 So, let me also welcome I am going to take about 4 or 5 lectures and I am going to focus unit 6 and 7 of the UGC syllabus that is social issues on the environment and population in the environment, but there will be a spillover with topics from other modules other units to the UGC syllabus as well. So, I would like to start with a brief description of the context for social science and humanities perspectives in an inter or multi disciplinary course on environmental studies for undergraduate students. So, all of you will know that unit 1 of the UGC syllabus specifically mentions that we are to impart to the students the multi disciplinary nature of environmental studies which means that we have to cover as many different aspects from as many disciplines as possible and therefore there is also the inclusion of topics from the social sciences especially from economics, sociology and so on. I would like to mention here that there is some recent work by 3 very famous sociologists Anthony Giddens who is British, Scott Lash is also British and Ulrich Beck is German. They have been writing quite a lot on the idea of risk emanating from various kinds of new technologies, but also from climate change, disasters and so on. And one of the things they are saying is that human beings have to become more reflexive that means whether it is a small or a big decision in their lives whether I have to take a bus or a taxi, what food I eat, what kind of clothes I wear to very large decisions about production process, services, use of resources and so on. Every single thing on every single issue every single human being has to reflect and think before they make a decision. Business as usual which used to happen some decades ago where we could unthinkingly go about our daily activities is no longer possible because every single action accumulates through the actions of thousands and millions of people to result in certain kinds of disasters, impacts on the environment and so on and climate change is a good example of that. So this reflexivity is a concept that comes primarily from the social sciences and humanities where it is not enough to collect information, interpret them, analyze them, come out with results. We also need to find out what are the broader implications of that knowledge that we have and that is one of the reasons why this course has been made into a multidisciplinary course. Secondly, we all know that technology is a cultural response to all kinds of human problems including the very basic problem of food. We all have to eat at least 3 times a day to live. So how to get that food, where to get that food from, who will produce it, how will it be produced using what means, what resources? To other kinds of everyday problems including transportation, protecting ourselves from the environment by wearing clothes, by having a house for ourselves, to other kinds of issues like comforts beyond our basic needs. Now different societies at different points of time used technology in many different ways. Some have chosen to use technology in very minimal ways, others have chosen to use technologies in very complex and in very big ways also. So India is a country of contrasts where you have very high tech agriculture take place, you have very low technology agriculture also take place, both can be sustainable or unsustainable depending on the context you are looking at. So the purpose of this kind of a course is to inform students that there are multiple choices they can make, both with reference to which technology to use as well as with reference to whether to use technology at all. Gandhi for example told us that hospitals have to go, doctors have to go. By that he meant that doctors and hospitals represent a problem in society that only if there is a lot of illness and sickness in societies you need a lot of doctors and hospitals. The solution to the problem of health is not only doctors and hospitals it is also sanitation which prevents many diseases and illnesses from occurring in the first place. So you can also address the problem of health in a different way, not only through technologically addressing a medical problem after it has arrived. So the choice of going for or against the technology not choosing a technological option, choosing a non-technological option, choosing a behavioral option all of these are very important. Finally we also have the Indian context because just as many models of development of technology, economic ideals, philosophical ideals all of these have come to us from the west in the last 200 years after British rule. It is not that there were no ideas on these things before in India and there are certain unique conditions specific in India. So the large amount of poverty for example, places of illiteracy, the high population density, resource care cities and so on. So how do you ensure that we create environmental awareness without imposing models from outside which may not be very appropriate to our context? That requires an understanding of the Indian social economic cultural context also. So because of these reasons there is also this module from the social sciences which is incorporated into this course on environmental studies. In this particular trading program what we are going to do is to draw from the disciplines of economics, philosophy and sociology because these have most to do with the topics mentioned in the UGC syllabus, issues of ethics, issues of justice, issues of the role of individual morals and so on. And these are also the disciplines which cover environmental studies syllabus in IIT and as I mentioned in the beginning especially units 516 of the UGC syllabus but also parts of units 1, 2 and 4 which have an interface with these units. Now when we say that we ought to incorporate a social science perspective in this course on environmental studies, we first need to know what are these social science issues, what do we mean by social science issues, what are nature and social science issues. So let me give you a few examples here of why it is important to adopt this social science perspective and what are the issues that we incorporate. Firstly, nature and environment are social science issues not only biological, zoological, chemical, atmospheric or purely environmental scientific issues because our perceptions, the way in which we look at nature and society, they are governed by our meanings and beliefs. So for example, in Indian society and many societies around the world, many objects of nature are also regarded to be sacred, they have a religious significance. That is the perception of nature. There are some societies in which they regard nature as an object purely to be exploited for human beings beyond economic value, there is no other value for it. There are some societies in which people live very high energy consumption lives which can cause an enormous amount of damage to the environment. There are other societies in which people consume a lot of less energy that could be related to lifestyle, it could be related to the way in which they look at environment, it could be related to scarcity context of resources. So people attach different kinds of meanings and beliefs to nature whether it is rainfall, water, forests, whatever. Therefore, number two are responses to environmental problems depend upon social structures and relationships. So we know there are countries like the US and present Australian government which even refuse to believe that climate change is taking place, that human beings have an impact on global warming. So it depends on who is in power, which kind of ideology they believe in, what kind of beliefs they have. The previous Australian government was in favor of measures to mitigate climate change, the present government is not in favor of it. So you can see who is in power, what ideology they have, what institutions they support determines how people respond to environmental problems. It can also depend on what kind of attitude they have to the environment. So one of my students is sitting there who is working on fisheries issues and he knows this case study of fisher folk outside of Mumbai in Navi Mumbai whose common areas of fishing have been encroached upon for the Navi Mumbai airport, by the SIDCO, Urban Development Corporation, by the Jawaharlal Airport Trust and so on. Now these communities who are not very scientifically literate, who are not very highly educated have been able to show the enormous environmental damage because of these actions. Why is it that experts with high educational qualifications sitting in these organizations did not have the same perspective on the environment? How come they were able to design and implement programs which cause damage to the environment? So the National Green Tribunal has actually find these organizations a total of 90 crores of rupees. So what we are talking about is the way in which people in power run the institutions without having certain kinds of environmental awareness or consciousness. Therefore addressing these institutional issues is also a social science problem because even though technologies are available to construct these projects in a less environmentally damaging way, they still did not go for it. Why did they not go for it? That is the question. Number three, we all know that human societies are ultimately dependent upon natural life support systems, what we call as the biosphere or the global ecosystem. And number four, how we organize ourselves as human beings is shaped by our material interventions into nature. What this means is that the kind of skills we have, the kind of technologies we have, the kind of work we do, these determine how we organize ourselves, what kind of corporations we form, what kind of firm, what kind of associations, educational institutions, all these are determined by labor and technology. For example, this kind of organization of education through this technology where you are sitting in remote places all over India and I am standing here in IIT, this is a form of social organization of education which is facilitated by certain technologies which was not available 10 years ago, 20 years ago. But this comes with a price. All this equipment to set up requires a lot of use of resources. This air conditioning contributes to global warming. So, every form of social organization which is facilitated by the work we do and the technologies we use has an implication for the environment. Therefore, desirable as this model, maybe we need to find out what is the implication for the environment so that we can then work out alternative mechanisms. So, what I do in the classroom when we teach students is to start with this idea about how social sciences first relate to environmental issues. How do we think of nature? How can we think of human nature relationships? So, there are some people who are very distant from nature and the environment, mostly people in cities who are not very affected if the environment is degraded in the short term, in the long term they may be but not. There are other communities who have a very close relationship with nature who are affected immediately there is a threat to the ecosystem like Fisher folk for example. So, if there is coastal erosion or sea level rise, they are the first to be affected. If there is global change, global climate change, farmers will be affected more than you and me sitting in the cities. So, different people have coped with nature in different ways, they have different mechanisms, different technologies and that is an important aspect of our understanding of nature. Some people also argue that nature is socially constructed that is while nature as a physical object may exist out there, our understanding of it depends on what we can get from nature, how we look at nature not from an animals point of view, not from an insects point of view but from a human perspective. So, very often we forget that we are also part of nature. We talk about human nature relationship as though we are different, we are outside of nature with though even though we are part of nature. How does this affect the way in which we relate to nature? So, many of the wildlife conservation projects in India for example, many of them have failed because they thought human beings are not part of nature, they would be kept outside of the parks. So, the lion sanctuary in Sariska is a famous example where not a single tiger lion was left, it is a complete failure because human beings were not allowed. So, gradually we have learnt that human beings are part of nature and they have a role in maintenance of nature and therefore these relationships are something we have to understand. Nature can be a physical object, it is also a cultural object like I have the picture of the Pawai lake which is right next to us. So, the Pawai lake offers ecosystem services, it is a source of recreation, it is a source of livelihood for fishermen, Pawai lake we enjoy the beauty, the aesthetics and so on. So, there are cultural as well as physical aspects of nature which we need to understand and how this affects the way in which we address environmental issues. In the Pawai lake for example, there is a fishing anglers association who do not want the fishing communities who do fishing for a livelihood because they think they are damaging the lake. Say likewise the fishing community things that the anglers association has no business being here because they have no real interest in the maintenance of the lake. So, all the different stakeholders have different perspectives on nature. So, these tell us that every natural object, every aspect of the environment has a social context, a political context and economic context, they have an economic value, they are governed in particular ways, there are certain rules and regulations and so on. So, making students understand these is what I first do in the classroom by using different examples and the Pawai lake is just one example, you can use practically you can use the Ganga river for example, which is has such rich historical significance for a country like India. You can talk about forest, you can talk about lightning, you can talk about practically anything, you can talk about something like fish, which is of ornamentation, which is an object of amusement, it is a food, it is trade, it is commodity and so on. Then I go on to tell the students that there is an evolution in the way in which human beings look at nature and broadly we identify three stages or phases. An initial phase where human beings had very little knowledge and very little control over nature and they worshiped nature as being sacred. That was the phase when there was least environmental degradation or degeneration. The second phase was when human beings thought that nature is wild and disordered and civilized and it should be controlled, dominated, tamed, cultivated, civilized. That is the moment when nature started taking revenge on us. The moment you try to control something, there is a reaction to that. The third phase is when we overcame that stage to understand that we are part of nature and we have to live with nature. At different stages, what human beings did was to regard environment in utilitarian or instrumental perspective that is as an object of use for us or in non-utilitarian ways as nature having importance and significance in itself. That it is necessary for nature to exist not just because they are of use to us. So, these changing ideas and perceptions of nature are something that the students need to understand. Otherwise, there is a danger that even if we have excellent awareness about environmental problems, even if we have very good technical solutions to problems, we may end up adopting one solution universally for a variety of problems. Because the context is very important to understand that is what social science can give us. So, thinking sociologically or from a social science perspective about nature means that we ask the two questions that I put on the slide there. How has our understanding of nature and environment changed over a period of time and why did these changes happen? So, why is it that there are so many people in the world, thousands and millions including presidents, experts, scientists who do not think that climate change is a big problem? Who do not give adequate importance to environmental issues? Why is everything else given precedence over environmental issues even though we know that our neglect of the environment is causing huge amount of disasters for us? That is something that we should try and ask ourselves and this is where social science humanity subjects help us understand this in better. Now, going back to that first question, one of the ways in which we as human beings can ensure that social sciences together with science and technology disciplines can address issues like climate change and so on is to have a better awareness of these issues that I have mentioned on the screen. So, you can see I have mentioned here several terms conflicts and struggles over natural resources which we see in India quite a lot, issues of access. Some people have access to like us in Bombay 24 hours electricity, lot of water. Yesterday I was in Ahmednagar district 200 kilometers from here where people do not have water and no electricity. Issue of equity that whatever resources are available, everybody should have at least access to minimum resources so that they can meet their basic needs. The question of justice that we should not meet our resource needs by taking resources away from somebody else. The question of what institutions, rules, regulations are essential and appropriate so that we can address these problems well. So, institutions, governance, justice, equity, access, conflicts, struggles these are some of the major concepts which come from social sciences which we try and incorporate into environmental studies and there is plenty of literature some of which I have uploaded on Moodle already. How these are to be used is something that we will talk about in the next few lectures and we will be relating them to the topics mentioned in the UGC syllabus. So, but we are giving you this broader understanding because what is given in the UGC syllabus is a very minimal and very focused specific understanding of these issues. Here we are trying to say that you as teachers need a broader understanding of these concepts so that you can explain them better to the students. So, Ramchandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil are two environmental scientists. Ramchandra Guha is a sociologist and historian. Madhav Gadgil is an ecologist and environmentalist from the Indian Institute of Science. Together they have written a very large number of very famous books on environmental issues in India and one of the things they say has a lot of importance or resonance for the social science perspective on environment in India. They are saying that in countries like America the main environmental issue is around conservation whereas in country like India countries like India it is not conservation it is social conflicts around natural resources. You see there are conflicts between states Tamil Nadu and Karnataka over Cauvery. There are conflicts between countries India and Bangladesh over river water sharing. There are conflicts between villages between districts between people individuals households farmers everybody on every kind of resource whether it is forests or agricultural land or rivers or oceans and seas you can look at the poxthrates conflict over fisheries between India and Sri Lanka for example. So, when there are so many conflicts around natural resources it indicates that the environment has to be regarded the environmental problem has to be regarded from a particular perspective that there are these populations who are heavily dependent on resources for their livelihood and living and any kind of changes in rules regulations institutions technology way of accessing these resources impacts these people. Recently for example last week a very large number of fishing households took out a processional sea rally against the Jaitapur nuclear plant because it is going to displace them. So, there are conflicting demands for resources. So, more than conservation then so conservation comes when people have met all their basic needs and they want conservation of resources as an object of recreation beauty aesthetics and so on. We have not yet reached that stage we are at a stage where millions and millions of people are dependent on natural resources they will not be able to eat if the resources are degraded. Therefore, understanding this particular issue of social conflict and struggle around resources is fun one of the fundamental social science contributions to environmental studies in India and you can see some of those examples of river water disputes and disputes about mining area and Posco in Orissa the controversy around water in Delhi you can see Arvind Kejriwal's picture there. So, as teachers we must anticipate and prepare for resistance from the students some students will be very passionate they will immediately appreciate the need for environmental studies they will be very interested and you will enjoy teaching them that is what you know makes you go on as a teacher instead of taking up some other profession but there will also be some students who will want to know that I have come here to study instrumentation chemical engineering mechanical civil why are you forcing me to learn environmental studies and within environmental studies you are forcing me to study social issues population justice equity why do I need to study all this but there are also other issues some students will resist because many of the issues that we talk about with reference to the environment are subjective issues their ethical issues their moral issues and these are subjective aspects your idea of what is ethical may be different from what is mine your idea of morals may be different from what is mine your idea of what is an appropriate lifestyle may be different from mine. Some people may want to live a very high consumption lifestyle and some may not but the choice that you make has an impact on the rest of society if you decide to have three cars in your family it has an impact on the rest of society if you decide to live in a 27 story bungalow it has an impact on the rest of society. Now engineering students work with technical problems in different fields when we point out that some of these technological solutions may have implications for equality for access for justice then it is questioning their own choices they have made in terms of career and that applies to us also that applies to all of us. So when I when an architect is designing a building and you tell that person that what you are doing is harmful for the environment that you have to come up with an alternative design you are questioning the qualifications the education the knowledge the skills of that person the same thing applies to many other things other specializations also this does not mean that their engineering is bad or technology is bad it is particular kinds of technology and engineering that we have been taught that have to be modified keeping in mind environmental concerns. Therefore we are not just saying incorporate social science issues into engineering education in terms of ethics equity justice and so on but how to come up with alternative designs. So some years ago for example when there was this controversy about the Narmada dam and the huge amount of displacement it was causing engineers also came up with alternative designs where it would not cause so much displacement so much damage so much destruction and so on. So it is possible for us to come up with alternative designs that is the objective of point to do these kind of issues not to say that development is important it does not matter if people suffer. How can we bring about development without making the environment or people suffer if we cannot decide that then we are not human beings is not it how are we different from animals then if we cannot think about these kind of things. So the pedagogic issue that is when we teach environment studies after we prepare for resistance from students why they are resisting why they do not want to accept the importance of environmental issues. We can make connections between the different technological choices what kind of policies is the government favoring or not favoring. Why is it that many countries in the world are still not favoring solar energy or wind energy. Obviously there are economic reasons because they stand to make a lot of money from oil and not favoring these kinds of technologies. Why is it that the United States since one of you mentioned it is putting a lot of pressure on India not to go in for solar. How do they benefit from it. So there are broader socio-economic and ethical issues there are technological options and there is policy. How can we bring all of these together. So then if you go to the website of the Narvada Bacha Vandol in the NBA they themselves for example have come up with a lot of alternative technology options both for water management and for even for generating electricity. This movie Swadesh which some of you may have seen has this example of Shah Rukh Khan generating electricity from a small stream which actually is based on a real-life story which is designed by an IT Bombay alumnus in a village called Bilgaon in Madhya Pradesh. So there are different kinds of technological choices possible. In most of India south of the Vindias Maharashtra downwards you see for thousands of years we have depended on village water times as a source of irrigation. So why is it that suddenly they become unpopular and then we construct large dams. Is it because of corruption issues is it because of money issues is it because of lack of imagination. So what we are trying to say is not to criticize technology but to think of different technological options and what are the implications of each technological option from an environmental perspective and from an ethics and social justice perspective. This can be done if each of you as teachers take up cases, cases of whether it is Bhopal or Jethapur or nuclear energy or solar energy or large dams and so on. Go into the different kinds of controversies conflicts find out what are the different kinds of choices available so that the engineering students end up being better engineers that is our objective. Okay so what we plan to do now is that in introducing society and environment themes into the environmental studies course we should create an a context which students can relate to is they find appropriate. So in terms of a teaching strategy this is what we normally do in the classroom. One thing you can do is to show icons, people who are inspiring figures, people who are very well known and respected in society but who also had very important things to say on environment and religion can be a source. So in India we know for example that most of the bhakti saint poets like Santhukaram or most of the Sufi poets they were not only for more equality in society they also wrote a lot of songs about the importance of the environment. That is one way in which students are able to relate to environmental issues coming from the Indian context. It is not just an abstract concept which is taken from textbooks written by somebody whom they do not know from a different society or a different context or like his Holiness of the Dalai Lama who is not only an advocate of peace and tolerance but also of for you know against degradation of the environment that human beings have a responsibility to the environment. In all religions you can see it if you look at some of the sayings of the prophet Muhammad you can find the respect given to trees and other natural objects for example you can see it in Sikhism you can see it practically in every religion that there was a time when the great deal of respect was given to the environment that creates some kind of a connect to people with the environment it is not just a purely technical issue it is not an abstract concept it has an everyday relevance to us. In the case of India of course we have the inspiring figure of Gandhi who much before all the modern environmentalists had this environmental consciousness because his whole idea of development was based on conserving nature was based on not destroying the environment and you know he began to wonder about what would happen to a country like India big country like India if we followed the consumption pattern of western countries if every by every family in India had two or three SUVs what will happen it is going to be a disaster is not it that is what partly happened to China for example before they realized and started turning things around and not just in terms of thinking in terms of a lot of practical experiments for example organic agriculture is something we talked about he talked about it 70 years ago the harm that chemical fertilizers can cause to us which is established by science is something he spoke about quite a long time back the problems with soil fertility which farmers in Punjab and Haryana are dealing with and are unable to deal with and are committing suicide in very large numbers what are we doing to the forests. So all these kinds of practical issues is something that there has been a lot of thinking in the Indian context itself so but this is also related to a different development model so what we are trying to say is that when we talk to students about environmental issues from a social science perspective we should relate it to specific kinds of development and non-development other cultural kind of perspectives which also have an importance in talking about these kind of issues it is not purely technical issues what I also do in the classroom and what you can do is to take other very inspiring figures from the contemporary world and you can choose I am just choosing some examples but it is up to you you can choose a different set of people but it is important that you have diversity here men and women people from India and the West people from Africa from different fields so that you convey something to the students about the contributions of these people on environmental issues while keeping in mind issues of economic growth development poverty all of those kind of issues. So I conduct these kinds of quizzes where I just give the name of a person and ask them who this person is what this person is famous for some people know most people do not know this is one way of you know also engaging the students otherwise they just fall asleep in the class especially with these kinds of air conditioning environment so to keep people students awake and make sure that they participate is to conduct these kinds of instant quizzes give these names of inspiring people ask them who they are and then explain to them. Now in this lecture I do not have enough time to show you these videos and I have given those links there so you can also show them those videos. This video for example about Wangari Mathai who won the Nobel Prize the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on the environment. So she talks about how planting trees her organization was responsible for planting millions and millions of trees in Africa but she talks about how this is related to issues of democracy in Africa this is related to issues of development to addressing poverty along with environmental management. So linking these different things is what we are trying to do in this course not just talking about environment for its own sake which can put people off why should the environment be protected when people are starving. So the fact that these things are related that Africa has been suffering from conflicts violence genocide dictatorship that those are also related partly to environmental issues when there is environmental degradation people are starving and people are starving they pick up guns. They try to grab resources from others so it is not so one has to understand that there are connections between these different issues and that is what she tries to explain in this very short video which you can watch online. Likewise one can also show pictures of famous technocrats since these are engineering students one could show examples of people like Harish Hande who is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and who started this company called Selco Solar which is one of the biggest solar energy companies in India and he was awarded this Max Sai award. Again this video if you see and many other videos of interviews with him exist he works mostly in Karnataka and Bihar and you can see he talks about how solar energy is not just about clean energy it is also about providing livelihoods to people. It is also about development it is about income generation all of these kinds of things not simply about protecting the environment. You can bring in people like Vandana Shiva who is again very well known in India for her work on problems related to genetic engineering genetically modified organisms agricultural biotechnology and so on some of which have been banned in many countries in the world they were highly controversial issues but more importantly she has been working on many other issues environmental issues relating to water relating to biodiversity she has this organization called Navadanya and her work on what is called as eco feminism which will take up later that is the role of women in conservation because when we talk about environment in the abstract we forget that men and women have had different roles and if that men have had a greater role in environmental degradation than women and women have had a more caring and nurturing role is what she is saying in this very famous book that she wrote called eco feminism again you can go to this YouTube video to watch this interview with her there are hundreds of videos interviews with her and you come to know what exactly she is saying when she is talking about the role of women in nurturing the environment or these are the famous persons from the Lal Bhagwana who needs no introduction to all of you who became famous to the Chipko movement but who has also been very much involved in protecting the ecology of the Himalayas the he has been involved in the anti-theory dam movement for example so unfortunately people did not listen to him which is why we had that severe Uttarakhand landslide and crisis two years ago flooding he has also won a lot of awards again this video is very interesting because in this he gives a very beautiful definition of what is sustainability he talks about the difference between temporary economy and permanent economy temporary economy is where we talk about short-term profits permanent economies where income and employment is guaranteed to people for a very long time in the future that is what sustainability is about he also talks about the history of the environmental movement and interestingly also about how men and women had different views about how to protect the forest and they had different needs from the forest okay one can also talk about famous industrial disasters so the quiz that you conduct the impromptu small-scale classroom quiz that you conduct can be also about disasters so Minamata is something that many people are aware of that's what I see in the classroom more than these famous people they know about these disasters so that itself is reflecting of something isn't it that students know more about disasters than those who have done positive work that's probably because all the movies Hollywood movies are about disasters are not about good people doing great work and media which wants to focus on disasters so Minamata as many of you will know is the first incident of large-scale industrial pollution and its effects on human beings and of course river river in ecology fish birds and so on there are very interesting videos but be careful what videos you show to the students on this because some of them are very disturbing because they show human beings in you know having epilepsy fits in entering into paroxysms mental illness and all of that so this was a very devastating kind of disaster which had a lot of adverse impacts on people and on animals also so the videos can be very disturbing so please be careful while choosing the videos to show to the students this is a combination of an environmental disaster a creeping disaster and the positive effects of a person so Rachel Carson was a scientist in the US who in 1964 published this book called the silent spring which was the first comprehensively documented study of the impact of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on human health and of course in India we are seeing it endosulfan is a famous case in Kerala but we have seen it in Punjab Haryana also where years and decades of using chemical fertilizers has had impact both on the soil and on human beings so what I am suggesting here is that to grab the attention of the students in the first place showing these kinds of examples conducting these kinds of quizzes in the classroom both engages the students and draws their attention to different kinds of environmental issues and the linkages with issues of development economy technology and so on one can also use current examples so this is from the coordinators workshop that we conducted in March where I just took up newspaper items from the previous day so you can also see that environment is not just an issue that comes up once in a while when once in 40 years when Bhopal disaster happens it is not in a once in a lifetime even it is an everyday event everyday something or the other is happening and somebody is being recognized for his or her achievements in environmental issues so both positive and negative issues from daily newspapers is something that you can use to sensitize students to current and contemporary environmental kind of issues and you can see that citation from the Hindu newspaper talks about Madhav Gadgil s work not only for the preservation of the ecosystem but also for his work on how these are related to issues of participation local communities one can also do simple assignments in classes so those of you who have the time can do these kinds of assignments or activities in class in general one of the things that we are trying to do is to say that there are some simple solutions so the media or newspapers or you know neighborhood associations tend to have simplistic solutions but we have to understand that there are no simple solutions to this and it depends the solution depends on the context also so yesterday I was telling you I was in Ahmed Nagar district 200 kilometers away and we were being served tea in a village in cups in plastic cups so somebody was asking you know why are they giving us plastic but we must remember that in that village there is no water to drink where will they wash the cups from so one cannot just you know simply think of plastic versus paper paper may be better in terms of biodegradability but paper cuts down a lot of trees some people say coolers or clay cups are better but clay is burnt to make those cups it takes 2000 years to degrade and clay is the top soil if you remove the clay there is no soil fertility to grow crops so there are complex technical scientific issues behind all of them one should not go in for very simplistic solutions sometimes plastic can be good it depends on what methods you have for disposal for recycling okay same thing with chemical and organic chemical mechanisms in agriculture can lead to very high levels of productivity but it also has long-term effects from the soil and human health organic may be good but we do not yet have done sufficient research on organic to increase productivity to a high level so that we can eliminate chemical altogether we also have the imperative of feeding people so there are all these different kinds of aspects that have to be weighed likewise with fossil fuels or biofuels biofuels are supposed to be good because you can keep growing crops which produce fuel all the time but Brazil has already found out that this is not sustainable because you are taking away very large numbers of acres of land for biofuels how are you going to grow food to feed the people okay and biofuels also are not native to most soils in the world and they can cause damage to the soil because they do not grow organically in the soil in most parts of the world they are artificial also okay so before we label something as eco-friendly environment friendly and so on one has to teach students to think critically about all these different choices that they make otherwise one can end up creating more problems in the in the name of eco-friendly having told you a few aspects related to what kind of pedagogies we follow in the classroom that is how we can try and grab the attention of the students what activities we can conduct in the classroom so that they learn to think about environment in a different way let me come to some of the topics that we have to cover in these modules some of these will be a repetition of what has earlier been already told to you by professor Nikhil and others but that is fine okay there is no harm in repeating things because the more we drill it to the students the better and some of these things have to be repeated more than once so that students get it and there are different ways in which we convey the same aspect to go from unsustainable to sustainable development what do we do how do we understand environmental issues that is one of the things that we want to convey to students isn't it so there are different ways in which we can think of unsustainability and sustainability so one of the things that we want to convey to the students is that there is no one unique concept of sustainable development that in fact that goes against the spirit of sustainability if you think one solution will fit all can be used by all communities all populations all countries in the world that is not going to work because the climate is not the same the soil type is not the same the water availability is not the same the resource availability is not the same same solution will not work everywhere so when we talk of sustainable development we are also talking that this is the importance of the social science perspective we are also talking about giving choice to people so that is related to freedom and democracy if I say that what I think of as sustainable is good and I impose it on you that means I am taking away your freedom okay so that cannot be good also for society because if in the name of expertise we impose certain things on others and that expertise has problems it can be unsustainable in the long run that's happened many times in the world so at one point of time a lot of experts believe that chemical fertilizers are good for the world even though other people were not agreeing with them that was imposed on the rest of the world and we are suffering for it now so is it sustainable development mean a choice of technologies that there are different technologies we have to choose one wisely does it mean solution to problems or does it mean prevention of problems from occurring in the first place does it mean lifestyles choices that we have to make okay that is the most difficult part okay the sociologists have done a lot of research to find out that awareness does not necessarily translate into environment friendly practices because we are not willing to give up certain of our lifestyle practices whether it is food or clothing or transportation many other things energy use okay so should it be looked on as a philosophy so we know there are a lot of indigenous communities around the world who have unique philosophies about environment who actually may be more successful at managing the environment than others who have more expertise is it a question of ethics only is it a question of attitude is it a question of economic model so some people would argue that it is all a question of pricing so if you want to conserve resources price it very highly but what happens to equity issues those who cannot afford it so to prevent wastage of water you can price water at a very high level but water is a basic need what about poor people who cannot afford high prices so the basic question then is that in going from unsustainable to sustainable development the sociologist Ramchandra Goha asks he has written this famous book called how much should we consume okay where he talks about different countries and the question asked by the faculty from petroleum and university is something he asks the country like the United States for example has a culture of using very high amount of resources very high energy consuming society is it really necessary to consume so much can we not lead comfortable lives without using so much resources okay what are the consequences of those choices when we consume so much who suffers sometimes we also suffer isn't it if we consume too much food we are the ones who suffer okay but there are other people also who suffer therefore Ramchandra Goha and mother of Gadgil in this book ecology and equity they are saying sustainability is not just about maintaining consumption levels at a particular level it is also to ensure that while doing so you ensure everybody has equal access to resources to meet their basic needs otherwise it is sustainability at the cost of justice that some people meet their resource other people don't have any resources at all but that can also be manipulated so what I am trying to do here is that we when we talk to students not just give them information but try to make them think about different ways of thinking about these things so don't just take what Gohan Gadgil are saying as sacred scripture okay so we can say that equity is important for addressing poverty is important but that can be manipulated also some countries will say our people are still poor so don't ask us to reduce our contribution to climate change we will do it after we reach your consumption stand but then if India and China reach the consumption level of America there will be no world for us to live in okay how can we address the needs of the poor without following the same methods as other countries have done is what we have to think of and that is where even technology has a role what kind of technologies do we need what kind of science do we need what kind of basic research do we need what kind of philosophies do we need is what we have to think about so basically the whole idea here is not just to pass on information about different theories and concepts from the social sciences it is to suggest that there are multiple perspectives of understanding sustainable development the idea of sustainable development of a fishing community in Konkan region of Maharashtra may be very different from the idea of sustainability of a bureaucrat sitting in Delhi okay or of an energy scientist or of an architect all of these different perspectives are equally valuable and important how can we bring them all together to arrive at a common strategy for sustainability and this is where we have to avoid silos with that professor Fatak has been talking about silos what we are talking about is separation of our different subjects and disciplines into very distinct bounded kind of areas and saying I have nothing to do with civil engineering civil engineers have nothing to do with energy science energy science has nothing to do with philosophy that will not work that is the whole point of this course of environment studies is to break down these boundaries inside of that we all have something to learn from each other okay and that is something that is extremely important to convey to the students and that we cannot do unless we are convinced of it ourselves now this is a diagram that is very famous it must have been told to you before also you find it in many textbooks the common three ring sector view of sustainable development what I want to do and what we should do to our students is to learn to criticize this because that follows the silo approach what is happening is we think that the economy needs certain measures society needs certain behavioral changes environment can be managed in a different way and everything will be alright it will not be alright okay what we need instead is to have this approach an embedded nested kind of approach where environment is the larger superset within which society exists within which there is an economy economy is necessary for people to survive once we look at sustainable development in this nested form then we begin to understand what is the importance of each and which solution should come where how they can all be interrelated from this perspective sustainable development has been looked at in different ways so in teaching the students for example this article is something that I found very useful by Hopwood Miller and O'Brien where they are trying to map different approaches that there is no one unique we all have memorized the Brunthland commission definition of sustainable development isn't it all of us know it by heart you wake us up in the middle of the night we will know it that is only one way of looking at it but there are multiple approaches so ordinary people will have a particular perspective people who are starving will have a particular perspective people who have a lot of money will have a different approach so there is a multifaceted approach people have need to have the courage to make different kinds of choices it can be very simple kind of thing so one of our colleagues earlier was saying that you know if he or she is cycling around the office some people make fun of you so what is wrong with cycling two of us every day people think that if you wear certain kinds of clothes you don't look smart enough so you have to wear only certain kinds of branded clothes you have to wear a suit even in this hot weather like Mumbai otherwise you know people will not give you respect so we have to have the courage to make the right kind of sustainable choices and first of all understand that there are different choices that everybody does not have to follow the same path that is what they are trying to say in this that there are different approaches we have to select one which is suitable for us and from that there is this other approach that is currently becoming very popular called the post sustainable development perspective because we have seen that in countries like India we have suffered enough because of the development model that we have imported from somewhere else the technologies that came in with the British which was primarily the British model of colonialism was primarily to do with exploitation of natural resources that was the major objective in coming to India and they destroyed huge amount of natural resources or took them back to England. So post sustainable development approach is saying that even when it comes to sustainable development again there are some experts sitting in the United Nations in World Bank in Sweden or all these countries who have come up with one definition of sustainable development and said you have to follow this but in the post sustainable development approach we are saying this is wrong each one of us should be allowed to think about what is good for us while it does not harm others. So sustainable development projects are not necessarily those which are implemented intentionally that is someone consciously thinks this is sustainable this is not sustainable sometimes what we think of as sustainable may not be so in the long run. If you ask a hundred different people then you get a much broader wider perspective of what is sustainable what will work in different contexts. So a diversity of approaches is what is being stressed here that people have different kinds of aspirations different kinds of aims desires needs and so on and we should allow them a chance to meet those needs including meeting basic needs which people cannot do in India. So how can we enable this not by having a consensus on what is sustainable development but by involving more people right now what participation means is that some expert decides what is a good project and comes and tells you that we are doing this and you are forced to accept it and you are deemed to have participated in it that is not real participation. Participation is genuinely asking people what they want and incorporating that into your plans. So here we are looking at sustainable development in terms of what in manufacturing we call as quality control. So it is regarded as a process not as an outcome. So Stephen Morse as well as Jules Pretti have written a quite a lot about this. So can suppose I ask some of you what have as any country attained sustainable development it is very difficult to answer that when is a country or a society deemed to have achieved its goal of sustainable development. You cannot answer that question. So sustainable development is a process where you try and work towards sustainability. In the that means that things will never be perfect we will work towards perfection we will work towards sustainability and in the process we will take as many different views of as many different populations as possible. So when you have in the Indian context the problems of poverty there are severe consequences of degradation. At the same time you also have the importance of growth and development because we have to feed people we have to meet their basic needs. Addressing these is a very huge challenge and therefore from a post sustainable development perspective we are saying let as Mao Zedong said a thousand flowers bloom. Of course he never allowed it himself but you know we have to allow it. If a thousand solutions are there and we can try out these different things in different contexts then we work closer towards sustainable development rather than having one model which fits all. I want to have a bit of discussion with you okay but two things that we will discuss right now one is an assignment we are giving you. So I want you to prepare an assignment for your students which means the assignment for you is to do the assignment is to prepare an assignment which you will give to your students okay is that clear. So you are asking your students to carry out a certain activity you are asking them to think about consumption you are asking them to reduce consumption on anything that they use on an everyday basis and then you ask them to find out how to measure qualitatively or quantitatively the environmental benefits of this reduction of consumption and thirdly you also ask them to find out how easy or difficult it is to reduce consumption of any particular item which they use on an everyday basis. It could be petrol for their motorbike okay it could be food that they eat including junk food it could be the clothes they wear it could be what they drink or don't drink okay it could be many things that they use how much water they use in their lives. So you design an assignment okay you don't have to write the answers to the assignment that you can ask your students to do later when you teach the course but I want you to design this assignment in such a way that you ask certain questions you create an exercise for your students and submit that assignment to your coordinator who will then send them on to us okay is that clear okay. Now I want to take up a discussion because I know that while some of you may have extra expertise qualifications extra may have done readings on the units 6 and 7 of the UGC syllabus most of you have come with an engineering commerce or some other background so and even for people like us we did not necessarily come with this kind of expertise when we started teaching this course from 10-15 years ago. So this question is very pointed when you teach these two units of the UGC syllabus 6 and 7 that is social issues and human population what kind of problems or challenges you face and how did you attempt to resolve or address these challenges. I want to ask you these questions get a response from some of you so that I can then think of ways of addressing these problems in my next few lectures. So now those of you who have faced any kind of problems or challenges anything whether it is reading material understanding of students your own understanding of the issues any challenges or problems in teaching these two units please raise your hand and ask me now and if you have successfully or even unsuccessfully address these problems please share those experiences also with all of us okay yeah. So do I see some hands raised okay VJTI. Sir this is Sameer Sayed from VJTI. What content should be covered under this point under this chapter unit 6 social issues and environment wasteland reclamation is one point what should be covered under this point. What question should be covered okay thank you I'll just come back after I collect a few questions. College of Engineering Bhubaneswar hi who wants to ask a question. My question is with population increasing day by day it appears human development is against environmental preservation so please comment. Okay Jawaharlal Institute. My question is that a lot of electromagnetic radiation also create some environmental problems so what should be the probable solution for it. Okay can we go down Netaji Subash. So when we teach in the class we talk about the social problems okay but later on what we see that these are not followed practically okay so the student asked what is the necessity of studying all these things when practically no one is obeying all these rules and regulations. Okay thank you for that. In that way we can convince them that is my question. Okay thank you thank you for that. Periyar Mani Ammai University. One it is about the cultivation of genetically modified crops. Yes GM crop okay that leads to some sort of monocropping that will bring down the biodiversity that will affect the complete environmental system there's a serious social issue. Okay what is your reaction towards that one one question. The second question that is about our real estate business almost all the agricultural, cultivable land everything it is getting shrinking due to this real estate business. Yes. Okay so that how we are going to address how we are going to prevent that is using that all agricultural land for real estate business and other components. Okay one thing I want to say is that from even a very small sample of questions it is very clear that all of you are thinking of environmental issues in terms of very contemporary kinds of challenges that's a very good thing and probably it emerges partly from your own understanding of these issues your own felt need to incorporate current controversies into the course and secondly students also might be interested in these kinds of issues GMO the role of real estate and so on. So and I think the more we address contemporary kinds of problems issues challenges controversies in our course the more students will engage and be interested in it. So that is the way to go not purely to teach environmental issues from a social science perspective but link it to current issues relating to technology whether it is genetically modified organisms or policy like land laws. So let me just take a few of them let me come to the first two questions wasteland reclamation and population increase. So in general there is a lot of literature on wastelands in India there is also national wasteland development board but the research on this and the teaching on this is done primarily through the framework of what we call as the commons or common property resources and what is the importance of these in terms of environmental degradation but also in terms of livelihoods of the very poor in this country and for economic development and growth. So the question that you ask is a very valid one about wasteland development because this is a topic which is not covered in many of the books even if it is covered it is covered in a very cursory way and there is not enough material available. So what we do in our course here is to talk about wastelands in terms of its uses for a certain section of the population and how this wasteland is being encroached upon or it is degraded what are the consequences of that. So when I come to the module on commons I will talk about this in detail and we will give you some reading material as well. On population increase also again some of the textbooks that you have mentioned deal with it in a very mechanical way and they do not really they convey a stereotypical image of population increase resulting in environmental degradation that is not necessarily so. A country with a small population can cause huge environmental damage a country with a large population can use the resources in a very sensible manner. So it depends on what technologies we use what are our lifestyles what are our patterns of consumption and so on. So it is about the choices we make not about the size and density of the population and that is mentioned in one or two of the books like Kaushik and Kaushik for example which goes into these debates. Again I will take this up in detail in the next lecture. The question about the impact of what we teach by the person from Netaji Subhash in Kolkata is a very interesting one because sometimes it can make us very depressed but we are teaching all of these and then students go out and do the opposite of what we tell them. So and that happens in all courses that happens to us as parents also when we teach children and so the issue is not to expect an immediate impact this is not like a pill you know you just pop and your headache disappears or you give an injection and the disease gets cured. So the environmental issue is one that has arisen over a very long period of time and that is why we keep saying that it is not simply a question of awareness. There is a need to address these at multiple levels so what happens very often is that we as teachers tell students what is the environmentally appropriate things to do some other teacher in some other course may tell something else. The media television will tell you something else the newspapers will tell you to consume in a particular way. So there are all these pressures coming from the around us you know there are these advertisements for free charge now so which ask you to consume more and more of everything because it is coming to you for free. Now if people keep consuming more and more especially of junk food that is shown in those ads what is going to happen to us and to society around us. So we must understand that there are many different influences on people and it takes time for people to understand these issues these messages that we are trying to pass but and maybe some people will never get these messages we should also be prepared for that. So over a period of time people will learn these by themselves by facing certain problems in life or their relatives and friends will face these problems there will be crisis there will be disasters unfortunately disaster is one way in which we learn the sense. Okay but our job is to continue teaching in particular ways so that they understand that this is not simply a fad that some supreme court judge thought fit to impose on all of us. So the more we can relate social science issues to everyday conflicts controversies genetic engineering all those kinds of dams and those kinds of things the more we tell them about how these issues can be incorporated into their own engineering design solutions the more they understand and adopt these measures okay. So that is why I mentioned in the beginning during the introductory session that we want to teach and not preach. If you try to preach there is resistance if we try to teach there is a chance that over a period of time students will get the message okay. Yeah on the two issues that were mentioned last that is the GMO and the real estate these two are primarily related to what we call as equity issues that is there is equality in terms of information in terms of access to certain kinds of technologies equality is in terms of power who gets to make decisions and so on. So both the impact of real estate and GMO on environmental issues are related to problems of increasing productivity development growth at the same time with adverse impacts on human beings and environment. How best can we address these issues again we are going to take up in the next few lectures but I am glad you raised this question because I was not planning to deal with these in more detail especially the current controversy around land laws related to real estate taking over of agricultural land is very important because it is being discussed mostly from the perspective of people whose land is being taken away in terms of displacement. It is not being discussed in terms of the environmental impact of that which is very important. So I am very happy that you raised that so we will take this up in the next few classes okay. So thank you very much.