{"id":2629,"date":"2020-07-28T13:11:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:11:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/?p=2629"},"modified":"2020-07-28T13:11:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T13:11:54","slug":"environmental-concerns-and-conflicting-realities-a-socio-historical-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/2020\/07\/28\/environmental-concerns-and-conflicting-realities-a-socio-historical-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Concerns and Conflicting Realities: A socio-historical study"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Somnath Pati<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThere is something deceptively reassuring in our readiness to assume guilt for the threats to\nour environment: we like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the\nstrings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives.\u201d – Slavoj Zizek<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the route from my native place in Saraikela, Jharkhand to my hometown, in Rourkela,\nOdisha, one would come across several parts of a forested range which is known as the\n\u201cSaranda\u201d, considered to be the \u2018largest Sal Forest of Asia\u2019. However, the plight of the forest\ncould be captured in an \u2018innocent\u2019 anecdote which my father used to share every time we made\nthe journey to my village and that was, \u201cWhen we were young, the Saranda was so dense that on\n\nthis rail route, even during the brightest part of the day, the region surrounding the two tunnels\nconstructed between the Goilkera and Mahadevsal station (which occupy the 25th and 26th spots\non the list of rail tunnels in India, by length) would act as an endless and vast space of greenery\nobstructing sunlight, and it seems so dark, just like dusk\u201d. It was described in a 2017 study by\nDipak Anand and Syed Ainul Hussain, who work with the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun,\nthat the Saranda\u2019s exposure to continuous \u201cindiscriminate mining has disturbed the ecosystem of\nthis fragile region\u201d and that 213 species of plants had disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in the year of 2018, in July probably, when I was travelling to the Eastern Ghats with just\nsome thousand rupees to finance myself for a trip, which I had saved through my scholarships,\nand internships, as a graduate student from a college in University of Delhi. I was staring at the\nwindow and I was about to doze off, with the calm breeze blowing in a usual, unreserved\ncompartment of a lonely passenger train. I woke up with a jerk and saw that the train had stopped\non the outskirts of a station, named Doikallu, which I searched on the weak mobile internet (still\na privilege!) to only find that the most highlighting feature of the place was described in the\nterms of a Naxalite attack with posters of protest, and in which, they \u201ctriggered blasts\u201d and\n\u201csnatch walkie-talkies\u201d of railway personnel in an incident on March 30, 2017, as reported by\nThe Indian Express. The dusk at the outskirts offered a faint ethereal glow in the cloudy evening\nskies at Doikallu and the train resumed the journey finally, after a long, yet refreshing halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Doikallu is in the Rayagada district of Odisha. A story of the other railway stations on this route\nlike Bissamcuttack, Muniguda, and Lanjigarh point at the same Rayagada district which is home\nto the famous Niyamgiri hill ranges, inhabited by the indigenous Dongria Kondh tribe. Much of\nit is probably widely known in the informed environmental \u201ccircles of discussion\u201d due to the\nconflict between political policies and the subsequent \u201csocial resistance\u201d generated by the same,\nfor which a large environmental movement emerged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The discourse created by the forces of \u2018elitist activism\u2019 and \u2018objective concerns\u2019 is that of a\nconstant \u2018online shaming\u2019, as simply on the assumption of a larger general apathy. But, there is\nno apathy, at least on the part of the larger conscious and informed masses. The selectiveness of\nresponse to issues is primarily rooted in the personal or sometimes, collective priorities to be\naccorded to different concerns at different points of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months ago, the Aarey Forests had grabbed the headlines which led to \u2018awakening\u2019\nconcerns of many individuals, as an \u2018ambitious\u2019 Metro Rail project threatened the \u201cgreen lungs\u201d\nof Mumbai, and subsequently several indigenous tribes such as the Warli Adivasis, that call it\nhome were at stake. The Dehing Patkai rainforest area of Assam, which is an elephant reserve as\nwell, was also threatened similarly by the proposals of mining activities. This widely publicized\nissue is ongoing and now of much interest to anyone who wants to follow the current\nenvironmental concerns and critique\/comment upon it. By the time, we end discussing these vast\nareas, at best, merely expressed in statistical value, such as 280 square kilometres have been\ndeforested simply in the first month of this decade, which also sadly reminds us that there has\n\nbeen a staggering 85 percent increase in the deforestation rate in the previous year of 2019, as\ncalculated by Brazil\u2019s National Institute of Space Research (whose Director-General Ricardo\nGalvao was accused of exaggerating the data to taint the Bolsanoro presidency and subsequently,\nremoved from his position).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of all these, here in our country, a large part of the civil society soon plunged into\ngrief, just as the month of June in the year 2020 had started. The tragic and unfortunate death of\na pregnant elephant in the Palakkad District sparked visible outrage across the country. This led\nto a massive social media campaign built on the foundations of disinformation, claiming that she\nwas force-fed a pineapple stuffed with crackers by villagers reportedly belonging to\nMalappuram, which was then dubbed as \u201cthe Muslim-majority district\u201d. Little did anyone\nanalyse the causes of the death as a classic case of the \u201chuman versus animal\u201d conflict, in which\nthe pineapple was supposedly meant to be a trap for the wild boars that are considered as a\nmenace by the farmers because of the damage they do to crop fields. Sadly, it is difficult to\nexplain the extent of damage in crop fields which is hardly compensated by a privileged section\npropagating the need for environmental activism on social media. However, this is a false sense\nof consciousness and does not even qualify to be environmental activism, especially when\n\u2018awareness\u2019 is based on half-baked knowledge. We try to relieve ourselves of a shared guilt by\noffering tokenism for the environment. The last time I had checked the National Crime Records\nBureau\u2019s statistics, a staggering 11,379 farmers had died by committing suicide in India in 2016,\nand even such data is challenged by journalists who have a broad experience of research on\nagrarian issues, such as P. Sainath, who feel that the data is largely misrepresented and skewed to\ndecrease socio-political accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Complex social issues require \u2018rational\u2019 environmental approaches. Highlighting the\nshortcomings of policy framing (especially in the environmental sector) becomes pertinent, at an\nage where more and more environmental \u2018clearances\u2019 are being provided arbitrarily to facilitate\nvested interests in \u2018wealth accumulation\u2019 at the cost of large-scale catastrophic harm. As humans,\nwe are always comfortable by shifting the \u2018burden of guilt\u2019. Consumers of animal meat are\nvilified conveniently, as the distinctions between lifestyle choices and socio-historical dietary\npractices are blurred. As a movement built on offering sympathetic considerations to spare\nanimal lives, it is not often difficult to find oneself getting caught up in the trend of \u2018shaming\u2019\npeople online over non-vegetarian dietary practices. This sadly might get confined to the \u2018elite\u2019,\nor \u2018privileged\u2019 discussion circles of \u2018PETA veganism\u2019, but at the same time, there is a growing\ntrend to radicalise a religious system and reinvent itself on the lines of a \u2018cultural practice\u2019 which\nsubscribes to \u2018vegetarianism\u2019. This perpetrates violence upon other human beings, when there is\na transformation to dictate the lifestyle choices of other communities in the society and force an\nopinion, which when \u2018disobeyed\u2019 would meet with \u2018drastic retaliation\u2019. But, this is the condition\nof contemporary society. If we analyse our basic socio-historical knowledge, \u2018indigenous tribes\u2019\nhave for the most part, subscribed to non-vegetarian dietary practices. That brings us back to\nsquare one. How many forests and livelihood systems of indigenous tribes who continue to exist\n\nacross the length and breadth of the world, have been sacrificed at the altars of \u2018progress\u2019? We\nshould refrain from adopting an ideological belief system adhering to \u2018ecofascism\u2019, at all costs,\nhence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the need of the hour is to accept and make peace with the fact that there is a \u2018climate\ncrisis\u2019, the denial of which would cost us dearly. The idea at the moment is to act, voice our\nopinions, and build collective solidarities, even from different tables at the hall of\npolitical\/ideological spectrum. But, while building collective solidarities across different shades\nof opinion, it is important to make the discussions reach out of our respective echo chambers.\nMaking collective voices heard and having uncomfortable conversations is necessary but the\nconstant bullying of fellow individuals in the social media over \u2018issue prioritization\u2019 on the\nenvironmental front needs to end. So, when we have that typical WhatsApp forward that\n\u201cHumans are the virus\u201d, during a pandemic, we should think about how indigenous tribes have\nlived in \u2018harmony\u2019 within diverse environmental systems, to ensure their survival. At the same\ntime, it is to think about the conflicting realities embedded within our environmental concerns.\nUndoubtedly, the Earth is diverse and there is an insect within the animal world, the locust,\nwhich bears testimony to this fact. Consumed as a delicacy across several cultures, it is what one\nfears while protecting crops in the subcontinent, and yet, others attributing some of the deadliest\nplagues in history to the insect. Probably, it is time to rethink our static ideas of \u2018environmental\nconcerns\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere is something deceptively reassuring in our readiness to assume guilt for the threats to our environment: we like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives.\u201d – Slavoj Zizek
\nEveryone today talks about the conflicting realities around the environmental concerns, but how
\nmany can take an action for it? Well, some people do and we can trace them back to our history.
\nClick on the link and have a look at the socio-historical aspect of the environmental realities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1811,432,1819,1804,1787,1784,1814,1825,1805,1807,1798,1802,1817,1820,1799,1816,267,1810,1808,1813,1792,1821,1788,1795,1791,1818,1803,1806,1826,412,1823,861,1793,1815,1801,1786,1785,1789,1809,1800,1796,1822,1790,1824,596,1794,1812,1797],"class_list":["post-2629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society","tag-aarey-forests","tag-activism","tag-brazils-national-institute-of-space-research","tag-breeze","tag-concerns","tag-conflicting-realities","tag-dehing-patkai","tag-diet","tag-doikallu","tag-dongria-kondh-tribe","tag-dusk","tag-eastern-ghats","tag-echo-chambers","tag-ecofascism","tag-ecosystem","tag-elephant-reserve","tag-environment","tag-environmental","tag-forests","tag-green-lungs","tag-greenery","tag-harmony","tag-jharkhan","tag-journey","tag-largest-sal-forest-of-asia","tag-national-crime-records-bureau","tag-naxalite-attack","tag-niyamgiri-hill-ranges","tag-non-vegetarian-3","tag-odisha","tag-peta","tag-policies","tag-rail-route","tag-rainforest","tag-region","tag-rourkela","tag-saraikela","tag-saranda","tag-social-resistance","tag-species","tag-sunlight","tag-survival","tag-tunnels","tag-veganism","tag-vegetarian","tag-village","tag-warli-adivasis","tag-wildlife-institute-of-india","post_format-post-format-quote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2629"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2665,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2629\/revisions\/2665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisaras.org\/projectdhaara\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}