Soil ours, water ours, ours are these forests; our forefathers raised them, it's we who must protect them. This old Chipko song, translated from Garhwali, drives home the vital message of the trailblazing movement which took off in the early 1970s in the hill regions of what is now the state of Uttarakhand. Courageous, resolute women formed the backbone of the struggle, which involved hugging trees to prevent contractors licensed by the government from clearing forests. It is this key message of community sovereignty – a prerequisite for ecological democracy – that constitutes the predominant motif and the core wisdom of the Anil Agarwal Reader, a three volume compilation of articles and editorials by the pioneering environmentalist who preferred to call himself a journalist. Though these articles address issues that were of contemporary interest in the nineties, their relevance to today's grim reality reminds us that not much has changed.
Founder of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), India's leading environmental group, Agarwal's life was dedicated to fighting the environmental crisis head on by writing about and campaigning for innovative approaches to deep-rooted problems. Whether he was writing about the path-breaking Chipko movement, bringing out CSE's influential State of India's Environment Citizens' Reports or travelling across rural India to document community-based environmental regeneration efforts, Agarwal's passion for the interests of the poor who are entirely dependent on their natural resource base guided his vision for the environment. In his own words, as quoted in the CSE tribute in their 2000-2002 annual report:
I have never been worried about the Earth. I'm worried about human beings. I was trying to understand what India is all about, what India's people are all about. And that is how I stumbled upon the Earth. I realised that they have a deep relationship with the Earth, and that is why Earth became important to me.
Laced with a scathing candour and an irrepressible optimism, the elegantly produced Anil Agarwal Reader is a trove of information, knowledge and solutions for such an environmentalism as if people mattered. The first volume of the reader contains Agarwal's writings published between 1991-1994 in a column called 'Green Politics' in the Delhi edition of The Economic Times, while the second and third volumes consist of his editorials in the period 1995-2001 in the science and environment fortnightly Down To Earth published by CSE. Peppered with stories of an India trapped in a quagmire of material deprivation, environmental poverty, bureaucratic webs and, most importantly, mental stupor, Agarwal's articles employ real life experiences and hard hitting facts to bring us face to face with the depressing reality of our current condition. And crucially, based on practical solutions and real world success stories, he goes beyond today's cynicism and desperation, to challenge, inspire, indeed, give us the confidence to build a future with democracy at our grassroots.