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development devastation

Author (with spectacles) at Narmada Sangharsh Yatra (Struggle Journey), 1990

Photo by Shailendra Yashwant

CLIMATE CRISIS

It did not stop the dam, but is it a failure?

23rd February 2023

The many faces of India’s Narmada movement: Since the mid-1980s, the Narmada valley has also been the site of one of Independent India’s most iconic and globally well-known people’s movements, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement). For the last nearly 40 years, this movement has raised questions about and tried to stop, a series of mega-dams along the river and its tributaries.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Joshimath Crisis is a Warning from the Himalayas

6th February 2023

A development model based on local conditions and aspirations is necessary. The current crisis in Joshimath is the consequence of choosing economics over ecology or the ecosystem. It was scripted from the time we opted for a development model that instigated the open plunder of natural resources.

Development/Growth

Nine competing geoeconomic projects that will shape Asia’s future

13th February 2020

From Great Game India: A global contest with at least 9 geoeconomic projects is underway in and around Asia. Regional powers are putting forward ambitious plans for building roads, railways, and other hard infrastructure across the region. A preview of a competition as wide-ranging as the region itself; whose long-term ecological cost will be incalculable….

Representative pic

Conflict/Dispossession

Beggars as choosers: Why India’s poor opt to beg

6th December 2019

Beggars are usually ignored on the streets and questions are asked about why they don’t work. But many have indeed worked as paid labour and have chosen begging as the primary activity, finds Sabina Yasmin Rahman. As India’s urban and rural poor reel from a state-made economic crisis, this revealing study takes on an urgent relevance….

ALTERNATIVES

The fate of Ladakh in the Age of Ambani

11th November 2019

Padma Rigzin writes: Ladakh’s folk religion teaches that humans do not form the centre of the natural world but are merely inhabitants. So much so that my ancestors would not move a rock to build a house. Unfortunately, people in Leh are shouting the tune of the mainstream. Ambani has already started knocking our doors….

Mayank Aggarwal/Mongabay

Conflict/Dispossession

The invisible victims of an unfinished city

15th October 2019

From Mongabay India: First envisaged in the early 2000s, Lavasa was touted as independent India’s first privately owned hill city. But over the years, the project faced numerous legal cases of usurping the land of villagers and violating environmental conditions. It’s now a ghost town with empty, unfinished construction or buildings vacated by their occupants….

ALTERNATIVES

How the ‘Gujarat model’ is devouring Gujarat (and not just Gujarat)

6th October 2019

From The Hindu: The perverse ‘achievements’ of those relentless in their advocacy of the Sardar-Sarovar dam are now evident. The riches of Gujarat—shown as a model to the rest of India—are the result of such violent extraction, exploitation and destruction that benefit a few while victimising many. Any protest is being beaten into the earth….

Conflict/Dispossession

Mahul, Mumbai: Unfit for human habitation

20th September 2019

From Vice.com: “When we go to private hospitals outside, they immediately tell us that the only way to survive is to leave the area. But the doctors here tell us there’s nothing wrong. Are they saying doctors outside this area are all mad? Are the researchers who’ve declared this place unfit mad?” asks Farah Sheikh….

Development/Growth

Fifteen of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in India: New report

11th March 2019

From IndiaSpend.com: Fifteen of the top 20 most polluted cities in the world are located in India, according to an analysis of air quality in several cities around the world by IQAir Group. Gurugram, in Haryana, topped the list with an average annual particulate matter (PM 2.5) quality of 135 g/m3 (micrograms/cubic metre), in 2018….

Conserve/Resist

Kaiga nuclear plant expansion: Expect body blow for Western Ghats biodiversity

5th March 2019

From Down to Earth: The biodiversity of the Western Ghats, already under a lot of anthropogenic pressure, will suffer even more if the expansion of the Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant, goes ahead. That this will be done for generating power through a technology that has several alternative and much benign options is even more ironical….

Conserve/Resist

As Kerala’s sacred groves disappear, the Theyyam art form loses a vital link

3rd March 2019

There has always been an unmistakable umbilical link between the dance form of Kerala called Theyyam and nature. The unique pantheistic art form of the Theyyam now faces increasing threats of gentrification and Brahminisation, thus paving the way for the destruction of the sacred groves where it was born. Text and photographs by Thulasi Kakkat….

Ruchira Petkar/The Wire

Conflict/Dispossession

Thousands in Maharashtra are opposing what could be ‘globe’s largest’ oil refinery

8th February 2019

From The Wire: The Rs 3 lakh crore oil refinery project, planned by oil majors over an expanse of over 15,000 acres of land in Maharashtra’s Konkan region, if it takes off, will inevitably displace farmers and fisherfolk from 17 villages – 15 villages in Ratnagiri and two in neighbouring Sindhudurg along the western coast….

Vizhinjam, Kerala, where the Adani Group is building a mega port

CLIMATE CRISIS

The coast is unclear: on the 2018 CRZ notification

2nd February 2019

From The Hindu:This government has unleashed several extremely unimaginative developmental policies that target ecologically valuable areas and turn them into sites for industrial production, despite abundant evidence for such policies’ damaging effects. The latest instance of this is the 2018 CRZ notification, which, among other things, increases the vulnerability of coastal people to climate disasters….

ALTERNATIVES

The great Indian irrigation deceit

29th November 2018

J. Harsha, Director, Central Water Commission, writes: India fails to deliver water in time, and in adequate quantities to small landholdings (< 1 hectare) belonging to marginal farmers (constituting 85 per cent of total farmers) cultivating in 43.64 million hectares of canal-irrigated areas. The impact of this great Indian irrigation deceit is enormous on agriculture…

Conflict/Dispossession

Enough! Why 1,00,000 farmers are marching to Delhi on November 30

21st November 2018

From The Telegraph: India’s farmers are marching once again to demand that Parliament discuss the agrarian crisis. The underlying message is simple. If over 3,00,000 debt-ridden farmers have committed suicide in the past 25 years, then the agrarian crisis is no longer an economic one. It’s a moral crisis. It cannot be allowed to continue….

Illustration: Sumit Kumar/BBC

Conflict/Dispossession

Chai with Narasimha

3rd November 2018

This is a snapshot of a fleeting encounter between a Karnataka farmer and a water activist at the premises of a leading agricultural university. In a few painful sentences, it captures the everyday desperation that is the lot of the average Indian farmer, caught between an unraveling climate, a ruthless market and a malignant state….

Conflict/Dispossession

Modi’s other dubious French deal: The world’s largest nuclear plant at Jaitapur

30th October 2018

Building the world’s largest nuclear power project in an ecologically fragile region like Konkan, along with attendant concerns of the safety, an unsteady French nuclear industry, will pose serious challenges to the environment, biodiversity, health and livelihoods of lakhs of people in the region. Is the Modi government courting a nuclear Bhopal, asks Sonali Huria….

Education/Awareness

USAID, Monsanto and the real reason behind Delhi’s horrific smoke season

20th October 2018

From The Sunday Guardian: The Delhi metropolitan area has one of the world’s highest concentrations of population, and suffocating people here on an annual basis should be treated as a crime against humanity, especially when it can be controlled. Arvind Kumar writes on the connection between USAID, Monsanto and Delhi’s nightmarish annual air pollution spike….

CLIMATE CRISIS

T.G. Jacob: The genesis and political economy of the Kerala floods

10th October 2018

From Frontier Weekly: The flood in Kerala, created by an overdrive in construction activities, which gave enormous profits to corporate capital, now demands reconstruction work on a giant scale, which only expands the market for corporations further. It is obvious that this is not what is required. The requirement is an alternative model of reconstruction….

ALTERNATIVES

Why is the Indian govt silent on this 86-year-old’s fast for the river Ganga?

2nd October 2018

From Mainstream Weekly: Dr. G. D. Agrawal (now Swami Gyan Swaroop Sanand) is one of India’s most distinguished environmental engineers, who served as the first Member-Secretary of India’s Central Pollution Control Board. Fasting for almost 100 days now to save the river Ganga, he’s now on his sixth, and in his own words, final “fast-unto-death”….