A History of Environmental Justice in India

Abstract

Indian environmentalism has, for the most part, been about social justice. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was concerned with differential access to natural assets and ecosystem services. The Bhopal Gas Disaster of 1984 raised new issues, pertaining to industrial risk and safety. This article traces the history of environmental justice from the 1970s onward. It describes the perspective of Indira Gandhi, India's Prime Minister from 1967 to 1984, and her attempts at reconciling the environment with development and economic justice; discusses the emergence of a red-green environmentalism during the 1980s and 90s; and explores Bhopal and its implications; before addressing the issues that are front and center today, in the early twenty-first century.

Introduction

Environmental justice is a relatively new term in India. However, Indian environmentalism has, for the most part, been about social justice. In a pioneering speech in 1985, Anil Agarwal, suggested that environmentalism in India was not just about trees and tigers, but about the environmental assets and liabilities of common people. (Agarwal, 1985). He was referring to the implications, to the lives and livelihoods of millions, of the impact of economic development during the 1970s and 1980s, and especially, the changing dynamics of resource use. Since then, the scope of, environmentalism in India has expanded beyond issues of differential access to natural assets. The Bhopal Gas Disaster, for example, drew attention to the problems of industrial risk, and in its wake, a host of other issues have arisen. And again, as industrial conglomerates control resources, and to a considerable degree, influence economic policy making, questions about accountability and the very democratic process have been raised (India Together, 2014). Elsewhere, I have summarized the big themes in environmental justice and human rights in terms of sustenance, security, and suffrage (Rajan, 2011). This article will trace the contours of these issues. It will begin with Indira Gandhi, India's Prime Minister from 1967 to 1984, and her attempts at reconciling the environment with development and economic justice. Next, it will address the emergence of a red-green environmentalism during the 1980s and 90s and, especially, its critique of the state and development policy. The third section will explore Bhopal and its implications. Last, but by no means least, the concluding section will briefly sketch the key themes today.

Indira Gandhi and Her Critique of Western Environmentalism

By the late 1960s, environmentalism as an ideology was being articulated strongly in the United States and Western Europe, and developing countries were being challenged to respond. In 1968, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led India's delegation to the 14th General Congress of UNESCO. This was among the first international forums in which the biosphere became a political issue. In her speech, she articulated, for the first time on international stage, India's position on environment and development. Proposing a program called “A Design for Living,” she declared her and the Indian government's commitment to the environment, while emphasizing that the central priority was the improving the human condition (Gandhi 1972a). Four years later, in April 1972, Gandhi had begun to build on these ideas when she said:

… development is not the cause of most of these problems but the cure. The poorer countries cannot but look upon planned development as an instrument to improve the quality of life. Such planning, however, should entail a reappraisal of the objectives of development to provide more explicitly for the social and human needs of health, shelter, clean air, water and the beauty of natural surroundings. We should move away from the single dimensional model which equates the growth of G.N.P. with development. Our emphasis should be on the qualitative improvement of life as a whole rather than on the quantitative growth of various sectors of economy. (Gandhi 1972a)

These concepts set the foundations for her critically acclaimed, if controversial, speech at the Plenary Session of the United Nations Conference on Human Development at Stockholm on July 14, 1972. She began by suggesting that progress should become synonymous with an assault on nature. Next, she brought up the fraught histories of imperialism and global inequality, before launching a trenchant attack against Western environmentalists (Gandhi 1972b):

On the one hand the rich look askance at our continuing poverty—on the other, they warn us against their own methods. We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters? For instance, unless we are in a position to provide employment and purchasing power for the daily necessities of the tribal people and those who live in or around our jungles, we cannot prevent them from combing the forest for food and livelihood; from poaching and from despoiling the vegetation. When they themselves feel deprived, how can we urge the preservation of animals? How can we speak to those who live in villages and slums about keeping the oceans, the rivers and the air clean when their own lives are contaminated at the source? The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty. Nor can poverty be eradicated without the use of science and technology. (Gandhi 1972b)

This set the stage for a pointed critique of the then-popular Western environmentalist obsession with population control in the third world:

The extreme forms in which questions of population or environmental pollution are posed, obscure the total view of political, economic and social situations…It is an over-simplification to blame all the world's problems on increasing population. Countries with but a small fraction of the world population consume the bulk of the world's production of minerals, fossil fuels and so on. Thus we see that when it comes to the depletion of natural resources and environmental pollution, the increase of one inhabitant in an affluent country, at his level of living, is equivalent to an increase of many Asian, Africans or Latin Americans at their current material levels of living…All the “isms” of the modern age—even those which in theory disown the private profit principle—assume that man's cardinal interest is acquisition. The profit motive, individual or collectives, seems to overshadow all else. This overriding concern with self and today is the basic cause of the ecological crisis. (Gandhi 1972b)

Indira Gandhi's Stockholm speech was not just a one-off rhetorical flourish in an international forum. It also came to signify the codification of India's approach to development in the second half of the twentieth century. The essence of this approach was that India would strive to harness its natural resources, and invest in modern technology to raise the quality of economic life of the average person. At the same time, efforts would also be made to conserve the environment and preserve its vital forces. Indira Gandhi recognized that there were many shades of gray, and that this grand strategy was easier to talk about rhetorically than implement in practice. For example, she grappled with the consequences of development upon India's tribal peoples and their cultures, only to reconcile the inevitability of development (Gandhi 1982a). Again, despite her vehement critique of Western population control advocates, she ended up presiding over an extremely coercive, government-sponsored, forced sterilization program (Brown 1984). She lamented the increasing monocultures that resulted with the pursuit of industrial forestry by the government's own forest department but appeared frustrated that her own government did not heed her concerns (Gandhi 1982b). In many speeches she repeated the argument in Stockholm that Western industrialism was not a paradigm for countries like India; and articulated the need for balance and alternatives, including, for example, appropriate technology and renewable energy (Gandhi 1981). Yet, she offered no concrete alternatives or pathways for environmental governance.

The Environment and Social Justice in the 1980s and 1990s

By the end of the twentieth century, it had become increasingly evident that India's economic policies had resulted in a devastating impact on the environment and by extension on the livelihoods of people. The government's own statistics collected around the turn of the century painted a dismal picture. They claimed that soil erosion, water-logging, and salinity affects 60% of cultivated land; that the average annual per capita water availability had declined by almost 70% in the first five decades of the post-independence era; and that the area under forest cover, at 19%, was well below the desired level of 33% (GOI 2009). Crucially, each of these numbers has a social justice dimension, because adverse ecological changes tend to exacerbate poverty by directly impacting poor people dependent upon on ecosystem services (Boyce and Shelley 2003).

During the 1980s and 1990s, Indian environmentalists persistently drew attention to these trends. They also articulated two other critical environmental justice issues (CSE 1982, 1985). The first of these was about development-induced displacement. For example, an estimated 40 million people had been displaced by large dams in the fifty years in India since independence, and of these, less than a quarter had been resettled (Planning Commission nd). These numbers stack up unfavorably against some of the worst state statistics anywhere in the world during the century—including wars, disasters, and pestilence. The numbers also conceal the extent of human trauma—of forced and delayed relocation, multiple displacement in many instances, the absence of alternate cultivable lands or livelihood, and the undervaluation of compensation. The numbers also do not speak to the host of socio-economic and cultural issues at resettlement sites, ranging from unemployment and underemployment to the absence of safety nets in cities and the breakdown of community. Crucially, they fail to address the destruction of life-worlds, spiritual worlds, and foundational cosmologies that defined the very essence of many human communities that were displaced, especially those in the tribal belts (Planning Commission nd).

Gender was another critical theme in Indian environmentalism during the last quarter of the twentieth century. As forests, water, and other natural resources were appropriated for other uses by the State and other interests, poor women found themselves having to work harder to procure the basic necessities of life. Scholars have documented the increase in the time and energy that women and girls spend in fuel, fodder, and water collection, and discussed the socio-economic, cultural, health, and nutritional implications of the time lost and the physical exhaustion caused in the process. These implications include lesser income from non-timber forest products and agriculture; de-skilling, such as, for example, a decline in traditional knowledge of plants and species; health complications, exacerbated by the differential access to good nutrition among the genders; and the decline of social support networks because of the lack of time to nurture them (Agarwal 1992, 1997a, b, 2000, 2001).

The issue of differential access to natural resources, be it because of development-induced displacement, gender, or other factors, constituted the environmental debate in India during the last quarter of the twentieth century, and it continues to do so to this day. However, the Bhopal Gas Disaster of 1984 raised a host of new issues. On the night of December 2–3, 1984, an explosion at gas tanks storing methyl isocyanate at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, immediately killed 2,000 to 4,000 people and maimed about half a million others and their progeny. Bhopal was without doubt an illustration of the environmental justice, writ large, and of the political economies defining environmental risks globally. To begin with, UCIL was the Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC). The parent U.S. company took many of the key design decisions that precipitated the event (Chouhan 2004). The plant was also poorly maintained; had a long history of failure and accidents; had low employee morale; and at the time of the accident had less than the prescribed number of employees, and many of those that were there had not received adequate training in operating the complex factory safely (Jones nd; Chouhan 2005). After the catastrophic December 1984 gas spill, the company focused on its own economic interests, spurred by pressure from its shareholders. However, the victims received short shrift. For example, based upon precedents in the United States and elsewhere, organizations representing the victims demanded US$ 10 billion in compensation. The Indian government's claim in court was US$ 3.3 billion. However, Union Carbide offered US$ 300–350 million and settled for US$ 470 million, at a cost of 43 cents a share (Rajan 1999). It subsequently boasted that “The year 1988 was the best in the 71 year history of Union Carbide, with a record [US]$4.88 earnings per share which included the year-end charge of 43 cents a share related to the resolution of the Bhopal litigation” (Union Carbide Annual Report, 1988).

The Bhopal Gas Tragedy also raised another question—that of the capacity of the state to manage and govern complex and risky technologies. In Bhopal, the federal and state government failed both in the immediate aftermath as well as during the long term (CSE 1984–85). Although one explanation is that this reflects a lack of political will, there was arguably a wider problem—that of the absence of adequate expertise (Rajan 2002). To begin with, the state simply did not have the capacity to respond immediately and effectively to a potential hazard, including warning systems, communication, and evacuation procedures as a particular kind of capacity. Second, its bureaucracy lacked the ability to innovate and thereby adapt and respond adequately to unfolding novel situations. Unlike floods and famines, which the Indian state is familiar with, and which are for the most part sudden, catastrophic events, Bhopal, lingered and festered as a chronic event over months, years, and eventually decades. It affected half a million people and demanded a wide range of expertise, integrating socio-economic, medical, cultural, and psychological factors. The state government was simply not up to this kind of a task. It did roll out one scheme after another, but for the most part these were versions of existing poverty alleviation programs and had limited impact. The state also proved unable to trouble shoot with cultural contexts in mind. To give an example, the eligibility process for rehabilitation required the certification of victims, for which certain sets of documents were needed. However, many victims did not have these documents. The result was the emergence of a parallel economy of false documents and bribery, which cost the victims a great deal. The state could well have created simpler rules—but this risked free-riders at the expense of making life easier for the majority of the victims (Rajan 2002). The state machinery did not have the ability or the expertise to recognize or respond to such tragic choices (Calabresi & Bobbitt 1978).

Bhopal was the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It drew attention to issues related to the impact of toxic contamination on individuals and communities, and, in case after case, it emerged that the poor were adversely affected. For example, there are significant differences in morbidity due to exposure to polluting cooking sources, with poor people using the most harmful fuels. Mortality statistics issued by the Government of India state that 217 per 100,000 residents die in households using electricity, liquid petroleum gas, natural gas, or biogas (the cooking fuel sources of the rich), as opposed to 924 per 100,000 residents among households using straw, shrubs, or grass (the cooking fuel sources of the poor) (GOI 2009). Again, among the symptoms related to outdoor air pollution, irritation of eyes affected 44% of the population; cough, 28.8%; pharyngitis, 16.8%; dyspnea, 16%; and nausea, 10% (GOI 2009). Respiratory morbidity due to exposure to higher levels of particulate matter was a significant source of most of these symptoms (GOI 2009). Poor people, because of where they lived and worked, were more exposed to particulates and, therefore, more prone to these illnesses (CSE WHO 2013). The trends are similar in the case of water pollution. The 22 largest cities in the country produce over 7,267 million liters of domestic wastewater per day, and 79.8% of the rural and 30% of the urban inhabitants do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities (GOI 2009). Moreover, inadequate treatment of human and animal wastes contributes to high incidence of water-related diseases in the country (GOI 2009). Once again, poor people face the brunt of the health problems.

The Brave New World

State policy on environment and development in contemporary India is unchanged from that articulated by Indira Gandhi three decades ago. Poverty continues to be seen as the worst polluter, and the preferred solution remains economic growth. If anything has changed, it is the ideological wrapper in which development is packaged. State socialism, which was the governing ideology for the first five decades after independence, is now an artifact of history. The candy wrapper today prominently features the market, gross domestic product growth, and the neo-liberal consensus (Mukherji 2014). The state does embrace environmental causes but only where it is consistent with the growth agenda. A case in point is the support for solar energy (Clean Technica 2014). Although many individuals in state bureaucracies remain sensitive to needs of the poor, sensibility to the plight of people displaced by development projects is increasingly lacking in official ideology and state policy. As a consequence, big development, characterized by dams and large power and industrial projects, continues and threatens the livelihoods of increasingly large numbers of people, especially indigenous populations, that come in its wake. Compounding the problem is rampant corruption, and the overt theft of public resources. The past two decades have seen scandal after scandal involving big corporate players, Indian and foreign, who have gained access to and trampled upon the human rights of millions of people, especially in the mineral rich areas of Eastern and Central India which, coincidentally is also the core tribal belt (Padel 2010).

On the other side of the ledger is the existence of strong social movements and a free and vibrant press. Virtually every issue, from land and water rights to pollution and disasters, displacement, and corruption has been engaged by strongly mobilized civic organizations. To a considerable degree, Indian courts have abetted these causes and passed many landmark rulings concerning environmental human rights (Balakrishnan 2010, Gauri 2009, Sahu 2008). A related development is the articulation of the concept of economic human rights, and its institutionalization. Spurred by a fervent campaign involving a wide coalition of entities ranging from academics to bureaucrats and activists, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed as a parliamentary Act in 2005 and guarantees every Indian with the minimal amount of work needed to eke a livelihood (NREGA Website). The passage of this Act is significant for many reasons, the least of all for the fact that human rights remains an important facet of the Indian political discourse, even in this era of free markets and growth.

The same can be said for democracy. The past two decades has witnessed a potent struggle for public and corporate accountability. Legislatively, it has led to the passage of the Right to Information (RTI) Act in parliament in 2005 (RTI Web site). The RTI has been an immense success, as measured by its public uptake, and the wider discourse on accountability that it has engendered. It has also emerged as an important element in strengthening environmental justice and human rights causes.

Conclusion

As a term, environmental justice might have emerged relatively late in the Indian context. As a sensibility, however, it has been a central meme in Indian environmentalism since the 1970s. Moreover, although some of the broad trends concerning environmental justice in India remain very bleak, the existence of a vibrant civil society and its capacity to inform state policy and engender institutional evolution in Indian democracy, marks a silver lining that is by no means insignificant.

Footnotes

Author Disclosure Statement

The author has no conflicts of interest or financial ties to disclose.

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