacity of the
soil depends, is constituted and can be artificially induced.
Land pollution is an enormous problem. Land is littered
with garbage and fouled with liquid wastes. In some countries
non-geological hills—hills of garbage-—are rising. The very
methods of waste disposal sometimes employed such as incinera
tion, are themselves sources of further pollution of the environment.
All growth , is at the expense of the environment, as mentioned
carlier, because there is industrial pollution, agricultural pollution,
domestic pollution, and pollution from insanitary and inadequate
water and sewage carriage systems.
There are optimists who declare that we have enough scientific
and technological knowhow to be able to support a much larger
world population. But the immediate fact is that more than twothirds of the present population is ill-fed, ill-sheltered, under
clothed and lacks some of the basic necessities of life.
“All the talk about our scientific and technological knowhow,
is a big and empty boast,” says William Bowen, “if possibilities
are assessed in realistic terms, that is to say, just how much of this
knowhow will be translated generally into practical action.”
Even if we multiply our skyscrapers and raise them higher ;
double-deck not only our highways and railroads, but entire
cities ; launch floating ‘townships’ on the ocean ; there will not
be enough elbow room on this planet in a not-so-distant future
on this crowded planet.
Air. Seemingly there is plenty of air, yet this cannot be
regarded any more as a “free good.” If we cannot be made to
pay for using air, as we do for water, we shall soon be paying (if
we are not already paying) for polluting air and making it less
usable. Air, unlike water, cannot be recaptured and put through
purification processes. Air pollution, like land pollution, has
many sources: industrial, domestic, agricultural and insanitary
municipal services and in addition, there are incinerator plants,
thermal and nuclear energy plants, and our present systems of
transport, along with the craze for ‘speed travel’ to be thrown in
for good measure.
Chemical industries release large quantities of sulphuric and
hydrochloric acids, sulphur and nitrogen oxides, among other
noxious gases into the atmosphere. The metallurgical industries
emit large loads of lead, arsenic, zinc, copper, cadmium, among
other pollutants. Inferior qualities of fuels in domestic use in
21
crease pollution hazards. Cars and other motor vehicles arc the
greatest single source of air pollution and in the larger cities, they
can pump into the air annually a load of 75,000,000 tons of toxic
wastes including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, lead fumes.
Not only the number of vehicles but the fact that in countries like
ours they arc badly constructed, kept in poor repair and badly
driven (frequent breaking and acceleration increases exhaust
outputs) increases their pollution potential.
Air that is heavily laden with pollutants cannot be cleansed
by natural processes. Pollution debilitates or destroys one of the
chief natural agents of purification, namely, plant life. One
might add at this point that in so many countries, woodland and
forest belts are conserved near a city as in Paris, Brussels, or
created as in Amsterdam, to serve as the ‘lungs’ of the city,
purifying its air.
Air that is heated rises from the ground, cools as it rises, and
is arrested at a point where its temperature is the same as the
layer of air immediately above it. This marks its mixing-depth
and the limits of our usable air-space. For us the atmosphere is
not limitless, since 95% of the usable air is contained within the
lower reaches of the atmosphere (the stratosphere) upto a maximum
height of 12 miles, and only a fraction of this, about the first mile,
is available for constant use. As levels of pollution increase, the
mixing-depth decreases, and the usable air-space is drastically
reduced.
This is why people in heavily congested urban/industrial
^complexes are breathing practically the same fouled air all the
ttime. Autopsies conducted in Britain on road accident victims
lhave revealed that lungs of people from remote countryside areas
sstill have a healthy pinkish tinge, while those from industrial
cities have lungs of an ugly greyish colour.
Air pollution has been defined as “the addition to the environrment at a rate faster than it can accomodate it, of a substance
o»r energy (heat, sound or noise, radioactivity, etc.) that is potentiially harmful to life.” This is an inadequate and misleading
dlcfinition. For one thing, “potentially harmful” cannot be taken
to mean that no actual harm is done but only that all the effects
imay not be immediately visible or easily traceable to their actual
sources. For example, industrial pollution has been known to
cause crop failures and plant defoliation at a distance of 300 miles
frcom the source of pollution.
’ -polhiti
like waterborne
AGS
* ANO
_.,KAENTA-nON
)
22
pollution, can travel fast and far. It is the known cause of the
most serious health hazards such as chronic, lung and cerebro
vascular diseases, a larger number of diseases still difficult to diag
nose, and others that may continue being dismissed as nameless
‘aches and pains.’
Noise pollution has serious pathological effects that are almost
totally ignored in countries like ours, i.e. serious physical and mental
effects. It can be the direct cause, as in the case of higher
incidence of deafness, or an indirect but gravely aggravating cause,
as in the case of nervous tensions that precipitate mental diseases.
According to a World Health Organisation estimate: “Industrial
noise alone costs the USA more than 84 billion annually, in
accidents, absenteeism, inefficiency and compensation claims.”
But, as J. M. Mechlin points out, this leaves out of account “all
the human costs in sleepless nights, family squabbles and mental
illness (which) are beyond measure, but must surely be enormous.”
Experiments conducted on laboratory animals as well as
on school children have revealed that both were excessively restless
and unruly, with a marked tendency toward violence, during
pollution peak periods: when noise pollution was at a peak and/or
there were increases of toxic pollutants in the air they breathed.
It is being said today, that if no other death-control mechanism
works in our world today, the stresses and strains of urban life in
our noisy and congested cities will continue to take increasingly
heavy tolls of human life.
Air pollution is also a great source of damage to human pro
perty. It causes metals to corrode, fabrics to decay, defaces with
filth the facade of buildings and causes their structures to weaken.
Plant and animal life are known to be more sensitive than human
to dangerous levels of air pollution. This is why miners in the
old days used to send in their pct canaries to test the air of new
shafts and if the birds did not return this was a danger signal to
indicate the presence of deadly gases. The residents of the Chembur area in Bombay now know that withering plants indicate
dangerous levels of air pollution.
The effects of air pollution on climate, still remains a con
troversial question. No one denies the connection between pollu
tion and unpredictable climatic changes but there is difference of
opinion about attributing effects to pollution as the sole cause.
There is more than enough evidence to prove that excessive
amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes serious ‘per
23
turbations’ and violent storms. Ample evidence is there to show
that it is air pollution that causes frequent smogs and also the
persistent ‘smaze’ (smoke and haze) that hangs over the larger
urban/industrial complexes.
While we are on the subject of different types of pollution,
perhaps, a small mention should be made of what is known as
‘visual pollution’. Ugly, filthy, or dismally monotonous surround
ings have their depressive effects, that can prove demoralizing.
Environments with no touch of natural or man-made beauty
dehumanise man, make him lose self-respect and respect for
others, because of the lack of any uplifting influence that makes
him question values, and why he should submit to sub-human
conditions. As a political detainee wrote from Robben Island:
“Looking out from the prison bars, the sight of a small tree, a
passing bird, encouraged me to believe in human freedom as the
basis of human dignity.” People do not realise what kind of
prisons for their spirit they create in their_deteriorating environ
ments. As said earlier, an environment reflects what a people
is and tries to be, the values that it upholds, the things and con
ditions that matter most to it in life.
Water. This is actually our most abused resource. The
waterways of the world are now carrying mounting loads of wastes
impossible to ‘digest’ or reduce by bacterial action. Some of the
wastes arc non-biodcgradable, such as synthetic fibres, plastics
and chemical detergents. Energies such as heat and radio
activity arc also non-disposable. Waters nearly everywhere in
the world, are fouled with sewage, poisoned with dangerous che
micals, streaked with oil, ; blanketed with dust and sediment, and
foaming with detergents.
Pollution has caused the degeneration of destruction of entire
aquatic ecosystems. There arc lakes in different parts of the
world which have been pronounced dead or dying, and rivers
which are no more fit for any use other than navigation and power
generation. Polluted seas have fouled the shores and beaches of
several countries. There is a higher incidence of waterborne
diseases everywhere. Since pollution has reduced surface supplies
of water by rendering them unfit for use, there has been over
mining of groundwater—more tube wells for drinking water,
especially—and water-tables in some areas have been dangerously
lowered. In coastal areas, the lowering of water-tables or levels
of underground supply, has resulted in another form of pollution,
24
the seepage of sea water into fresh water aquifers.
“One of the alarming aspects of environmental pollution,”
says Rene Dubos, “is that despite the new powers of science or
rather because of them, man is losing all control over his environ
ment. He introduces new forces at such a rapid pace and on
such a wide scale that the effects are upon him before he has time
to evaluate their consequences and can afford to change his course.”
Once industries have been established by a lake or river and the
local economy has become geared to them, it is too late to do
anything about industrial pollution without grave economic losses.
All planning for development must be based on ecological investi
gation, so that effective environmental safeguards arc observed.
Pollution means that the poison spirals are rising rapidly in the
food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe.
CHAPTER VI.
The Challenge of the Future
The prime challenge today is to maintain a perspective of
hope. Hope against hope, even in the more desperate situations
where one’s environmental problems seem beyond solution, so
that one finds courage to do what can be done. “Ecologists,”
says Frank Fraser Darling, “cannot afford to be optimists. But
an absolute pessimist is a defeatist, and that is no good cither.
We see that there need not be complete disaster and if our eyes
are open wide enough, world wide, we could do much toward
rehabilitation.
Here, in India, we need to open our eyes at least nationwide
to see that our still too generally prevalent policies of a free-for-all,
laissez faire, is something we cannot afford. We cannot afford
either that our ‘retarded development’ should mean that we are
simply slow in making the same mistakes as the technologically
advanced countries. Mistakes that they themselves bitterly
regret and find prohibitively costly to remedy.
The prediction on a global scale that there is not likely to be
enough food, fuel or anything for a much larger world population,
is of particular significance for us, as the nation with the second
largest population in the world. But other nations with more
25
recent population explosions, with but a fraction of our popula
tion, and much higher standards of living, have heeded the warn
ing we continue to ignore. We seem to have grown too accustomed
to living with an over-large population, despite the fact that the
bulk of it lives at subsistence level and under.
When there is no hunger, there is always widspread under
nourishment and malnutrition, (Hidden Hunger) that is the cause
of lowered resistance to disease, lack of physical energy, physical
deformities and mental retardedness. In times of crises, the
poor and underprivileged sections of society arc the first and worst
victims.
In no country whether rich or poor, advanced or retarded,
is the heavy, outdated governmental machinery equipped to
face the challenges of today. The best of governments are
now capable only of slow and cumbersome rmovement and
need to be pushed, if they are to be got moving at all in the right
direction. At the same time, no people that has at least some
semblance of democratic institutions, is as powerless as it thinks
or as helpless as it feels. There are always legitimate channels
of exercising public influence and public pressures. It is the
business of citizens to know how their governmental institutions
are constituted and function, and make them function as they
should.
The environmental movement itself illustrates what citizens
can do. If we study the brief history of this movement, we find
that it began as and has remained a ‘popular’ movement, initiated
and sustained by the efforts of ordinary citizens under the leader
ship of few from among their own ranks who were able to accept
the moral, intellectual and organisational challenges. Nowhere,
did the first initiatives come from governments. And even later,
the best initiatives have come because governments were pressured
into taking action. This movement has shown what is true
generally, that there is no alternative today to citizen action,
and hope for the future lies in the citizens accepting this
challenge.
In other countries where the environmental movement has
made a real impact, citizen action has used a double-pronged
strategy : parliamentary and extra-parliamentary pressures and
succeeded in bring a number of their environmental problems
“off the street, into legislation.” However in these countries,
the movement has also had a marked urban bias, which they can
26
afford, being pre-eminently urban societies. In this country the
same kind of bias is dangerous, for one thing, most of our people
still live and work in rural areas in the stagnation of no-change ;
and for another, pressures cannot be lifted off our cities which
have their cause and origin in rural areas. How do we go about
‘slum clearance’, for example, when there is a steady influx of
people coming in from the villages to swell the ranks of the
unemployed and underemployed, and in the process, convert one
city after another into a vast slum ? Even building a Twin City
as in Bombay will not solve that problem, because the only solution
is more bearable conditions of life and work and employment
for rural people in their villages.
There is a dawning realisation among younger people in the
country today that this is what needs to be done, not-only because
its a remote but efficacious means of slum clearance in the cities
but necessary in itself. There are some young professionals who
arc leaving the comforts of a city and more lucrative jobs to live
and work in the rural areas. There are teams of students study
ing abroad to prepare themselves to work or rural development,
and professionals from this country working abroad who make
regular contributions from their salaries to support them. These
may be extremely few and scattered instances, and’nowhere pro
portionate to the need, but they are indicative of a new spirit and
a heartening sign, that perhaps the winds of change are beginning
to blow more freely in this country.
CHAPTER VII.
Citizen Action
There are active groups of citizens in this country, but they
are scattered and each busy doing their own thing. Anything
from ‘befriending’ birds and trees, to social service. There seems
to be no overall picture in their minds of the crisis in our total
environment, and no attempt to co-ordinate their activities for
concerted action. Meanwhile the greater majority of people
show no active interest and concern or if they have interests and
concerns, are wary of joining any organisation for two valid reasons,
at least : (I) either they cannot work up enough enthusiasm for
27
the kind of thing an organisation is pushing as a great cause ; or
they have been alerted to the fact that its leadership is incompetent
and not entirely trustworthy. Signs of organisational infighting can
rarely be kept an entirely private matter, so that people are
disillusioned and turned away. People with genuine interests
and concerns are looking for the right kind and quality of leader
ship.
There is an imperative need of a single group to co-ordinate the
activities of all citizen action groups according to a combined
strategy of action, so that there is no duplication of efforts, senseless
rivalry and dispersal of funds and resources while, at the same time,
important aspects of a totality of problems is overlooked. Citizen
action cannot make a real headway unless “the moral, economic
and political bottlenecks arc broken.” The moral bottleneck is the
most difficult to break because it means arousing an ignorant and
apathetic citizenry from inaction to active concerns and efforts
even at some personal cost. The economic bottleneck although less
difficult to break requires constant vigilance and investigation to
discover and publicly expose all the ways in which public autho
rities waste and misuse public funds. In no country, however
affluent, are public funds adequate to meet a great multiplicity of
public needs yet if existing funds were invested productively and
according to a strict order of priorities, a larger number of needs
could be met and many more problems solved. The poorer a
society the more necessary it is that public funds should be used
productively, to meet the most urgent needs of the largest number.
The political bottleneck, incredible though it might seem, is the
least difficult to break. On the one hand citizens must carefully
distinguish the problems they themselves can solve and those which
only governments can solve at all levels — local, regional, state,
interestate — and no citizen action group can succeed without a
political action programme. However, politicians almost by
definition arc opportunists, and in a number of countries where
political candidates are now being judged by citizens on their
‘environmental viability’ or record of performance on environ
mental issues, politicians are frantically busy jumping on to the
environmental bandwagon especially as their platform during
election time. But there will be discrepancies between promises
made during elections and performance afterwards unless in every
constituency there is a citizens committee that keeps a close watch
on their local MPs and MLAs and holds them answerable for all
28
they do or fail to do and to see that these representatives defend
and promote their interests in and out of parliament. Parlia
mentary' pressures are usually slow in bringing results unless backed
by extra-parliamentary pressures, such a public protests, represen
tations to political leaders with a clear statement of demands and
a constant barrage of criticism through the mass media. It
must be remembered that no political party, not even the govern
ment as the political party (or parties) in power can afford to
continue ignoring public opinion and denying public demands
without grave risk to its political future.
Professional Citizens. A citizen action group that has many
hard-won victories to its credit, including six new items of legisla
tion, is the Public Interest Research Group, led by Ralph Nader.
In a country (the U.S.A.) where there is a great proliferation of
citizen action groups, this group enjoys the well-merited distinc
tion of having captured the public imagination to an extent that
no other group has done, and having given people the feeling
that even as average, ordinary citizens, there is much they can do
if they go about it the right way. This group has six new items
of legislation to its credit.
The Public Interest Research Group consists of teams of lawyers
whose business it is to work on a thorough scrutiny of existing
legislation and its enforcement, on a wide range of issues, as varied
as property tax laws, road-safety regulations quality standards
for consumer goods, and ‘corruption in high places.’ Auxiliary
forces help the research group. There arc student volunteers,
for example, with one group counting 200 regulars, who are now
famed as “Nader’s Raiders”. Their particular job is to conduct
fact-finding missions and exercise vigilance to detect new deve
lopments, favourable and unfavourable. ‘Nader and Co.’ has
become a power to contend with in the land ; it makes its influence
felt at all levels of authority' and corporate potver, in and out of
government.
To arouse people to active concerns, according to Mr. Nader,
there is “no need to peddle ideology, but to talk facts . . . No
need to dismantle the institutions of society, but to make them
work
and, as he adds, “one does not need to agitate but to
operate ; not to orate, but to dig in and discover what can be
done.”
According to this philosophy, citizenship has three kinds of
obligations according to whether they can serve as (1) citizens-
29
on-the-job, (2) part-time citizens or (3) professional citizens. The
main drive in every case being to check “corporate institutional
power and its misuse.”
Citizen-on-the-Job. 1'his category of citizens arc also vatiously described as the ‘whistle-blowers’, who alert the group. They
have clearly decided the ‘ethical issue of allegiance’ where there
is conflict of loyalties. They are citizens first, with an obligation
to defend the interests of their community and society ; an obliga
tion that they will not surrender, in order to submit to the loyalty
expected of them and claimed of them as employees, by the institu
tions for which they work. When they see what only insiders
can see, they blow the whistle. Reports of abuses and malpractices
from these helpers, has enabled the group to take different institu
tions to task for all manner of offences such as “the pollution of a
river, the manufacture and sale of unsafe goods, the hustling of
frauds, and bribing their way into bending laws to conduct illicit
operations.”
Part-Time Citizen. This category covers a great variety of
people who see problems and are deeply concerned but lack the
skills and/or time to dedicate efforts to problem-solving tasks,
so they support the group —■ financially and otherwise — that is
willing and able to act on their behalf; follow its directives in doing
what they can in their own situations and for the rest arc available
when needed. Like other categories of auxiliary forces ( Raiders
and Whistle Blowers) they look to the Professionals for effective
leadership.
Professional Citizens. This is the key group of full-timers,
who dedicate all their time and skills to tasks of promoting and de
fending public interests. As far as possible, they are supported by
the community to which they belong. Problems today are Loo vast
and complex to be solved by amateurish efforts. Professional
expertize is urgently needed: skills of research, formulation of a
well-defined strategy, and directing operations. “Citizen action,”
says Ralph Nadar, “is about as developed today as physics was in
Archimedes’ time, because we haven’t full-time talent on it.”
The close and constant collaboration of all categories of
helpers, has enabled the Public Interest Research Group to draw
up astound ingly accurate reports and ‘position papers’ on the wide
range of issues it has tackled which, in their totality, constitute a
political programme that neither of the political parties in the
country has been known to issue in defence of citizen’s rights.
30
Citizen Council. Action groups have organised themselves
in different localities of a city and suburb, in a number of western
countries, to improve and enhance the quality of their local environ
ment. Residents of a locality elect a council to direct community
enterprises. They plan action on the basis of a thorough study
of the problems of their area or locality ; and mark out specific
environmental abuses and insults, for attack. Great cleaningup programmes are organised to oblige all local residents to keep
their houses and environs clean ; oblige property owners to see to
proper maintenance and repair ; and municipal authorities to
see to regular garbage collection, road repair and cleaning. The
success of their local enterprises has given some of these groups
such prestige that they have been able to obtain grants and loans
from public funds to improve and extend local facilities, since
public authorities are assured that their funds will be used pro
ductively.
Both persuasion and compulsion tactics are used. Where
persuasion fails, compulsion tactics are employed ; imposing suit
able penalties for specific abuses ; and, where necessary, taking
legal action against those guilty of grave and persistent offences.
Efficiently organised groups have created active communities
which take pride in their environment and in all they have
achieved through their own efforts to improve its quality. Vacant
lots which were once garbage dumps, have been turned into small
public gardens and safe playgrounds for children. Run-down
property has been converted into community recreation centres
and open markets, where vendors are allowed to set-up stalls for
certain hours of the day, and then clear up and clean the place
before they leave. Action has been taken against traffic noise
and the noise of radios, stereos and TV played full volume, all
day and late into the night. Proprietors of shops and eating
places have been obliged to observe quality standards and vendors
of unclean and adulterated food and drink prohibited entry in the
locality. Such groups have discovered that anti-social habits
that once had to be penalised, become, with time, the not-donethings ; and new habits are formed among the local citizenry.
It is one of the greatest contradictions of our age that in
creasingly larger numbers of people live in closer proximity —
packed into row upon row of concrete boxes — but live as total
strangers. There are neighbourhoods without neighbourliness.
Some signs of a healthy reaction against this tendency are visible
31
in other countries, which we would do well to imitate, according
to circumstances in our own local situations. There are some
residential areas in Scotland, for example, where people have come
together to live a shared life as a close-knit community. Younger
members of the community take on all the more strenuous tasks
of organisation, but each age-group contributes what it can to the
welfare of the community.
Teams of teenagers help the aged and needy. They repaint
and repaper homes, do rounds of window-cleaning, house-clean
ing, gardening and other chores, purely as a neighbourly service
or also to earn some pocket money. Elderly people organise
day-care centres for children of working mothers and offer their
services to couples with young families as ‘baby-sitters,’ to allow
them some freedom to enjoy social life. Professionals offer their
services to solve community problems, and there is help for all in
their times of need. Such an environment is truly a human en
vironment.
CHAPTER VII.
A Strategy of Change
Problem-solving tasks must serve to overcome subjective and
objective difficulties. Objective difficulties will always loom large
in a country so vast and poor as ours, because of our paucity of
resources. However, it is often the subjective difficulties such as
ignorance and apathy, lack of any civic or social sense, a gross
selfishness and unconcern face-to-face with the sufferings of others,
which pose even greater obstacles and prevent us from coming to
grips with objective difficulties.
One of the most overworked phrases in environmental circles
is the one voiced by Walt Kelly’s famous Pogo : “We have met
the enemy and he is us.” It is easier both to identify and fight
an outside enemy. But when there are enemies within our own
ranks, it is infinitely more difficult. This is why the main task of
citizen action is the formidable one of trying to change the out
look and attitudes of fellow-citizens and to fight citizen irresponsi
bility. If we are realistic, we must see that self-interest is the most
powerful motive force in our society today. Therefore it must be
(First Floor
32
made the most powerful ally, as an enlightened self-interest.
Change does not come without preparation. Our people
must har e some preparation of mind and heart, understand what
will serve their best interests, realise that they can achieve much
by their own efforts, before they will be ready and willing to accept
civic and soeial responsibilities. This is why the first of first steps
in a change-initiating process is to form and inform public opinion,
in order to gain public understanding and support.
Opinion-forming process presuppose (o) the establishment of
a system of communications that casts wide the net, so as not to
exclude (as far as possible) any section or segment of society
(Z>) the ability to give a relevant message that will strike home;
in the case of all the elements of society ; (c) an efficient feed-back
system to keep a check on what progress is made and to discover
causes of failure in order to remedy them ; (if) and at least a
minimal consensus of public opinion as the basis of launching
action.
Tiro channels of communication that offer the widest pos
sible outreach arc: (1) the Mass Media — the interest and
support of the press, radio and television, should be enlisted
as early as possible and the best possible use made of the
time and space they offer to diffuse information, to build up as
complete a picture of problems as investigation permits, and to
stimulate public discussion and debate by focussing attention on
problems ; (2) the Opinion-leaders of different sections of society,
who must be discovered and convinced of the necessity of action.
They will know their followings, and how to communicate the
same convictions to them.
Demonstration is also an essential and most persuasive means of
communication. If, for example, certain localities (a few, and
as diverse as possible) can be selected to start demonstration experi
ments in the organisation and operation of citizen councils, the
success of such experiments could prove generally infectious, and
bring more people to a willingness to attempt similar efforts to
solve their environmental problems. Here, too, the mass media
could help by giving publicity to the experiments. Citizen action
at local, grassroots level, should be pre-eminently a community
building enterprise., and show how much people can do, even in
the poorest of communities, if they are well directed and work
together.
Periodic Campaigns arc still another means of communication
33
with large sections of the public. Suitable occasions should be
sought or created to proclaim campaigns, with the approval of
local leaders and where necessary, public authorities, when
campaign forces operate in one locality after another, pointing
out specific environmental abuses, explaining their effects, and
showing people what must be done to counteract them. For the
duration of the campaign, all other channels of communication
should also be used to focus attention on it.
Public Forum events should be organised through the news
media, with a panel of experts going into operation, to stimulate
discussion on specific issues ; or through mass meetings, where the
panel serves as a brains-trust, to conduct question and answer
sessions, and seminars for more select and smaller groups of experts
and laymen.
Programmes for Educational Institutions arc also extremely im
portant. Children and youth arc the section most easily avail
able for formal education, for the rest informal means have to be
used. It should be one of the objectives of citizen action to have
a team of qualified teachers who do the rounds of educational
institutions to conduction special classes in environmental studies,
arouse the young to action in the way organising their own cam
paigns and even to educate their parents and elders. If the teams
of teachers arc young themselves, equipped with good teaching
material (audio-visual material such as films, slides and printed
matter) and conduct practical application sessions for students,
they could fire the imagination of the young.
Research and Action. The two must go hand-in-hand. To
form public opinion and keep it well-informed, there must be a
thorough investigation, fact-finding missions for data-collection, a
general survey of the problems in the area and their interrelated
ness, and then a selection of specific issues or specific problems that
need to be given top priorty. One cannot attempt solutions to
all problems at once, so those problems should be selected which
are the most urgent and accordng to strategic planning, may also
serve to solve other problems in their wake.
The ability to talk facts, to marshall facts and figures in a
convincing manner, has already been indicated as extremely
important and requiring professional expertize, and also that in
each case, the message is relevant to the people addressed. The
same problems do not interest and affect different lots of people in
the same ways. In order to be relevant, the message should be
34
in the language (terms and concepts) each lot understands and
appreciates, and linked up with what are the existing interests
and concerns, or what can be shown as the true interests and
concerns of the people addressed. This is why graded releases are
advocated for information service.
Applied research implies the use of both the techniques of
analysis and synthesis. A synthesis is needed if one is to discover
the inter-relatedness of problems and get an overall picture where
in each problem is situated in its proper perspective ; and it is
possible to make a choice of the priorities to be observed in pro
blem-solving efforts ; and after each problem has been analysed,
to discover its different aspects, and a groundplan drawn up for as
complete a strategy of action, using sound campaign techniques.
It is a matter of strategic importance, that at least a minimum
consensus of opinion is obtained in a section of society where action
is going to be launched, and the support of its opinion-leaders
enlisted. People from different backgrounds, cannot be expected
too easily to become one in mind and heart. But enough people
need to be rounded up who will make a common cause of specific
issues and be united in purpose and action. This will mean
making people come across professional and occupational frontiers
and bringing down all barriers — socio-economic, communal,
ideological, political, and the rest — so that there is a solidarity of
effort, once action is launched.
The very urgency, complexity and magnitude of problems calls
for a well-planned strategy. Haphazard and piecemeal planning
will not serve. In order to be intelligently and effectively or
ganised, there must be use of sound campaign techniques and
there is no excuse today because there are well-tried techniques
for all manner of problem-solving tasks if one takes the
trouble to study them and adapt them to local situations. One
can find a highly evolved science for almost every thing, including
the dynamics of public protest.
It is also strategically important that citizen action does not
take a blindly obdurate anti-governmental stance. One cannot
stress enough the need in this country of a healthy, intelligent
opposition to the party in power. But governments need to be
opposed and supported. Opposed by skillfully organised pressures
— in and out of parliament : when they pursue blind policies,
clear instances where they show incompetence and corrupt practices
and are inefficient in their planning and implementation. They
35
need support, when they arc trying to work for progress but arc
obstructed by vested-interest groups, and there are vested interest
groups of an almost infinite variety in this country, in our extremely
divided society.
There are always some good people in government, eager and
anxious to work for progress, and competent enough, in their field
of specialisation. But they are harrassed, frustrated and prisoners
of the system under which they have to work. Such people should
be discovered and their allegiance and collaboration sought.
People who hold government offices do not cease to be citizens ;
and more people should penetrate the bastions of authority which
arc our governmental structures, and work from within them.
AN ACTION PLAN
------ Applied Research-
Panel of Experts-
* Investigation and data collection.
♦ A comprehensive survey of pro
blems.
* Selection of priorities.
* Definition of problem-solving
tasks.
* Feasibility studies for projects.
-Public Forum ------
♦ Stimulation of discussion
through the Mass Media.
♦ Organisation of Public
Meetings for Quest ion-andAnswcr sessions.
* Seminars for experts and lay
men conducted by the panel
of experts.
Public Action Campaigns*
Information Service
Discusion of Graded Releases to :
The Mass Media for the general
public.
Public Sector Agencies.
Business-Indust ry-Labour
Organisations.
Professionals and Academics.
Agriculturists.
Student and Youth Organisations.
Civic and Social Service Groups.
Publication of scientific studies
written by the panel of experts.
♦ Periodic campaigns against
specific environmental abuses
conducted by special cam
paign task forces.
* Educational campaigns.
♦ Demonstration experiments
in controlled areas.
♦ Organisation of Parliamen
tary pressures and public
protests.
♦ Fund-raising drives.
--------------------------------------- A Feed-Back System♦ Reporting-back of reactions pro and contra.
* Careful scrutiny to identify sources and
causes of rejection and failure.
Revision oj strategy.
♦ Recasting of material for re-use.
36
Panel of Experts. No citizen action group can hope to have
all the skills and expertize equal to its tasks. Such groups do not
need boards and committees but a panel or experts for consultation
and collaboration in their work. There is no such thing as an
environmental science as a distinct discipline but there arc different
sciences which are needed to solve different aspects of environmental
problems and in sofar as they do this, they can be called the en
vironmental sciences. Since problems involve subjective and
objective difficulties, the social or behavioural sciences are as
important as the physical and natural sciences and one cannot
stress enough the need of professional expertize to direct citizen
action groups.
Qualities of Leadership. We arc thinking here mainly in terms
of a group that provides an overall leadership for citizen action,
whose role is pivotal in organising and directing the activities of
existing citizen action groups, to the extent that they will allow.
It should round up such groups, having investigated their character,
aims and objectives, and record of performance of each group,
and propose to Them fa common strategy which will serve
to co-ordinate activities. This will not be easy, many groups
may prove unco-operative and challenge the right of this ‘core
leadership’ to establish itself in any kind of commanding position
over them. The latter must enlist the support of eminent citizens
in order to propose such a plan.
In a society as deeply divided as ours, compromise solutions
will always be in order. But the reason why so many compromise
solutions are not lasting, is that they have been dictated by false
expediencies and under unjust pressure. The wounds opposed
parties have inflicted on each other have not healed and continue
festering. So that sooner or later, fresh hostilities break out. A
leadership group cannot be effective unless it is a force for re
conciliation, and for this it must itself be a ‘reconciled force’ capable
of teamwork, free of internal conflicts and struggles for power and
precedence ; able to pool skills, insights, experiences ; share res
ponsibilities, and plan and act according to decisions taken together.
It must be a company of equals, (although it may have its acknow
ledged leaders) which does not tolerate anything hierarchical and
authoritarian in its internal organisation.
A citizen action group in Paris which has remarkable achieve
ments to its credit, when questioned about its effectiveness—‘the:
secret of its success’—had no ready answer to give, at first. Them
37
the leader of the group pointed to the legend written in big, bold
letters over the doorway to the office: ICI ON TRAVAILLE
EN EQUIPE (Here we work as a team) saying that this, perhaps,
was the whole answer. After this the other members of the group
filled in the answer. “At the beginning,” said one, “we had to
discover ourselves: which of us could do what, better than the
others. Once this difficulty was sorted out, we began to fit well
together, work well together, and this was half our battle won.”
Another added, “For some time, results were painfully slow in
coming and we seemed to be making no advance at all. ft was
a matter of taking two steps backwards for every step forward.
As individuals, we could not have had the strength to press on.
It was our combined strength, our ability to check one another’s
tendencies to easy discouragement or cynicism, that pulled' us
through.” One of the final remarks was most instructive. “We
had to work hard to keep our sense of humour alive,” said the
youngest member of the group, “And this gave us the key to another
door. We discovered that when one cannot fight opposition with
all the weapons one has, one must learn to fool it or make it look
foolish. Turn on the public eye and focus it on all the contradic
tions, inconsistencies, and the ridiculous attitudes people are obliged
to strike in order to remain firmly entrenched in their position
as the protagonists of no-change. No group enjoys being an object
of public ridicule, and we had some surprisingly complete capi
tulation.”
Vigilance is another essential factor. Such a group must
serve as the watchdog of its society : quick to detect unfavourable
developments and new dangers, and swift in alerting the people.
It must also exercise vigilance over itself, because it must acquire
a reputation for reliability, availability, and disinterestedness;
and do nothing that would compromise this reputation. Reliability,
because of the thoroughness and impartiality with which it conducts
its investigations and communicates the results ; the skill with
which it directs action; the honesty with which it acknowledges
mistakes and failures and tries to make amends ; the scrupulously
careful use it makes of funds.
Availability means, of course, being easy of access and willing
to assist all who come with genuine problems and determined to
make the necessary efforts to work for solutions even at some
personal cost. But since one cannot help everybody with any
kind of problem, the group must limit itself to those problems
38
which are in line with its own clearly defined aims and objectives
and, where possible, pass on those it cannot help to others who can.
Disinterestedness is a quality one cannot stress enough. Among
other things, it means not seeking publicity for publicity’s sake and
craving public applause. When facing the glare of publicity
as part of the job, the group should make the best possible use
of it to promote the cause, rather than to boost its own image.
Many of the tasks such a group will have to undertake will prove
absolutely thankless. Much of its work may have to be done
unobrusively, behind scenes : persuading people to come to right
decisions, and guiding their efforts in tbe right directions and
afterwards, allowing them to take credit for any resultant success.
All the foregoing may seem to add up to an altogether too
tall order, impossible to achieve. But one needs to counter a
marked tendency found in this country to declare things impos
sible, that have never been tried. The state of our environment
demands that we make unprecedented efforts and risk untried paths.
REFERENCES* Suggested also for further reading.
Bock, A. : The Ecology Action Guide (Nash).
Caldwell, L. K. : Environment.
Dang, Hari : Himalayan Ecology (Sunday World, New Delhi,
August 19, 1973).
Dasmann, R. F. : Planet in Peril ? Man in the Biosphere.
(Penguin/UNESCO Books).
Ewald, W. R. (editor) : Environment and Change (Indiana
University Press).
“Fortune”, (editors of) : The Environment. A National Mission
for the Seventies. (Harper & Row).
Helfrich, H. W. (editor) : The Environmental Crisis (Doubleday)
Henle, P. S. H. and Pratap Singh an Indian Forester, 95 (11) and
97 (2).
Hodge, C. (editor) : Aridity and Man (American Association for
the Advancement of Sciences, Washington DC).
Matthews, S. W. and Canby, T. Y.: articles in National Geographic
Vol. 143, No. 1.
Osborn, F. (editor) : Our Crowded Planet (Doubleday).
Perry, J. Our Polluted World.
Vohra, B. B. : The Human Environment in India.
Ward, B. and Dubos. R. Only One Earth (Pelican Books)
The United Nations Demographic Year Book, 1971.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Miss Dhun Kalapesi has been deeply involved in
the environmental movement since 1967. As Pro
fessor of Area Studies (Birmingham) and visiting lec
turer at other universities in Europe and the USA, she
has given courses on the Problems of Developing
Countries with stress on their ecological and general
environmental problems. She has also served as
consultant to the UN and other international govern
mental and non-governmental agencies with aid and
technical assistance programmes in India. Since her
return to India in 1972, she has been commissioned
by the Union Ministry of Food and Agriculture to plan
projects for the education of rural youth and has con
ducted feasibility studies in different states, especially
the Punjab, Haryana and West Bengal. She has been
member of two Committees appointed by the ICAR
for feasibility studies of projects included in the Fifth
Five Year Plan. At present she is working on an
Action Programme for drought prone areas.
Re. one
Published by Arvind A. Deshpande for Leslie Sawhny Programme
of Training for Democracy, Orient House Mangalore Street,
Ballard Estate, Bombay 1 and printed by F. Wiesinger, Shakuntala
Publishing House, at Examiner Press, Dalal Street, Bombay 1.
LESLIE SAWHNY PROGRAMME OF TRAINING
FOR DEMOCRACY
The Leslie Sawhny Programme of Training for Democracy
began on 1st April 1968. A non-partisan programme, its aim is
to train public workers, social workers, youth leaders, in citizen
ship, effective organization and the principles of liberal demo
cracy. Courses are tailored to the needs of different groups and
are held in various languages and places. In 1973 the pro
gramme established its own permanent training Centre at Deolali,
where most of its courses will now be held.
The syllabi of these training courses, which, last anything
from a weekend to 15 days, cover three main heads; the principles
of democracy as developed and practised throughout the world;
methods and techniques of organisation; and Outward Bound
exercises with an emphasis on the building of character and
leadership.
By March 1973, the Programme had organised over 100
training courses and over 1 5 seminars. Its alumni and participants
in various courses and seminars then numbered over 3500.
A great deal of the inspiration fpr'this Programme came
from the late Col. Leslie Sawhny; who, .apart from being a
distinguished soldier, a keen sportsman and an enlightened
industrialist, was a great liberal and lover of freedom. He had
joined in developing this project and had agreed to participate in
its direction just prior to his passing away in December 1967.
Those who guide the activities of the Programme as
Members of the Board of Management are Mr. N. A. Palkhivala
(Chairman), Mrs. Rodabeh Sawhny, General P. P. Kumarmangalam, Mr. J. R. D. Tata, Mr. Shantilal H. Shah, Mr. V. B. Karnik,
Mr. A. D. Moddie, Mr. S. Mulgaokar, Mr. M. R. Pai, Mr. M. A.
Sreenivasan; Mr. M. R. Masani and Mr. F. S. Mulla, (Hon.
Secretaries) and Miss S. K. Bharucha (Jt. Hon. Treasurer).
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