Chapter three

CHAPTER 3

ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY

Look around you. What do you see? Ifyou are in a classroom, you may seestudents in uniform, sitting on chairswith books open on their desk. Thereare school bags with lunch and pencilboxes. Ceiling fans might be whirringoverhead. Have you ever thoughtabout where these things — schoolclothes, furniture, bags, electricity,come from? If you trace their origins,you will find that the source of eachmaterial object lies in nature. Everyday, we use objects whose productiondraws upon natural resources fromaround the world. The chair in yourclassroom may be made from woodwith iron nails, glue and varnish. Itsjourney from a tree in a forest orplantation to you depends onelectricity, diesel, facilities for trade,and telecommunications. Along theway, it has passed through the handsof loggers, carpenters, supervisors andmanagers, transporters, traders andthose in charge of buying schoolfurniture. These producers anddistributors, and the inputs that theyprovide into chair manufacturing, inturn use a variety of goods andservices derived from nature. Try and

map these resource flows and you willsoon see how complex suchrelationships are!

In this chapter, we will study socialrelationships with the environment asthey have changed over time and asthey vary from place to place. It isimportant to analyse and interpretsuch variations in a systematic way.There are many urgent environmentalproblems that demand our attention.To address these crises effectively, weneed a sociological framework forunderstanding why they occur andhow they might be prevented orresolved.

All societies have an ecologicalbasis. The term ecology denotes theweb of physical and biological systemsand processes of which humans areone element. Mountains and rivers,plains and oceans, and the flora andfauna that they support, are a part ofecology. The ecology of a place is alsoaffected by the interaction between itsgeography and hydrology. Forexample, the plant and animal lifeunique to a desert is adapted to itsscarce rainfall, rocky or sandy soils,and extreme temperatures. Similar

51ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY

ecological factors limit and shape howhuman beings can live in anyparticular place.

Over time, however, ecology hasbeen modified by human action.What appears to be a natural featureof the environment — aridity or flood-proneness, for example, is oftenproduced by human intervention.Deforestation in the upper catchmentof a river may make the river moreflood-prone. Climate change broughtabout by global warming is anotherinstance of the widespread impact ofhuman activity on nature. Over time,it is often difficult to separate anddistinguish between the natural andhuman factors in ecological change.

Activity 1

Did you know that the Ridge forest inDelhi is not the natural vegetation ofthis region but was planted by theBritish around 1915? Its dominanttree species is Prosopis juliflora(vilayati kikar or vilayati babul) whichwas introduced into India from SouthAmerica and which has becomenaturalised all over north India.

Did you know that the chaurs,the wide grassy meadows of CorbettNational Park in Uttaranchal whichoffer excellent views of wildlife, wereonce agricultural fields? Villages inthe area were relocated in order tocreate what now appears to be apristine wilderness.

Can you think of other exampleswhere what seems to be ‘natural’ isactually modified by culturalinterventions?

Alongside biophysical propertiesand processes that may have beentransformed by human action — forexample, the flow of a river and thespecies composition of a forest, thereare other ecological elements aroundus that are more obviously human-made. An agricultural farm with itssoil and water conservation works, itscultivated plants and domesticatedanimals, its inputs of syntheticfertilisers and pesticides, is clearly ahuman transformation of nature. Thebuilt environment of a city, made fromconcrete, cement, brick, stone, glassand tar, uses natural resources but isvery much a human artefact.

Social environments emerge fromthe interaction between biophysicalecology and human interventions.This is a two-way process. Just asnature shapes society, society shapesnature. For instance, the fertile soil ofthe Indo-Gangetic floodplain enablesintensive agriculture. Its highproductivity allows dense populationsettlements and generates enoughsurpluses to support other, non-agricultural activities, giving rise tocomplex hierarchical societies andstates. In contrast, the desert ofRajasthan can only supportpastoralists who move from place toplace in order to keep their livestocksupplied with fodder. These areinstances of ecology shaping the formsof human life and culture. On theother hand, the social organisation ofcapitalism has shaped nature acrossthe world. The private automobile isone instance of a capitalist commodity

52 UNDERSTANDING SOCIETY

that has transformed lives andlandscapes. Air pollution andcongestion in cities, regional conflictsand wars over oil, and global warming

are just a few of the environmentaleffects of cars. Human interventionsincreasingly have the power to alterenvironments, often permanently.

A dam

A small dam


The ecological ef fects of theIndustrial Revolution in Britain werefelt all over the world. Large areasof southern North America and theCaribbean were converted toplantations to meet the demand forcotton in the mills of Lancashire.Young West Africans were forciblytransported to America to work asslave labour on the plantations. Thedepopulation of West Africa causedits agricultural economy to decline,with fields reverting to fallowwastelands. In Britain, smoke fromthe coal-burning mills fouled the air.Displaced farmers and labourersfrom the countryside came to thecities for work and lived in wretchedconditions. The ecological footprintsof the cotton industry could be foundall over urban and ruralenvironments.

The interaction betweenenvironment and society is shaped bysocial organisation. Propertyrelations determine how and by whomnatural resources can be used. Forinstance, if forests are owned by thegovernment, it will have the power todecide whether it should lease themto timber companies or allow villagersto collect forest produce. Privateownership of land and water sourceswill affect whether others can haveaccess to these resources and on whatterms and conditions. Ownership andcontrol over resources is also relatedto the division of labour in theproduction process. Landlesslabourers and women will have adifferent relationship with naturalresources than men. In rural India,

women are likely to experienceresource scarcity more acutelybecause gathering fuel and fetchingwater are generally women’s tasks butthey do not control these resources.Social organisation influences howdifferent social groups relate to theirenvironment.

Different relationships betweenenvironment and society also reflectdifferent social values and norms, aswell as knowledge systems. Thevalues underlying capitalism havesupported the commodification ofnature, turning it into objects that canbe bought and sold for profit. Forinstance, the multiple culturalmeanings of a river — its ecological,utilitarian, spiritual, and aestheticsignificance, are stripped down to asingle set of calculations about profitand loss from the sale of water for anentrepreneure. Socialist values ofequality and justice have led to theseizure of lands from large landlordsand their redistribution amonglandless peasants in a number ofcountries. Religious values have ledsome social groups to protect andconserve sacred groves and speciesand others to believe that they havedivine sanction to change theenvironment to suit their needs.

There are many differentperspectives on the environmentand its relationship to society. Thesedif ferences include the ‘nature-nurture’ debate and whetherindividual characteristics are innateor are influenced by environmentalfactors. For instance, are people poor


because they are innately lesstalented or hard-working or becausethey are born into a situation ofdisadvantage and lack ofopportunity? Theories and dataabout environment and society areinfluenced by the social conditionsunder which they emerge. Thus thenotions that women are intrinsicallyless able than men, and Blacksnaturally less able than Whites, werechallenged as ideas of equalitybecame more widespread during the18th century’s social and politicalrevolutions. Colonialism generated agreat deal of knowledge aboutenvironment and society, oftensystematically compiling it in orderto make resources available to theimperial powers. Geology, geography,botany, zoology, forestry andhydraulic engineering were amongthe many disciplines that werecreated and institutionalised to

facilitate the management of naturalresources for colonial purposes.

Environmental management is,however, a very difficult task. Notenough is known about biophysicalprocesses to predict and control them.In addition, human relations with theenvironment have become increasinglycomplex. With the spread of indu-strialisation, resource extraction hasexpanded and accelerated, affectingecosystems in unprecedented ways.Complex industrial technologies andmodes of organisation requiresophisticated management systemswhich are often fragile and vulnerableto error. We live in risk societies usingtechnologies and products that we donot fully grasp. The occurrence ofnuclear disasters like Chernobyl,industrial accidents like Bhopal, andMad Cow disease in Europe shows thedangers inherent in industrialenvironments.

Bhopal Industrial Disaster: Who was to Blame?

On the night of 3 December 1984, a deadly gas spread through Bhopal, killingabout 4,000 people and leaving another 200,000 permanently disabled. The gaswas later identified as methyl isocyanate (MIC), accidentally released by a UnionCarbide pesticide factory in the city. In its State of India’s Environment: The SecondCitizens’ Report, the Centre for Science and Environment analysed the reasonsbehind the disaster:

‘Union Carbide’s coming to Bhopal in 1977 was welcomed by all, because itmeant jobs and money for Bhopal, and saving in foreign exchange for the country,with the rising demand for pesticides after the Green Revolution. The MIC plantwas troublesome from the start and there were several leakages, including one thatcaused the death of a plant operator, until the big disaster. However, the governmentsteadfastly ignored warnings, notably from the head of the Bhopal MunicipalCorporation who issued notice to Union Carbide to move out of Bhopal in 1975.The officer was transferred and the company donated Rs 25,000 to the Corporationfor a park.


MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AND RISKS

Although the relative importance orurgency of different environmentalhazards may vary from country tocountry and context to context, thefollowing are globally recognized as themain ones:

A. Resource Depletion

Using up non-renewable naturalresources is one of the most serious

environmental problems. While fossilfuels and specially petroleum hog theheadlines, the depletion anddestruction of water and land isprobably even more rapid. The rapiddecline in groundwater levels is anacute problem all over India, especiallyin the states of Punjab, Haryana andUttar Pradesh. Aquifers which haveaccumulated water over hundreds andthousands of years are being emptiedin matter of a few decades to meet the

The warnings kept coming. In May 1982, three experts from the UnionCarbide Corporation, USA, surveyed safety measures and pointed out alarminglapses. These fears were reported in a local weekly Rapat, in what was to be aseries of prophetic articles in 1982. At the same time, the factory’s employeesunion also wrote to Central ministers and the chief minister warning them ofthe situation. The state Labour Minister reassured legislators at several timesthat the factory was safe. Only a few weeks before the gas leak, the factory hadbeen granted an environmental clearance certificate by the state pollution controlboard. The Central government rivalled its state counterpart in casualness. Itignored the plant’s safety record in granting it permission and ignored Departmentof Environment guidelines on the siting of hazardous plants.

Why the guidelines and warnings were ignored is clear. The company employsthe relatives of powerful politicians and bureaucrats. Its legal adviser is animportant political leader and its public relations officer is the nephew of a formerminister. The company’s posh guesthouse was always at the disposal of politicians.The chief minister’s wife had reportedly received lavish hospitality from the companyduring visits to the USA, and the company had donated Rs 1.5 lakh to a welfareorganisation in the chief minister’s home town.

Union Carbide Corporation also played its full part in the run-up to the tragedy.The Bhopal plant was under-designed and lacked several safety features. It didnot have a computerised early warning system, a standard device in the company’sfactories in the US. The company had not worked out emergency evacuationprocedures with the local community. The plant was not being maintained andoperated at the requisite level of efficiency. Morale was low because sales weredropping and the plant was running at a third of its capacity. Staff strength hadbeen reduced and many engineers and operators had left, making it impossiblefor the existing staff to monitor all the tasks. Many instruments were out of order.Discussion: Which social institutions and organisations play a role in industrialaccidents like the Bhopal disaster? What steps can be taken to prevent suchdisasters?


growing demands of intensiveagriculture, industry and urbancentres. Rivers have also beendammed and diverted, causingirreversible damage to the ecology ofwater basins. Many water bodies inurban areas have been filled up andbuilt upon, destroying the naturaldrainage of the landscape. Likegroundwater, topsoil too is createdover thousands of years. Thisagricultural resource, too, is beingdestroyed due to poor environmentalmanagement leading to erosion,water-logging and salinisation. Theproduction of bricks for buildinghouses is another reason for the lossof topsoil.

Biodiversity habitats such asforests, grasslands and wetlands are

the other major resource facing rapiddepletion, largely due to the expansionof areas under agriculture. Thoughvarious parts of the globe, includingsome parts of India, appear to haveseen some re-forestation or increase invegetative cover in recent decades, theoverall trend is towards the loss ofbiodiversity. The shrinking of thesehabitats has endangered many species,several of them unique to India. Youmay have read of the recent crisis whenit was discovered that the tigerpopulation had fallen sharply despitestrict laws and large sanctuaries.

B. Pollution

Air pollution is considered to be a majorenvironmental problem in urban andrural areas, causing respiratory and

Deforestation


other problems which result in seriousillness and death. The sources of airpollution include emissions fromindustries and vehicles, as well as theburning of wood and coal for domesticuse. We have all heard of pollutionfrom vehicles and factories, and seenpictures of smoking chimneys andexhaust pipes in cars. But we oftendon’t realise that indoor pollution fromcooking fires is also a serious source

Health Organisation has estimatedthat almost 600,000 people died dueto (cumulative) indoor pollution relatedcauses in India in 1998, almost500,000 of them in rural areas.(Giddens 2004: 614, Table 19.1, takenfrom the Human Development Report,1998 of the United NationsDevelopment Programme, whichquotes the World Health Organisationstatistics.)

of risk. This is particularly true ofrural homes where wood fires usinggreen or poorly burning wood, badlydesigned fireplaces (chulhas), and poorventilation combine to put villagewomen at serious risk because theydo the cooking. In fact, the World

Industrial Pollution

Water pollution is also a veryserious issue affecting surface as wellas groundwater. Major sources includenot only domestic sewage and factoryeffluents but also the runoff fromfarms where large amounts ofsynthetic fertilisers and pesticides are


used. The pollution of rivers and waterbodies is a particularly importantproblem.

Cities also suf fer from noisepollution, which has been the subjectof court orders in many cities. Sourcesinclude amplified loud speakers usedat religious and cultural events,political campaigns, vehicle horns andtraffic, and construction work.

C. Global Warming

The release of particular gases (carbondioxide, methane and others) createsa ‘greenhouse’ effect by trapping thesun’s heat and not allowing it todissipate. This has caused a small butsignificant rise in global temperatures.The resulting climate change isprojected to melt polar ice-fields andraise the sea level, thus submerging

low-lying coastal areas, and moreimportant, affecting the ecologicalbalance. Global warming is also likelyto result in greater fluctuations anduncertainty in climates across theworld. China and India areincreasingly significant contributors toworld carbon and green house gasemissions.

D. Genetically Modified Organisms

New techniques of gene-splicing allowscientists to import genes from onespecies into another, introducing newcharacteristics. For instance, genesfrom Bacillus thuringiensis have beenintroduced into cotton species,making it resistant to the bollworm,a major pest. Genetic modificationmay also be done to shorten growingtime, increase size and the shelf-life

Spraying pesticide in a brinjal field


of crops. However, little is knownabout the long term effects of geneticmodification on those who eat thesefoods or on ecological systems.Agricultural companies can also usegenetic modification to create sterileseeds, preventing farmers from re-using them, and guaranteeing thatseeds remain their profit-yieldingproperty, forcing farmers to bedependent on them.

E. Natural and Man-made EnvironmentalDisasters

This is a self-explanatory category.The Bhopal disaster of 1984 when atoxic gas leak from the Union Carbidefactory there killed about 4000 people,and the tsunami of 2004 are the mostrecent examples of man-made andnatural environmental disasters.

WHY ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS ARE ALSO

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

How environmental problems affectdifferent groups is a function of socialinequality. Social status and powerdetermine the extent to which peoplecan insulate themselves fromenvironmental crises or overcome it.In some cases, their ‘solutions’ mayactually worsen environmentaldisparities. In Kutch, Gujarat, wherewater is scarce, richer farmers haveinvested in deep bore tubewells to tapgroundwater to irrigate their fields andgrow cash crops. When the rains fail,the earthen wells of the poorervillagers run dry and they do not evenhave water to drink. At such times,the moist green fields of the rich

farmers seem to mock them. Certainenvironmental concerns sometimesappear to be universal concerns, notparticular to specific social groups.For instance, reducing air pollution orprotecting biodiversity seem to be inthe public interest. A sociologicalanalysis shows, however, that howpublic priorities are set and how theyare pursued may not be universallybeneficial. Securing the publicinterest may actually serve theinterests of particular politically andeconomically powerful groups, or hurtthe interests of the poor and politicallyweak. As the debates over large damsand around protected areas show, theenvironment as a public interest is ahotly contested arena.

The school of social ecologypoints out that social relations, inparticular the organisation of propertyand production, shape environmentalperceptions and practices. Differentsocial groups stand in dif ferentrelationships to the environment andapproach it dif ferently. A ForestDepartment geared to maximisingrevenues from supplying largevolumes of bamboo to the paperindustry will view and use a forest verydif ferently from an artisan whoharvests bamboo to make baskets.Their varied interests and ideologiesgenerate environmental conflicts. Inthis sense, environmental crises havetheir roots in social inequality.Addressing environmental problemsrequires changing environment-society relations, and this in turnrequires efforts to change relations


between different social groups — menand women, urban and rural people,landlords and labourers. Changedsocial relations will give rise todifferent knowledge systems andmodes of managing the environment.

What literally defines social ecologyas “social” is its recognition of theoften overlooked fact that nearly allour present ecological problems arisefrom deep-seated social problems.Conversely, present ecologicalproblems cannot be clearlyunderstood, much less resolved,without resolutely dealing withproblems within society. To make thispoint more concrete: economic,ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts,among many others, lie at the core ofthe most serious ecologicaldislocations we face today — apart,to be sure, from those that areproduced by natural catastrophes.

Murray Bookchin, politicalphilosopher and founder of theInstitute for Social Ecology

Two examples of environment-society conflicts are given below:

No Rain, but Snow and Water Parks

Water-starved Vidharbha has agrowing number of water parks andamusement centres.

Even when it’s 47 degrees in the restof the region, it’s cool here. A littleaway from us is a patch that clocks inat minus 13 degrees. This is “India’sfirst Snowdome” — in burningVidharbha. Keeping its ice rink firmcosts Rs 4,000 a day in electricity

charges alone. Welcome to the Funand Food Village Water andAmusement Park in Bazargaon grampanchayat of Nagpur (Rural) district.A portrait of Mahatma Gandhi greetsvisitors in the office of the hugecomplex. And you’re assured dailydisco, ice skating, ice sliding and “awell stocked bar with cocktails.” The40-acre park itself offers 18 kinds ofwater slides and games. Also servicesfor events ranging from conferences tokitty parties.

The vi l lage of Bazargaon(population 3,000) itself faces a hugewater crisis. “Having to make manydaily trips for water, women walk upto 15 km in a day to fetch it,” sayssarpanch Yamunabai Uikey. “Thiswhole village has just one sarkariwell. Sometimes, we have got wateronce in four or five days. Sometimes,once in ten days.” Bazargaon falls ina region declared as scarcity-hit in2004. It had never faced that fatebefore. The village also had its shareof six-hour — and worse — powercuts till about May. These hit everyaspect of daily life, including health,and devastated children appearingfor exams. The summer heat,touching 47, made things worse. Allthese iron laws of rural life do notapply within Fun and Food Village.This private oasis has more waterthan Bazargaon can dream of. Andnever a moment’s break in powersupply. “We pay on average,” says MrSingh, General Manager of the Park,“about Rs 400,000 a month inelectricity bills.”


The Park’s monthly power billalone almost equals the yearly revenueof Yamunabhai’s gram panchayat.Ironically, the village’s power crisiseased slightly because of the Park.Both share the same sub-station. Thepark’s peak period begins with May.And so things have been a little bettersince then. The Park’s contribution tothe gram panchayat’s revenue isRs.50,000 a year. About half what Funand Food Village collects at the gatein a day from its 700 daily visitors.Barely a dozen of the Park’s 110workers are locals from Bazargaon.

Water-starved Vidharbha has agrowing number of such water parksand amusement centres. In Shegaon,Buldhana, a religious trust runs agiant “Meditation Centre andEntertainment Park.” Ef forts tomaintain a 30-acre ‘artificial lake’within it ran dry this summer. But notbefore untold amounts of water werewasted in the attempt. Here the entrytickets are called “donations.” InYavatmal, a private company runs apublic lake as a tourist joint. Amravatihas two or more such spots (dry justnow). And there are others in andaround Nagpur.

This, in a region where villages havesometimes got water once in 15 days.And where an ongoing farm crisis hasseen the largest number of farmers’suicides in Maharashtra. “No majorproject for either drinking water orirrigation has been completed inVidharbha in decades,” says Nagpur-based journalist Jaideep Hardikar. He

has covered the region for years. ShriSingh insists the Fun and Food Villageconserves water. “We use sophisticatedfilter plants to reuse the same water.”But evaporation levels are very high inthis heat. And water is not just usedfor sports. All the parks use massiveamounts of it for maintaining theirgardens, on sanitation and for theirclientele. ”It is a huge waste of waterand money,” says Vinayak Gaikwad inBuldhana. He is a farmer and a KisanSabha leader in the district. That inthe process, public resources are sooften used to boost private profit,angers Mr. Gaikwad. “They shouldinstead be meeting people’s basic waterneeds.” Back in Bazargaon, sarpanchYamunabai Uikey isn’t impressedeither. Not by the Fun and Food Village.Nor by other industries that have takena lot but given very little. “What is therein all this for us,” she wants to know.To get a standard government waterproject for her village, the panchayathas to bear 10 per cent of its cost.That’s around Rs.4.5 lakh. “How canwe afford the Rs.45,000? What is ourcondition?” So it’s simply been handedover to a contractor. This could see theproject built. But it will mean morecosts in the long run and less controlfor a village of so many poor andlandless people. In the Park, Gandhi’sportrait still smiles out of the office aswe leave. Seemingly at the ‘Snowdome’across the parking lot. An odd fate forthe man who said: “Live simply, thatothers might simply live.”

(P. Sainath in The Hindu, June 22, 2005.)


‘God forbid that India should evertake to industrialism in the mannerof the West. The economicimperialism of a single tiny islandkingdom (England) is today keepingthe world in chains. If an entirenation of 300 million took to similareconomic exploitation, it would stripthe world bare like locusts.’

— Mahatma Gandhi

As a consequence of developmentslike the water park described above,small farmers in areas of drylandagriculture now find life increasinglyimpossible. Over the last six years,reports indicate that thousands offarmers in Andhra Pradesh,Karnataka and Maharashtra havekilled themselves, often by drinkingpesticide. What drives farmers, peoplewho stoically deal with theuncertainties inherent in agriculture,to this extreme step? The investigationof journalist P. Sainath shows thatfarmers’ recent distress is due to afusion of environmental and economicfactors. Agrarian conditions havebecome more volatile as farmers areexposed to the fluctuations of theworld market and as governmentsupport for small farmers declines dueto liberalisation policies. Cottonfarmers grow a high-risk, high-returncrop. Cotton needs some irrigation.It is also very susceptible to pestinfestation. Cotton growers thus needcapital to invest in irrigation and pestcontrol. Both of these inputs havebecome more expensive over theyears: high levels of extraction havedepleted water reserves so farmers

have to drill deeper, and pests havebecome resistant to many pesticides,requiring farmers to spray newpesticides, more frequently. Farmersin need of credit to purchase theseinputs end up approaching privatemoneylenders and traders whocharge them high rates of interest. Ifthe crop fails, the farmer can’t repaythe money. Not only can they not feedtheir families, they cannot fulfil familyobligations like arranging children’smarriages. Faced with financial andsocial ruin, many farmers havenowhere to turn. Suicide seems tobe the only way out to them.Discussion: Is water scarcity naturalor human-made? What social factorsshape how water is allocated amongdifferent users? How do differentpatterns of water-use affect differentsocial groups?

Activity 2

Find out how much water yourhousehold uses in a day. Try and findout how much water is used bycomparable households belonging todifferent income groups. How muchtime and money do dif ferenthouseholds spend on getting water?Within the household, whose job isit to collect water? How much waterdoes the government provide todifferent classes of people?

The Urban Environment: A Tale ofTwo Cities

Here is a typical conflict over the urbanenvironment. On the morning of


30 January 1995, Delhi was wakingup to another chilly winter day.Imagine the well-to-do colony of AshokVihar in north Delhi, posh housesshrouded in grey mist, early riserssetting off on morning walks, somewith their pet dogs — Pomeraniansand Alsatians, straining at the leash.As one of these morning walkersentered the neighbourhood ‘park’, theonly open area in the locality, he sawa young man, poorly clad, walkingaway with an empty bottle in hand.Outraged, he caught hold of the manand called out to his neighbours.Someone phoned the police. A groupof enraged house-owners and twopolice constables descended on theyouth and, within minutes, beat himto death.

The young man was eighteen year-old Dilip, a visitor to Delhi, who hadcome to watch the Republic Dayparade in the capital. He was stayingwith his uncle in a jhuggi (shantyhouse) along the railway tracksbordering Ashok Vihar. His uncleworked as a labourer in the Wazirpurindustrial estate nearby. Like all otherplanned industrial areas in Delhi,Wazirpur too has no provision forworkers’ housing. The jhuggi clusterwith more than 10,000 householdsshared three public toilets, each onewith eight latrines, effectively one toiletbetween more than 2000 persons. Formost residents, then, any large openspace, under cover of dark, became aplace to defecate. Their use of the‘park’ brought the industrial workersand their families up against the more

affluent residents of the area who paidto have a wall constructed between thedirty, unsightly jhuggis and their ownhomes. The wall was soon breached,to allow the traffic of domestic workerswho lived in the jhuggis but workedto clean the homes and cars of therich, and to offer access to thedelinquent defecators.

Dilip’s death was thus theculmination of a long-standing battleover a contested space that, to one setof residents, embodied their sense ofgracious urban living, a place of treesand grass devoted to leisure andrecreation, and that to another set ofresidents, was the only available spacethat could be used as a toilet. If hehad known this history of simmeringconflict, Dilip would probably havebeen more wary and would have runaway when challenged, and perhaps hewould still be alive. The violence didnot end there. When a group of peoplefrom the jhuggis gathered to protestagainst this killing, the police openedfire and killed four more people.

As cities grow, the conflict overurban space is becoming more acute.While migrants come to the city insearch of work, they cannot affordscarce legal housing and are forced tosettle on public lands. This land isnow in great demand to buildinfrastructure for affluent residentsand visitors — malls and multiplexes,hotels and tourist sites. As a result,poor workers and their families arebeing evicted to the outskirts of thecity and their homes demolished.Besides land, air and water have also


become highly contested resources inthe urban environment.

(Taken from: Amita Baviskar in‘Between Violence and Desire: Space,Power and Identity in the Making ofMetropolitan Delhi’ in InternationalSocial Science Journal. 175: 89-98.2003)Discussion: Why do the urban pooroften live in slums? Which socialgroups control landed property andhousing in the city? What social

factors affect people’s access to waterand sanitation?

Activity 3

Imagine that you were a fifteen year-old girl or boy living in a slum. Whatwould your family do and how wouldyou live? Write a short essaydescribing a day in your life.

GLOSSARY

Hydrology: The science of water and its flows; or the broad structure of waterresources in a country or region.

Deforestation: The loss of forest area due to cutting down of trees and/or takingover of the land for other purposes, usually cultivation.

Green House: A covered structure for protecting plants from extremes of climate,usually from excessive cold; a green house (also called a hot house) maintains awarmer temperature inside compared to the outside temperature.

Emissions: Waste gases given off by a human-initiated process, usually in thecontext of industries or vehicles.

Effluents: Waste materials in fluid form produced from industrial processes.

Aquifers: Natural underground formations in the geology of a region where watergets stored.

Monoculture: When the plant life in a locality or region is reduced to a singlevariety.

EXERCISES

1. Describe in your own words what you understand by the term ‘ecology’.

2. Why is ecology not limited only to the forces of nature?

3. Describe the two-way process by which ‘social environments’ emerge.


4. Why and how does social organisation shape the relationship between theenvironment and society

5. Why is environmental management a complex and huge task for society?

6. What are some of the important forms of pollution-related environmentalhazards?

7. What are the major environmental issues associated with resource depletion?

8. Explain why environmental problems are simultaneously social problems.

9. What is meant by social ecology?

10. Describe some environment related conflicts that you know of or have readabout. (Other than the examples in the text.)

REFERENCES

Centre for Science and Environment. 1982. The State of India’s Environment: TheCitizens’ Report. CSE, New Delhi.

DAVIS, MIKE. 2004. ‘Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat’in New Left Review, 26: 5-34.

DAVIS, MIKE. 2004. ‘The Political Ecology of Famine: The Origins of the Third World’in Richard Peet and Michael Watts (eds) Liberation Ecologies: Environment,Development, Social Movements. Routledge, (second edition), London.

GADGIL, MADHAV and RAMACHANDRA GUHA. 1995. Ecology and Equity: The Use andAbuse of Nature in Contemporary India. Penguin, New Delhi.

GUHA, RAMACHANDRA. 1997. ‘The Environmentalism of the Poor’ in RamachandraGuha and J. Martinez-Alier. Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North andSouth. Oxford University Press, Delhi.

POLLAN, MICHAEL. 2001. The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World.Random House, New York.

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Chapter three

Education