 So, let us begin with this lecture, very specifically these units and subunits mentioned the UGC syllabus will be directly and indirectly connected to what I am going to talk about in this particular class. Only thing is as I been saying for the last couple of lectures, it is important that we do not focus only on very specific issues and content related to these topics, but we also learn how to develop a framework to understand these issues about citizens actions, conservation ethic, role of individuals, the enforcement of environmental legislation and so on. Now, in the previous class, I was talking about issues of equity, access and justice. Issues related to equity, access and justice with reference to environment and natural resources, these are what lead to conflicts and struggles over natural resources and as I repeatedly emphasized environmental sociologists and historians have stressed that in India, the primary environmental issue is one of struggle and conflict over resources, not one of conservation as it has been largely in the West. So, from that perspective, we need to understand why these kind of topics have been put in the UGC syllabus. I will just I have just just for emphasis that point that has been made by Ramchand Naguha, I have put it on top there. Some of the questions related to conflict and the problem of equity and access are these, who owns resources? Is it owned by the government, is it owned by a private company, is it owned in common by a group of people or community, is it owned by individuals and what are the consequences? So, is it better if a government owns, controls, regulates, manages environmental resources or is it better if it is privately owned and managed or if villages, panchayats, municipal corporations, NGOs manage them. What kind of technologies should be used for more efficient use of resources? So, for example, you have a drinking water project, what kind of technologies are useful or if you want to channelize river waters for through canals for irrigation, what kind of technologies are better and who makes these decisions about technologies? Is it made on the basis of by politicians, is it made by bureaucrats, by technocrats, is that people's participation? So, we find that these issues determine what choices we make about environmental management and in turn, how efficiently they are managed and with what consequences for environmental degradation. So, as an exercise, you could probably do with your own students about ownership of different kinds of resources in your own neighborhoods, in your own area, in your town, village and so on and this could be small water bodies, this could be forest patches, this could be mangroves, pasture, green grassland. So, these different kinds of resources, who owns, is it government, which government agency, is it the revenue department, is it the forest department, is it a municipal corporation, is it a town development authority, who manage them in many cities, for example, some of these resources like parks have been handed over from management to NGOs or to local communities. So, in terms of ownership and then, who gets to access these resources, who gets to manage these resources, water, forest, grassland, parks and so on and what are the environmental consequences positive or negative, this kind of an exercise is something that you can do as part of one of the final modules mentioned in the UGCC syllabus, which is a field trip, so that could connect very well to these kinds of issues. Further, we can ask more fundamental questions about why are there struggles and conflicts around natural resources in the first place. If countries like India are characterized by these struggles around environment on a very large scale, almost everywhere in India, what are the reasons for these and why is it that resources are not shared equally, which is one of the reasons for these conflicts, whether it is mineral resources or forests or water bodies, rivers and so on. Some of these conflicts also relate to what kind of governance should exist about regarding resources. So, should we have formal legislation, rules and regulations by government, are these more effective? What about traditional customs and traditions, which are prevalent almost everywhere for managing resources? In Mumbai, for example, there has been longstanding customary ban on fishing during the monsoon because that is the season when fish spawn or breed. So, during that season, if you do fishing, then there will be no fish in subsequent seasons, but this was this customary law, if you like to call it, was broken by migrant fishing, fishing, fisherfolk from other parts, so the fisherfolk of Mumbai campaign to make this into a law, government. On the other hand, you have this example of Sariska, which I was mentioning earlier, the tiger reserve, which completely eliminated all kinds of customary management of the forest. Government had complete control over it, the end result was not a single tiger was left. So, you have other cases where there are combinations of these different forms of governance and management systems. So, in module 4 of environment and society, we are going to look at common pool resources, where we are going to discuss the views of Professor Eleanor Ostrom, the Nobel Prize winner in economics, who in fact talks about these different ways of management of resources and talks about their implications, not only for efficiency, but also for equity access and so on. So, if resource degradation occurs, is it because everybody does not have a say in management of resources that there are issues of power, where some people exclude, say the government excludes others from participating in management and therefore, resource degradation occurs. Is it because some people are able to bribe their way into letting out untreated effluence into a water body? So, these are also social science issues, which students should be alerted to. And of course, the earlier issue that I mentioned yesterday, which is going to be taken up in the economics module by Professor Narayanan about the ability to pay. So, these are all, these are, this issue is fundamentally related to the equity issue, because on the one hand, some social scientists, economists, policy makers argue that resources are not always priced according to their value and therefore, there is a lot of wastage. On the other hand, resources are, like water are a basic necessity and therefore, we have to make sure that those who do not have the ability to pay also should have access to these kinds of resources. So, what I would suggest is that the kind of questions that I am asking in this slide and the previous slide, these you can use in the classroom for discussion, like I mentioned a few points now. You can ask the students to develop case studies with reference to specific resources in your own backyard and ask them to do surveys and get some responses to these kinds of questions or you can design quizzes for these kinds of issues. Two video resources that I want to share, I am not going to show them, we do not have enough time. One is a very good presentation by the Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal. Of course, this was before he became the Chief Minister, before the Ahmadini Party was even formed actually when he was running an NGO where he talks about the privatization of water, there was a plan to privatize water, drinking water in Delhi and what are the legal implications, what are the issues of participation and what are the implications for equitable access to water in Delhi for everybody is something he talks about in that. The second is about water politics in Mumbai which was made by a famous Indian American anthropologist called Arjun Apadurai, which again talks about on the one hand the nature of the bureaucracy which provides drinking water to the city which involves alienation of some people from access to water. Like we discussed yesterday, water has to be taken away from certain communities in rural areas to be supplied to Mumbai and within Mumbai also in terms of who has greater ability to pay and so on. On the other hand, you also see that the lower level bureaucracy invokes certain traditional values about how water is a basic need and what we are doing is actually some kind of religious duty and therefore we have to provide water to everybody to respect you whether they are able to pay or not and therefore many studies in Mumbai show that whether people are able to pay or not whether they have a legal connection or not the municipal corporation officials go out of their way to provide water to everybody because they think it's a basic need. So let me take up a few examples and you could probably take up more examples from various kinds of resource conflicts and use them in the classroom to discuss issues of equity, institutions, governance and so on. So forest resources, forestry as a natural resource has been one of the cases where there has been conflict for more than 200 years now from the British days in fact. So those of you who are familiar with the Indian freedom movement will know that there were a lot of tribal movements against the British rule because primarily the British took complete control over forests over which local people had access. So at one go anybody who was using a forest resource became a criminal it became illegal even though they had been doing it for hundreds of years which is one of the reasons why many of these tribal leaders like Aluri Sitaram Raju in Andhra or Birsa Munda in Jharkhand they launched these movements and revolts against British rule. Unfortunately what happened was after independence the Indian government followed the same principle of stating that forests belong to the government and therefore anybody who uses forest resources for any purpose is by definition performing an illegal activity. On the other hand there has also been a lot of collusion between the forest departments and various timber merchants, paper mills, sports goods, manufacturers and so on which led to over exploitation of the forest such that even though the Indian constitution requires that we maintain the forest cover of 33 percent it is less than is about 25 or less in India today. So this kind of a deforestation that's been happening legal and illegal has led to a lot of conflicts between local communities dependent on forests and the government forest department. So what one could do and one must remember here that this the population we are talking of with who are involved in this conflict is not minor by various estimates this is about 100 million which is larger than most countries in the world. So the number of people who are dependent on forests as per the Forest Rights Act of 2006 is around 100 million or more. So we are talking about a huge population which is dependent on forestry for their lives and livelihood therefore it is very important that we understand the context in which these kinds of conflicts are taking place because it affects the lives and livelihoods of a very large number of people. So we have had various policies over the last 60 years or so after independence including on social forestry which one of you mentioned the other day joint forest management and so on. We also have Forest Conservation Act the Forest Rights Act we have given you links to these earlier. So what we would suggest is that you use various materials some of which I have already uploaded on Moodle as well as videos and case studies of these movements around forest deforestation the Chipko movement of course which is the most famous one in India in Uttarakhand and we will talk about the movement itself a little later. There is a similar movement in North Karnataka called Apiko which means the same to hug trees. Then Lekha Menda is a village in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra which is the first village in India to fight for and get their rights under the Forest Rights Act. So it is very interesting that the government refused to implement its own law and people had to fight to get the law implemented. So you can just search for videos on these cases. There is also a documentary called Jungle Tales on North Karnataka where a number of international forestry experts from around the world give their views on how the forestry has been degraded over century or more. Similarly there have also been a lot of conflicts over water resources. In India we see conflicts between states between regions within a state between different countries in South Asia, India, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and so on. Conflicts over dams which is also water related. Increasingly also over utilization of groundwater. Earlier it was mostly surface water with increasing exploitation of groundwater. Pumping out of groundwater is happening on a very large scale. So that is also leading to certain conflicts. For example against the Coca-Cola plant in a village called Plachimada in Kerala where it was seen that Coca-Cola was extracting groundwater on a very large scale resulting in the groundwater table going down and farmers not able to access water. In fact this the groundwater exploitation is in India is so serious that you know recently I was talking to a geographer who was telling me that northern India and Pakistan together extract so much of groundwater that is actually contributing to sea level rise. So it is happening on a very large scale and so the scarcity of resources of water as a resource and the conflicts that arise from these could also be interesting case studies to discuss issues of equity and access and why how these lead to conflicts. Again the some of the some of the environmental movements related to this I will take up in a little while. It is also it would also be interesting if you can identify different parties involved in these movements. So is it a state versus another state Karnataka versus Tamil Nadu over Kaveri or Tamil Nadu versus Kerala over Mullah Periyar Dam could be Andhra versus Telangana over the Godavari and Thongapadra and other rivers. It could be people versus government people versus corporate firm it could be against multi-purpose projects like the Narmada Dam and so on. So like in the case of the forests I would suggest you take up case studies of Narmada or Teri Dam in the Uttarakhand the Kaveri dispute the Mullah Periyar dispute or Plachimada and find out who are asked the students to discuss about who are the different parties involved why is there a conflict in the first place is it related to the use of a specific kind of technology is it related to particular kinds of laws outlay outdated laws which are not able to address the current conflicts is it because of power issues that certain parties are more powerful than others. So those kinds of issues can be brought in also the timing is very important. So in India we see that the conflicts between states over river waters actually starts in the 1970s not before and that is very interesting because that is related to the green revolution which began to be implemented from the late 1960s onwards. So the green revolution introduced certain kinds of varieties of plants which actually required more water more irrigation. So a change in the agricultural cropping pattern resulted in an increased demand for water and that is when you know these kinds of river water disputes Ravi and Bias between Haryana and Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and so on and so on also started at that time. So one kind of environmental change in agriculture resulted in demand for other kinds of resources which created conflicts in those areas. So Vandana Shiva has an excellent book called the violence of the green revolution where she talks about these issues also she has a book on water conflicts in India where these kinds of issues are discussed. More recently the last 10 to 15 years there has been a change in our policy towards mineral resources. So earlier before 1991 mining was an activity restricted to the government of India not even the state government it was a central it came under the ages of the central jurisdiction of the central government but since the 1990s we have allowed private sector global and Indian to also enter the mining sector and we know there have been a lot of conflicts so the POSCO in Orissa, Jadugoda and Jharkhand so there have been many struggles around minerals and mining for some reason which is only known to the whoever made the earth most of the mineral resources are under forests in India which means it primarily affects forestry but it also affects the 100 million people living in or around forests. So on the one hand there is this issue of minerals required for economic development and growth on the other hand there are these millions of people who need to be displaced because of these mining activities. So that is the reason why mining has become a significant arena for conflicts also in recent years. Those who are interested in this may look up the Samatha judgment which is an interesting judgment of the Supreme Court of India in response to a petition filed by an NGO called Samatha which tries to arrive at a solution wherein what we call as win-win situation you know where the local people can benefit from certain amounts of mining activity and you can also generate minerals for economic development of the country. Also recently there have been conflicts around nuclear power those of you who have been following environmental disasters will know that there have been significant nuclear disasters Chernobyl in Russia and Three Mile Island in the US in the 80s and 70s respectively. More recently you had the Fukushima disaster which has completely changed our idea of what constitutes risk and safety and how we should deal with disasters because Japan was known to be one of the most risk averse societies they are supposed to have had the best safety mechanisms of any country in the world and yet something like Fukushima happened is one of the largest environmental disasters in recent history and therefore how are we as a country looking at nuclear issues because Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu in terms of its location is very similar to Fukushima because it is also located on the seacoast similarly Jethapur nuclear plant in Marashtra is also located on the seacoast some of you must have read in the newspapers about the sea rally that was taken out by fishermen in Jethapur against this particular project so there are environmental issues but there are also issues of displacement of local people who have livelihood activities there and who have to move out because of this so this is another arena for conflicts around natural resources that becoming important now finally and this is one of the important topics mentioned in the UGC syllabus this is the issue of resettlement and rehabilitation we've had a number of struggles against these famous ones being in Shingur and Nandigram in West Bengal the Mahua cement project in Gujarat resettlement issues related to various multipurpose dams mining projects airports ports and other infrastructure projects now essentially when we talk about resettlement and rehabilitation we focus mostly on the human aspect the human beings who have to be resettled and rehabilitated rarely do we talk about the environmental dimension of this and I would like you in your classrooms to bring in the environmental dimension in a larger way and this can be done in two ways one in the project area is as itself people may be displaced willingly or unwillingly voluntarily or involuntarily but there is also certain damaged cause to the environment because of the project as per the environmental protection act certain measures are to be taken both to minimize environmental damage as well as to compensate for it so if forests are destroyed to plant motories if a mangrove is destroyed you have to restore mangoes or mangrove somewhere else and so on this is rarely done or implemented okay so recently the national grind green tribunal has become taking up this area so that's one very important aspect of project management that we have to make the students aware of secondly once resettlement takes place usually it does not consider the environmental dependence of human populations so they may be given a house somewhere else they may be given training to take up jobs but what about water supply what about sanitation if these households who move to a different place have cattle sheep buffaloes cows is there grazing land there will it be developed if these are fisher for coa develop being displaced are they moved to another place where they can practice fisheries in in the case of the Dharma time for example a lot of farmers were given compensation in the form of money but not compensation in the form of agricultural land which they could cultivate or if agricultural land was given it was usually barren land not suitable for cultivation so the environmental dimension that that human beings are fundamentally dependent on environment and number two that a very large proportion of those who are displaced due to these kinds of projects are people who are called as ecosystem people by Gohar and Gadgil therefore when they are resettled and rehabilitated they have to be resettled and rehabilitated in the environmental terms also which is usually not taken care of by the various kind of policies at this point maybe I will just take one or two questions Siliguri Institute of Technology Darjeeling this is a very interesting and important lecture you are telling because the conflicts about the resources actually and as the population is growing so how it is possible to manage the land actually land there is a problem with land okay how is it possible to manage the land now this is you know one of the difficult issues we are facing today because land for whatever purpose is it is used was not predominantly thought of as an environmental issue it did not feature in much of the environmental debates because we're talking about land parceled out to individuals individual firms and so on so we most of the movements have been about large resources large water bodies forests and there have been collectives or large groups using these resources or these have been there have been disasters which affected large numbers of people but land was a private property owned by individuals or individual firms and this was used for many different purposes and historically it was very difficult to mobilize people when land degradation took place it was also difficult to identify what are the environmental consequences it's only recently that this has become an important issue like I was talking about the Plachimada Coca-Cola case where it was a private property land but then it had an impact on the surrounding areas both because of leaching of chemicals into the soil and because of excessive extraction of ground water so likewise in many other cases also now we are able to understand that certain kinds of activities on individual small parcels of land can have larger consequences for air pollution soil pollution water pollution and so on so I'm glad you asked this question because there is very little literature on this there's a lot of large amount of literature on land grab right now but again it's not quite focusing on the environmental dimension so I would I would suggest that all of you reflect and think about this and see how this can be discussed in a much more you know vibrant and comprehensive way with the students so as a result of these kinds of conflicts and struggles around resources we've had a very large number of environmental movements primarily these are to do with collective mobilization of people around issues of concern which links environment to livelihoods and life so here what we do in our classroom and what I suggest you also do is to use case studies to explain the relationship between all of those things that I mentioned on this slide environment what is a policy towards environment what kind of technology choice are making so if it is irrigation for example is it large dams median dams small dams village tanks rainwater harvesting structures issues of livelihood resettlement justice equity biodiversity so when we talk of resettlement and rehabilitation again the environmental dimension has to incorporate biodiversity issues so one of the criticisms in the case of large dams is that they do not compensate for the biodiversity laws because of submersion of land and due to these reservoirs what happens to common lands which are not owned by private or public waste land forests grazing land which provides sources of livelihood to people so some of these case studies I will mention in the next few minutes or so but you can search for more case studies of environmental movements again from your own region so that students can relate to them better as I mentioned a few slides ago there's been a long history of resistance to environmental encroachment and resource grab especially in countries like India but also in South America and other parts of Asia in Africa so the colonial period marked the first time when resources belonging to the people were taken over by a foreign entity on a very large scale and it was made illegal for the people who owned these resources to actually use those resources subsequently so the as you know the East India company the British East India company the Dutch East India company and so on came to India primarily because they saw that countries like India were rich in various kinds of resources whether these are minerals or plants spices textiles and so on so the primary objective of colonialism in the beginning was to exploit these resources take them back to their own countries so this problem of what is called as a resource curse in environmental studies continues and it is seen most obviously in the case of Africa some of you must have seen this movie blood diamond where you know range of international actors use very violent and illegal methods to get control of the diamond industry in many African countries in Congo especially but also we see that this kind of issue has been raised in the case of Jharkhand you know the mining scam in Jharkhand for example is something that reflects this so Jharkhand is a state which is extremely rich in resources but this resource has not benefited the population of Jharkhand which continues to be poor so there are external entities which come and make huge profits out of this so what we see normally as a blessing turns into a curse because of the lack of appropriate institutions to harness these resources for local development purposes where this does not happen there is resistance and there are environmental movements so the best example is the Chippko movement which as you know was a movement in the early 1970s where people in the Alaknanda valley in the early 1970s experienced the huge flood which was not happening before all the same scale and then it began to be repeated year after year and the local people then gradually realized that this was related to deforestation because trees as you know put down roots which prevent the soil from getting eroded once deforestation takes place the soil gets eroded flooding becomes much more easier and of course the cutting down of trees also meant there was less fodder available for the animals the cattle sheep goats on which local populations were dependent so how this idea of Chippko that is hugging the trees to prevent the trees from being cut when the companies were coming to cut the trees is explained in this YouTube video by Sundar Lal Bhaguna the picture that you see on the top is not documented in history but there are oral histories it's part of the narratives that people tell you about one of the kings in the state of Rajasthan who was cutting down trees on a very large number to build a huge palace for himself and then a lot of the local people hugged the trees when the the kings men came to cut the trees so this is some kind of a part legend part mythology but I myself heard these stories in villages in Rajasthan so there is some kind of history some kind of indigenous mobilization tradition and environmental ethic which became famous as Chippko but you hear similar stories from around India all over India so the problem started when the government began to hand over a lease of forest to paper mills and loggers to sporting goods manufacturers for making cricket bats baseball bats and so on the local people initially protested saying that you know these are a source of livelihood for us so Chandi Prasad Bhatt whom you see below initially his idea was that local people should be given access to this tree so that they can minute make half finished bats or some kind of paper which can then be given to companies for making finished goods so that local people get employment eventually they change their position because the women in these communities pointed out that deforestation or cutting down trees reduces fodder creates floods creates disasters and so on therefore they should the trees should not be cut that's it okay there's no negotiation on this so from a women's perspective what are the key issues related to the Chippko movement why is deforestation such a big problem for us so the picture that you see in the middle these are some of the women who are part of the original movement in the 1970s who are still living so 30 years later they were interviewed and this video shows that revisiting the Chippko movement so what is the women's perspective what did women have to gain from the forest because of which they were totally opposed to this kind of a project interestingly this video also talks about the long history of this that the British initially wanted to exploit resources here and the first round of major deforestation in the Uttarakhand may happen when for railways and roadworks large amount of trees were cut in in this particular region so there's a long history of deforestation which culminated in this kind of a movement more recently we have the forest rights act again this is a movement that is not commonly mentioned in textbooks because it is very recent but because it affects a very large number of people and because it's one of the few cases where successful legal and policy transformation has taken place with reference to environment in India it's a good case study to take up so as I was mentioning earlier both the British government and the government of India transferred forest resources to the government making it illegal to access any forest resource for people who were dependent on them for centuries therefore from the 70s and 80s onwards there was a significant movement by many environmental and forest activists to change the law to say that local people must have number one a say in managing the forest and number two some access to resources in such a way that the forests are not destroyed so this could be cultivation on the fringes of the forest in a small scale collection of fallen wood collection of minor forest produced like honey or other kinds of leaves collection of bamboo for making their houses fences roofs and so on finally the government of India agreed under the forest rights act was passed in 2006 there were significant impediments to implementation of this law in fact what I noticed was some of you have already sent me some questions about why there is so much of a problem in by implementing environmental legislation and how do we teach this to our students so this particular short 10 minute video which is made by the people of the village themselves a very interesting video unfortunately it's in Hindi that means that those of you who do not know Hindi will not be able to understand it but you can get somebody to translate it for you okay it's a it's so it it depicts the long struggle from the colonial time to the present to bring about this change in law and then to get this law implemented by the forest department even though in this particular case the environment minister of India and the chief minister of Maharashtra were supporting them so you can see that it's not a simple question of power it's also a question of the forest department which stood to gain huge amounts of money by maintaining an exclusive right over forests so this is also an experiment in resource governance so for the forest rights act for the first time says that every family which is defined as forest dependent which are mostly tribals and lower caste people in India can get two acres of land for cultivation and they can also access forest resources in many different ways so the transformation of governing forest as a resource which provided equitable access which ensured more sustainable use of the forest okay and reduced conflicts between the forest department and the people that is something that you can show through this video but through other kinds of case studies relating to the forest rights act the most famous environmental movement not only in India but around the world is the Narmada movement against the Sardar Sarovar project which is actually not one dam but a series of very large dams over 30 big dams and over a hundred medium and small dams on the Sardar Sarovar on the Narmada river across Madhya Pradesh Gujarat and Maharashtra so this also becomes a very interesting case study for students because it enables us to bring in the technology issue the environmental sustainability issue the development issue the resettlement issue okay and disasters so if you begin discussing things you will see that generally a lot of political leaders are trying to put a lot of wool over our eyes generally the projected benefits from large dams are given as these irrigation drinking water hydro electric power and flood control and so on the Indian context is such that rains actually fall only during certain months of the year during other seasons you need to provide irrigation drinking water if you try to release water for drinking irrigation you cannot maintain the reservoir level at a certain reservoirs at a certain level to generate electricity and with increasing climate and monsoon variability it's becoming very unpredictable how much water will flow into the reservoir so we see that dams rather than actors flood control mechanisms actually create more floods we've seen it in Thongapadra we've seen it in Kosi we've seen it in the case of many other dams as well so what you see is that there is a certain idea of how dam as a technology can be used and there is a certain reality and between these two there is a very big gap which results in a lot of adverse consequences both for the environment and for people one of the interesting things we can talk about here you know earlier we were talking about the inequalities between developed countries and developing countries and in the case of dams it's the opposite the developed countries have largely given up construction of large dams America and Australia together have decided to decommission over 700 dams okay largely because dams the largely because of economic issues they're simply not feasible the cost of desilitation is so high that after 40 years it becomes too expensive to maintain given the benefits whereas India and China are among the few countries which continue to go in for this technology okay so who is it benefiting what why are we going in for it does it make sense these are kind of questions you can discuss but and there is a sufficiently good material integrating the technology engineering and social science aspects in the case of dams so they become very interesting cases to provide a multidisciplinary perspective on environmental issues to students of course there are movements against other dams also Sunderlal Bahuguna has been involved in the anti teri dam movement also there are many of these dams are located in seismic areas which may has consequences for earthquakes and so on and there are also other kinds of positive examples there is a Bali Raja Dam in Maharashtra which is a dam people's dam so it's a different kind of dam built by people themselves and it has a different kind of technology engineering which is supposedly more you know environmentally sensitive we also have these alternatives in the form of small scale water solutions so as I had mentioned earlier historically south of the Vindhya's there have been these thousands and thousands of village water tanks the historian and mathematician DD Kosambi has written extensively about this so they provide drinking water for human beings and animals they provide source of irrigation and with new technologies some of the small scale water bodies also generate energy electricity like this village called Bilgaon where one of the activists of Narmada Bacha Vandolan in association with some of our alumnus in IIT Bombay developed hydroelectric power from these small water bodies this example was shown in the movie Swadesh where Shah Rukh Khan became a hero by providing electricity to small village the original heroes are from here in IIT Bombay and in the Narmada Bacha Vandolan on the right side is a project that we in IIT some of us together also constructed for a village close to Mumbai so there are a lot of small scale water solutions which provide the same development benefits without the adverse consequences of larger dams so I think when we talk to students it should not all be negative one can also look at alternative kind of technology solutions which are more socially economically as well as environmentally sensitive and in fact that's one of the things that movements like the NBA in Narmada Bacha Vandolan have been saying that they're not against technology they're not against dams per se they're against certain kinds of dams therefore other kinds of technologies I earlier mentioned this case so I will not go into this in detail those of you from Kerala may already be familiar with this so this is the famous case of private ownership versus public access to water the interesting thing about this was that for the first time this brought into the public domain the issue of groundwater so groundwater exploitation has been going on on a very large scale but there were any hardly any social movements around this because it was affecting individuals and it was not something that was visible because it was water in the aquifers underground which was getting scales but this was a the first case where a movement started against increasing exploitation of groundwater initially Coca-Cola won the case in the high court because there was no law against groundwater okay so eventually the government of Kerala came up with a law this rate of Maharashtra also has groundwater law now many other states also are coming up with laws there's also groundwater bill which has been pending with the central government for five six years okay so groundwater as an environmental issue is has become serious in recent years and those of you who are interested in using this as a case study the groundwater as a case study may take up this environmental movement against Coca-Cola in Kerala in this village called Plachibata we move now into this issue of the legal aspects now whether it is struggles or conflicts or environmental movements they can have a long term sustainable impact on how we manage the environment effectively only if they end up in the form of better laws and rules and regulations and institutions to manage these resources better and in fact many of these movements have supported the change of laws and regulations and the Forest Rights Act is one example that I've given you environment protection after Act of 1986 also emerged in response to the concerns of a lot of environmentalists about the impacts of various development projects in India post independence so we are moving into this aspect of the legal aspects of environmental issues in the UGC syllabus a number of acts environmental acts are identified and these are probably the most difficult to teach because unless you are a lawyer making a lot of money teaching what laws is very boring you have various sections subsections subsections all kinds of things and your head starts spinning once you go into all those sections and we can't just ask our students they are not going to be they may become lawyers earlier they are engineers they take up various kinds of careers it's not important for them to know what all these provisions while but a general awareness about the provisions is important which will be useful for their own careers but more than that what is required is to understand the spirit behind these laws why do these laws exist what are their motivations what kind of positive environmental actions do they promote what kind of negative environmental actions do they seek to prevent so those are the kind of questions which we should make students aware of so using these kinds of examples the forest rights act on environment protection act I mentioned here you can use both video as well as research material to teach students about what are the key issues what are the motivations for these laws to come into existence in the first place what kind of institutions did they set up at the village level district level or the national level are these laws being implemented properly if not do the resultant conflicts what is the role of science here so in the forest rights act for example the law follows the science but the in the interpretation sometimes the forest department forgets about science so if you look at this video on Lekha Menda village in Gadchuruli district you find a very interesting example where timber as we bamboo as we know is a species of grass as per biology as per botanical science however the forest department classified it as timber and they said therefore since timber cannot be cut by local people you cutting bamboo is a crime how even science can be subverted by people with vested interests is something that you see but what is also interesting for us you know like in the case of the large dams often there is spurious science sometimes there is good sensible science as well so as since you are going to be talking to engineering students it will be very interesting if you can bring in a discussion about what is the nature of science and technology that goes into the making of these laws and the implementation of these laws a similar thing happened with reference to the movement against GM crops genetically modified crops if you look at BT Brinjal for example now the previous environment minister in his great wisdom asked all kinds of scientists to give their opinion no physicists astronomers mechanical engineers to give their opinion on BT Brinjal and these wise people instead of saying we do not know much about it said yes this is a good technology you can approve it so the way in which decisions involving science are made is something that we should be very aware of and that we see in many of these environmental movements where such questions have been raised quite often about what is science and what kind of science are we talking about the when we talk about the outcome of these projects it is also important that we talk to them about certain kinds of positive reinforcing mechanisms or positive institutional mechanisms that ordinary people have access to because of these laws so social impact assessment did not exist before 1986 it was mandated by the Environmental Protection Act so that has been made use of by many movements to ensure that the adverse impacts of projects can be minimized so if we want to talk about re-resettlement and rehabilitation for example that owes its origin primarily to the mandatory requirement of social impact assessment in the Environmental Protection Act of 1986 but we also know that most of these laws exist largely in violation so many of these laws are violated some more than others which means that there are problems in ensuring effective implementation of these laws just as I said that you know it is very boring for us to teach students about the various provisions of the act it is equally boring for me to teach you about these different environmental legislation and acts therefore since all of you are already involved in this course I have put to you these two questions so we will learn from each other we have mutually learned from each other so these are the two questions I have put to you number one since enforcement of environmental legislation is a problem how do you teach this and interestingly I notice when I went back home after telling you about this assignment yesterday I notice that lot of you had already asked me this question that you are doing this in the classroom and we are finding it difficult to talk about why despite the existence of laws there are so many environmental problems some of you have asked me this question and posed it as a one of the difficulties or challenges in the classroom the second is how to teach environmental laws without pouring the students to death so I gave you some of the environmental laws I also gave you links to the actual laws themselves and asked you to do a preliminary reading and then tell us how either how you have addressed these challenges or how you think we should address these two issues okay now I am going to give you a couple of minutes to articulate your thoughts on these two issues maybe even write it down in your papers or notebooks and then I will call upon some of you to share your views on this with us and with the rest of the centers and participants let's start with Marathwada yes I got the question sir okay so we can teach this we can teach this about the environmental laws and everything by giving examples to the student in the way they like like they were like movies like the scenes in movies or they like the stories in movies or the stories that they would like to listen okay sir by giving some examples that they like or by the giving some examples by our day-to-day life example what what they yes MGM Nanded sir teaching this issue is not a problem in law because at the time of teaching these law points we have to first of all raise the issue what is the issue and depending upon that issue if we are explaining the issue first then the laws are there to solve the problem of that issue this is a style in which law faculties are teaching okay that's I think is an excellent strategy that you are following relating it to issues rather than to take them as standalone topics yeah anything else you wish to add sir one one more thing that regarding minerals I have given one question and that question that question is connected with this Samatha case that we want to know about the basic issues and what are its effect on the society and whether the judgment is implemented by the government or not okay okay good afternoon be an IT my question is how politics affects the environmental law or making of the laws yes okay thank you so that is a question okay somebody else national park and at the night time I heard the sound of bicycle approximate 200 bicycles they were going to the catching fish there and it take out the fish and the market so such example I was given to the student as well as okay thank you okay SGS Institute indoor good evening sir this is an answer to the second question which you asked which was how best to teach environmental laws to students without boring them so I think what we could do is first discuss a case of degradation taking place in the nearby areas and then ask them to draft a possible solution as to what do they think that could be done after that what we can do is to show similarity between the actual law and what they have given their thoughts about in that way they'll be able to appreciate the law in a better manner okay thank you that's an excellent way of doing this thank you okay Mepco good afternoon any change in the attitude of society will help the environment because our society having both educated and uneducated people are as well as the rural as well as urban areas the change in attitude will help the environment actually in the course what we find a few it will help the you're talking about a change in attitude change in attitude okay but how is that related to the questions that I asked you they're actually regarding the acts how to teach the acts to the students you know what was suggested by the previous college I do agree with that thinking that if students were given opportunity to think on their own and finding solutions from their side and comparing it with the existing law it will be highly interesting rather than just giving the law in a raw manner if we just give them opportunity to go for thinking it will be very good okay Shivakasi where you are located is one of the most polluted cities in India so yeah sure so I think especially this course is very important there so have you actually visited as teachers all of you and with your students have you visited some of these environmentally polluted areas yes sir we have industrial visits inside from the college when the student get into the college we are arranging for industrial visit through which the engineering students are given opportunity to know about what sort of pollution that is happening in and around the city so do these industries allow you to visit the polluted sites not only polluted sites yeah I mean industries so they will get an overall idea about the nature of pollution the pollutant and all okay I would like to ask one question because even as per the UGC syllabus for this course the last module includes field visits so how many of you actually you know carry out these field visits with your students please raise your hand those of you who carry out these fields please raise your hands okay everyone everyone feel to visit for weekly visit everyone will go sir everyone will do okay that's good yeah yes sir okay other than industrial visits any other places you visited yes sir the thing is what I mean is even in the first year students were given opportunity to visit industries fireworks matchworks match industry printing press which is located in and around Sibahasi sir no but is there a specific environmental component to these visits still now it was not there not there okay okay thank you thank you sir thank you this is NMA NMIMS Sherpur I would like to ask you a question that I asked the previous college teachers also how many of you are involved in going to environmentally degraded areas to experience at first hand the environmental problems with the students please raise your hands those of you who take the students on field trips to study environmental issues please raise your hand yes regarding these trips field trips for the students at various places regarding the environmental classes we are being visiting nearby industries over here regarding the recently we have visited a kind of a different different land over there and nearby industries textile industries okay so we are making we are bearing out such kind of okay see if you look at this environmental studies course the focus is on different dimensions and aspects of the environment apart from industrial pollution there's a focus on forestry solid waste management water pasture grazing land soil so so many different kinds of resources so other than industry do you also focus on other kinds of environmental problems regarding here at Sherpur we are having at Sherpur we are having a kind of a water conservation system over here that is called as Sherpur pattern and we are over here kind of a greater kind of a use of check dumps and those kind of check dumps are used for water conservation systems okay so we are also taking our students over there just okay that's very good and do any of you also have a response to the question that I had asked about how to teach these laws regarding that teaching the environment laws myself I have taught the subject and to explain the students regarding the importance of environmental laws over there we just kind of create kind of case studies real-life case studies where the kind of judgment has been issued by the Supreme Court of High Court okay and explaining the students regarding the importance of aspect of law and the implications to kind of not following the laws for the what kind of consequences can be faced okay so this creates an interest among the students okay Amrita School of Engineering Gollum I would actually get the students emotionally involved so that they are not bored and I would show them the field of an example of some kind of like some kind of violation of an environmental law for example some displacement and then that the students would actually really be compassionate and then I would discuss possible solutions and the most important thing is to get the students emotionally involved and really want to find out how to help these people and then they will also be interested in knowing which kind of laws there actually are okay thank you and it's the first time I'm hearing these two words compassion and emotion with reference to the environment and not surprisingly it's come from Amrita so because the concept of affect you know which is related to emotions is it's very important that students are not just sensitive but they can empathize with environmental issues so that they don't then also are able to comprehend the more serious technical social science and theoretical concepts so thank you for that response okay thank you so yeah I see a lot more of you have your hands up please do send me your responses via Moodle and we'll consolidate them and if any more responses are required from my side I'll make sure I respond to you via Moodle most of you have given your own responses to my questions there were two questions which required my responses so I'll just respond to them briefly in the five minutes that is available to us so one is about this Samatha judgment which one of you asked for in fact it is not really a well-known judgment though it deserves to be much better known so the Samatha judgment is in fact what is called as a case law though it has not been converted into a law because it is a Supreme Court judgment so it's the first judgment of its kind where the Supreme Court acknowledges that there is a development imperative of extracting minerals on the other hand it also acknowledges the fact that there is a lot of degradation of the environment and displacement of people during due to mining activities so it has tried to arrive at some kind of a via media solution where people's permissions are taken some kind of royalty is given to the local people and restrictions are imposed on how much of activities can take place what technology choices can be made by the different parties involved and the Supreme Court suggested that all the chief ministers of all states get together to begin implementing this case law this judgment that was never done as I mentioned to you earlier but if you do not want to talk only about violations and the negative aspects so here is a kind of a positive way of addressing these very difficult kinds of environment human conflict kind of situations so I will upload this judgment on model it's also you can search for it on the internet and get it but it's one of the few which laid the basis for a more consensual and discursive approach to solving these environmental kind of conflicts and for the first time in Orissa this judgment I think last year was put into practice where using our 73rd amendment meant to the constitution it was decided that every village will vote to decide whether this project should be permitted or not so people were given that permission they voted and on that basis the final decision was taken so there is a process that is available to us to make decisions in these kind of cases it's only when those processes are not followed do we have those kinds of conflicts and struggles secondly the political effects how politics affects making environment laws so that's very interesting question now I have one of my PhD students there who's working on coastal regulation zones the coastal regulation zone is not only the most violated law in India it's also the most amended law in India the fact that you have to amend a law 27 times in 20 years shows that there is a lot of politics affecting it okay so there have been this but but also the CRZ has had much more public consultation both with experts and with ordinary people so it shows both the negatives and positives of developing environmental legislation in a democracy like India where a lot of public consultation has come in and people's views have been heard including people directly dependent on resources like the fishing communities for example living in coastal areas on the other hand there have also been a lot of pressures in the last 20 years to set up a lot of development projects in coastal areas tourism projects and so on and because of which constantly there is this law has been amended to dilute its provisions okay so the effect of politics is most visible here in the case of most other laws at least in principle the law has not been subject to much political influence and there has been a lot of influence of experts technical experts people working with resources environmental scientists and so on in the making of those laws but politics is seen in the form of violation of these laws not in the making of these laws so with that I will stop here