Blueprints for a Greener Legacy

Note: This episode is produced for the ear and designed to be heard, not read. Readers are encouraged to listen to the show to get the full experience. The transcripts are meant as support documents and may not include inclusions from the day of recording and may contain errors.

HOST

Welcome to Grassroots Nation, a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, a show in which we dive deep into the life, work, and guiding philosophies of some of our country’s greatest leaders of social change.

India’s conservation efforts face huge challenges due to rapid industrialization, infrastructure development, and conflicts with local communities. Scientific and social leadership in conservation has also strongly advocated an approach to ecology, equity, and social justice and this is what sets India’s environmental movement apart globally. In this episode, we hear from some of its stalwarts.

This is the third of six episodes that present important themes that have arisen in the conversations with the guests of Grassroots Nation. These episodes showcase what shaped their thinking, their relationships, and how small acts form the basis of collective action. 

India’s environmental movement is unique because of its deep connection to social justice, indigenous rights, and grassroots activism. Unlike purely conservation-focused movements, many Indian efforts combine scientific inquiry, strong legislation with the protection of livelihoods and local cultures. It is a widely held view that conservation must work in harmony with the needs of local communities.  

Professor Madhav Gadgil, the renowned ecologist and Padma Bhushan awardee, is synonymous with some of the most important environmental conservation actions taken by the government of India. In all of his roles from institution building for the study and protection of the environment, to his research and academic work, he has always asserted that the views and perspectives of local communities must be included in decision-making and are vital to sustainable development. In this clip you will hear him talk about setting up various institutions for research and how the Nilgiris Biosphere came to be. 

Dr Madhav Gadgil

GADGIL 

See, I started out with the prejudices, actually, as I said in the urban society that protection of nature requires exclusion of local people, which was the philosophy that Salim Ali also very strongly advocated and he was my guru and my idol. And I started off with this, but then, as with time went on, and I understood what was going on on the ground, then I came to realise that no, this is not the way. We must work with the people to protect nature and with the people to protect nature. 

And there was a program of the UNESCO called Biosphere Reserve which talked about this approach, protecting nature as part of joint endeavour of the communities and the governmental apparatus. So I was attracted to this idea. Now luckily at that time the person who was calling for proposals to be submitted by the Indian government to UNESCO for biosphere reserves was BP Pal. 

VO 

Benjamin Peary Pal was an Indian agronomist who was the director of the Indian Agricultural Institute and the first director of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. 

Dr Madhav Gadgil

Now BP Pal was a remarkable man. I must tell you stories of what he was. His name was Benjamin Peary Paul. He was in fact the first Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research and very fine agricultural scientist. Anyway, he was also a great artist in his house. He had these paintings of incidences of Draupadi’s life in Mahabharata and he had a wonderful aesthetic sense that he had roses and bougainvillea apart from wheat varieties which he bred, red roses and bougainvillea. Anyway so this man was in charge of this program and we became good friends and he encouraged me and so I got to submit the Nilgiri biosphere reserve proposal. There were hurdles because it involves three states coming together and bureaucracy working with people which is anathema to them. So it took some time, but yes it did in the end become the country’s first biosphere is right…

 

NULKAR 

And after that, the government went on to conserve several other biosphere reserves. In one place you mentioned about ecological prudence, which I think is very important for our audience to understand. Which ecological prudence which is demonstrated by especially tribal communities and hunting gathering communities and also the fisherfolk of North Karnataka with whom you worked in your research. But with the fisherfolk of North Karnataka, you mentioned the use of a precautionary principle that led to sustainable fish populations. Can you expound on this and tell us what has led to the decline and ecological prudence today?

Dr Madhav Gadgil

No okay okay. See ecological prudence is taking long term consequences in view and using ecological resources and commodities which had control over their resource base. They tended to throughout history. You have many examples of ecological prudence, not just in India but other parts of the world of communities which control their ecology resources, of a practicing ecological prudence. The fisherfolk, actually it is not so much North Karnataka,  I was working in Mumbai and in Mumbai that time the Japanese had introduced trawling for the first time. So there was this trawler which the Japanese were using to train the fishermen to use trawlers. I was interested and so I went on some trips on this trawler and I was … as is my wont I had immediately contacted the secretary of the Mumbai Maharashtra actually Fisherman’s Cooperative Union and I got to know the fisherfolk also and they were told me that look trawling would bring more fish catch to begin with but it will certainly in the long run deplete because this trawler the way it drags on the sea bottom, will harm fish breeding and in the long run this will destroy…so this is called precautionary principle these days. So they were advocating that and later it has actually come to the fact that this is very well understood, that it is this intensive trawling and fish stocks have been very seriously depleted.

NULKAR 

So looking at your work at the Centre for Ecological Studies at Indian Institute of Science in 1980, Indira Gandhi invited you to be on the committee to plan for the Department of Environment. And I don’t think many people will know this fact that you have your contribution towards the formation of what is today called as the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. MOEFCC started with Indira Gandhi’s invitation to you and I think BP Pal was also in that and Zafar Fateh Ali and MS Swaminathan, you know, Sundarlal Bahuguna, all of these illustrious people who have done so many things were on this committee. But very interesting is the point that after the formation of this committee, along with Professor Kailash Malhotra, another very renowned sociologist, anthropologist in India, he and you travelled for a couple of months across India, visiting people who were affected by economic development, getting to know their side of the story before you actually sat, put pen to paper to write a plan for that. So can you tell us something about this, these couple of months that you spend travelling in India?

Dr Madhav Gadgil

See, at the first meeting of the committee which was chaired by MS Swaminathan, I said that we should actually have inputs from people at the grassroots in terms of what the environmental issues are and how they should be viewed. So they readilythey are readily agreed, MS Swaminathan and others also ….BP Pal was there. They were very much in sympathy with this and then I invited KC Malhotra who was a student of ecology, Iravati Karve actually and who had great praise for him and we had become friends and we were working together. 

Kailash and I – we went around. We choose various regimes, so Goa to understand the mining issues, to understand ocean pollution that was affecting fishing, other trawling and fisheries depletion, then the Rajasthan where we looked at the Bishnoi community but also at various other influences there right at the edge of the desert in Jaisalmer and so on. Then with Sundarlal Bahuguna in Garwal and there was a this very interesting movement about impacts of Tawa Dam irrigation projects in near Hoshangabad.

[MUSIC]

HOST

In this next segment we hear from Dr. Ravi Chopra founder of the People’s Science Institute and Dr. Yellappa Reddy talk about their most significant environmental projects. 

Since the 1980s, Dr Chopra’s conservation work in Uttarakhand has been focussed on natural resource management in the Himalayan region where issues like earthquakes and droughts deeply affect vulnerable communities. Here he talks about howHow his organization,  ‘People’s Science Institute’ came to be.

Dr Ravi Chopra

So PSI began with looking at issues of water, and the biggest use of water is irrigation. The first project I said to my colleagues, I said, “Look, before we get into advising people on what to do for irrigation, let us first understand the subject ourselves.” So for one year we did nothing but study the history of irrigation in India going back to about 5000-7000 years ago till the present.

SUCHITRA

Across the country?

Dr Ravi Chopra

Across the country, how irrigation developed in different parts or did not develop. And that really made us understand one thing, that the traditional systems of irrigation, many of which still survive, were quite in harmony with the environment around them. They were not destructive of the environment whereas if we look at the post independence era, there is a lot of destruction of the environment in order to provide irrigation water.

AUDIO – sounds of irrigation

We began with that. Then the 1988 drought that broke out was… 87-88 drought, that led us to study droughts. How do people manage to survive when they don’t know where their next meal is coming from?

My colleagues and I went around the country seeing what could be done in response to droughts. All of a sudden in 1991, came the Uttarkashi earthquake. A bunch of people come to our office and they say we need help in building earthquake safe houses. So I said, “Hum toh pani ka kaam karte hai.” He said, “Aap engineer toh hain na? Haan toh phir aap humko batao.”

And given our basic idea that you have to respond to people’s requests, I raised the issue with the Kamarjeet, Dr Chawla and I said, “Kamarjeet, can you help us?” He said, “Sure.”   Now he’s a geotechnical engineer, about the best in the country. And he taught us all the principles of earthquake safe construction. ‘93 there was the Latur earthquake and at that time there were no lots of organisations that knew what to do during an earthquake. So we were also very lucky to run into Laurie Baker in Latur and Laurie Baker was happy to see us. He gave us a lot of time and we were thrilled to be in his company and learning about mud buildings from him.

‘97 was the Jabalpur earthquake, ‘99 was the Chamoli earthquake. By the end of the 90s we had not only understood how to build earthquake safe houses, but a lot more. We had developed a timeline of how you respond to disasters of different scales. So if it’s a small localised disaster, there is one timetable, and if it’s a state level disaster, there’s another timetable. How does the government operate? We produced a lot of very simple basic literature. So disaster mitigation and response became a second field of PSI.

And then from just looking at water one day, Dr. GD Agarwal said to me, he said, “Aapne jo lab banane ki koshish ki hai, yeh toh water pollution ki lab hai. Why don’t you make it into an Environmental Quality monitoring lab?” And I said, “But then isn’t the air pollution equipment expensive? And we don’t have anybody dealing with air pollution here.” So he said, “I’ll help you out.” He had helped some of his students from IIT Kanpur to set up a company which made air quality monitors in this country. So he brought in the idea of converting a tiny pollution water quality testing lab into an Environmental Quality monitoring group. So not only did we have the equipment, but we had people who knew how to use the equipment to generate results and how those results are to be used for campaigning against environmental pollution.

So for a long time these three remained. And then gradually irrigation water involvement gave way to expanded into natural resource management.

In late 89, there was a workshop in Ranchi on dams and some dams had been planned in the Chota Nagpur plateau area, one of which was Aranga Dam. Dunu had gone to that conference and when people came to him and said, “There’s this dam going to be built in our area and 38 villages are going to be submerged. Where can we go for help?” And he said, “There’s the People Science Institute in Dehradun, go ask them.”

During the drought, some of my friends were working there, colleagues were working there and one day I got a call saying, “Ravi, we have a young DM and DDC Deputy District Commissioner and they’ve started this very interesting programme to combat the drought. It’s called Pani Panchayat. But they don’t know how to work that programme and they’re making a mess of it, so all the contractors have hijacked the programme. We need you to come here and talk to them.” So I went and I spent a day with my colleagues and I tried to understand. Next morning I went and met the DDC and he said, “You’ve just arrived here, why don’t you go around the and just to go to some of the places where the dams are being built, see what you find and then let’s have a talk at night.” Evening, I went and told him I said, “I had been to these three locations and I attended some meetings of your Pani Panchayats in these villages and the thing is totally run by contractors, not by the villagers. The villagers are all on paper and money is being syphoned off.” So he said, “What should we do?” I said, “There is a way of setting up these systems of Pani Panchayat. If you go and you give a speech and you get people excited that they can build a dam and they can form their own committees, submit an application to you, it doesn’t mean that they’ve understood what you said. There’s a way of organising the Pani Panchayats.” So he said, “Okay, then tell us what to do.”

We then ran this programme, built 144 check dams, all built by the people. How many people from PSI were there? Five. Five people working in 144 villages around Palamur district in Bihar and in two years these dams were built, but the fascinating part was these systems that we introduced for the Pani Panchayats to really own their dams.

MUSIC

And that sense of empowerment that they got… The proof came two years later when we held a Pani Mela across the district and the women came to us in the Pani Mela and they said, “Humko bhi ek manch apna chahiye.” “What happened?” “Yeh purush log humko bolne nahi dete hai. Jab bhi hum bolne ko baat karte hai toh humko bolte hai baith jao. Aur aapke Pani Panchayat mein dekho kitni mahilaein hai.”

So then we worked with them to set up the Mahila Manches in all the villages. They took on afforestation programmes, they took on some livelihood programmes so this is how PSI developed over time. 

HOST

Dr. Yellappa Reddy’s esteemed service with Forest Department and later as member of the Lok Adalat or Karnataka High Court for environmental project initiatives has left an indelible mark on conservationists across Karnataka. He speaks of his deep understanding of the economic value of tree crops – thisthe was instrumental in broadening people’s understanding of how supporting communities is a way to support conservation. 

Dr Yellappa Reddy

MAYA

So but then it is possible. You proved in that period of your career, it is still possible to do the good.

Dr Yellappa Reddy

So whatever happens that you should not care for.  Personal benefits. So it is ethics. It is some principle in the life makes you a person with personality. People will recognise that.

Maya

So can you just tell us couple of more change that you brought about in your career. As these different, different positions that you handled at that point of time.

Dr Yellappa Reddy

See, most significant change we brought in forest department culture. Forest department is only the teak Rosewood timber, plywood. They have not widened. Other than timber and plywood, cultivation rising, et cetera. So non timber and high quality products from tree crops.

Tree crops are much more economical than any agriculture. Horticulture. Horticulture Agriculture needs input and continuous care. Continuous care is required. Care of input, this thing, fertiliser, pesticides, etc. But for a jack tree, for a tamarind tree, for jamun tree, nothing.

You plant it, protect it for five years. Then you will earn hundreds of years good income. So this switching over from fuelwood timber to other products from tree crops. About more than hundred species which are grown locally. Today jamun, you can see everywhere today in your own, just near your house you can see jack fruits. You know from where all of them are coming.

It is when I was conservator. When I was the Deputy conservator for forest … I promoted mother trees, mother seeds, grafting technologies.

Maya

Can you tell us more about this? What is a mother tree?

Dr Yellappa Reddy

Out of 100 population, there’ll be genetic variation. Out of 100, 2 will have good canopy, exposure to sunlight. Total canopy, total exposure to the sunlight will produce high quality fruits, canopy architecture.

Then genetically they are slightly superior. There is variation among the population, among the tree population. So selecting the mother tree, about yield, about flowering, about architecture, about root formation. All these criteria, what 26 criterias. To select a mother tree. We had prepared parameters. So we adopted that and we selected mother trees, then collected seeds from them, promoting… 

And if it is really much superior, then grafting technology also introduced. 

A group of scientists came from UK, all tree geneticists. So I was in charge. My boss Mr Shyam Sundhar asked me to accompany them and to talk to them. Then I’ve shown them about Ziziphus, chrome name. Challakere… low rainfall area. And how one bush earns about rs3000 for the family. No maintenance. Only thing they used to do is they used to take their cow, tie it to the bush and it used to urinate dung used to go there. That bush used to earn 5000 to the farmer.

Then one family used to come there during fruiting season. They used to collect it. They have to sell the trees. They used to earn Rs 25,000 within two months. 5000 Rs 6000 to the farmer, a livelihood to the other family. Who will collect it, will segregate it. Who will take it to the sandy, sell it, livelihood.

So the interconnections of resource, resource quality improvement, not by scientific methods, simply they used to tie their goats and sheep and cows near that bush. They used to earn that much of money.

Maya

Where did this happen? Which part of Karnataka was this?

Dr Yellappa Reddy

It is in Bangalore, entire Karnataka. So in Dharwad, in Mercara, so each zone had their own high value tree species.

So we established that centres. And today the number of research papers also have been published in Dharwad Agricultural University. Now central horticulture research people have identified the best varieties of the jack.

Two, three varieties now. So all those things now it has taken that long period to recognise tree crops have got high value. So now, recently, but four or four years back, Central Horticulture Research Institute identified the farmer. One good thing what they have done.

This is your property. We patent it. You raise the seedlings, you earn the money. Not the research institute. We will facilitate it. That’s how the institute should grow. By transferring the technology to the individuals. Then every individual will certainly grab it.

If you say that it is government property, it will go to bad politicians and it will not go back to the system. But this system which Horticulture Research Institute did I really admired.

MUSIC

My way of understanding the geography which division of circle. You must not open your mouth. You come down to the grassroots level. You talk to them. Then you will understand the ground realities. Then you start practising.  This is a skill an able administrator should learn. You will not know anything about Hasan. You will not know anything about Hasan district. How many Arsikere is different from Holenarasipur or Holenarasipur is different from Arakalagud. Arakalagud is different from Sakleshpur. Every taluka is unique.

Ecological economy has not been recognised at all. So we committed blunders and blunders and blunders. Today we are facing problems and problems and problems. This is where my approach is different. Because of holistic governance.

HOST

Dr. Kamaljit Bawa is the founder of the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). He is a deeply respected and prolific scholar whose work on the Himalayan region on issues from biodiversity to climate change are high regarded. In the clip you will hear, he talks about why ATREE has been successful–the organisation is one of the most respected think tanks for research on the environment. 

Dr Kamal Bawa 

Okay, let’s – it’s a two part question. Okay. And let us deal with it in two parts. The first question, uh, what would be my advice or suggestions, assuming you believe that ATREE has been successful? And that’s a big assumption. Okay. I would like to think that we have been successful, but I think it’s also for others to judge.

I think you have to have first expertise. You have to be able to demonstrate that you have the expertise or the institution has the expertise. Second, the institution must have a plan to execute what it thinks it needs to be done. And the third is, of course, You know, your ability to show at least some results that you are on your path, you are on a good path to resolve that problem.

And fourth, that, and this is not in order of priority, I should have mentioned first you have to have a good governance system for the organization. You have to have a good board. I think the board is your best ally to develop a successful institution. I would say two things, the board and your internal mechanisms of governance.

And, and with these two things, I think you will be able to attract donors, combined of course with a plan. I think in terms of the ethical dilemmas, there are various views on that. You know, some might argue that all environmental problems are created by capitalism and you can’t go to the capitalists to solve these problems.

There are other views that money has no colour. There are only different shades of green. I would say at ATREE has been very, very fortunate that we have donors who believe in the same ethical values and who share our purpose. That we really didn’t have many of these ethical dilemmas. Whenever we had these dilemmas, the board has guided us, and internally we have had good discussions. So again, relating the two, you know, your internal mechanisms of governance and having a good board. Institution should not depend on one single individual.

And that is the key, I believe, for success.

HOST

Grassroots Nation is a podcast from Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies. For more information, visit www.rohininilekaniphilanthropies.org or join the conversation on social media at RNP_foundation.

Stay tuned for our next episode. Thank you for listening to Grassroots Nation.