Staying Alive Women, Ecology And Survival in India
Vandana Shiva Kali for Women IRs 60, 1988
Review by Vlalavika Karlekar Vandana Shiva´s impassioned plea, "…the violence to nature, which seems intrinsic to the dominant development model, is also associated with violence to women who depend on nature for drawing sustenance for themselves, their families, their societies", is not to be taken lightly.
According to Shiva, nature is equated with the feminine principle; its degradation, colonisation and ultimately its destruction, all in the name of progress, are the outcome of a male or "patriarchal" culture. In India, the new god of development with all its manifestations has resulted in women´s alienation from the land and its productive resources. An early outcome of the British colonisation was the denuding of its vast forest resources. As the collectors of minor forest produce, women and their labour were easy victims.
Relating the history of the Chipko movement of the Garhwal Himalaya, Shiva traces the involvement of women from the days of M.K. Gandhi´s associate Mira Behn onwards. In the initial years, women collaborated with men to work towards providing raw material for Gandhian sawmill cooperatives and resin factories. By the 1970s, protests had begun for right of access to local resources. In Reni, women formed vigilance groups and successfully prevented the felling of trees. In Adwani, Dungari and Badiyagarh, women tied sacred threads to branches and in some cases dared axemen to approach trees which they hugged.