Environmental activism in India comprises two streams. The first focuses on protected areas and relies on the bureaucracy that often misuses its powers against communities that live in close contact with nature. The second focuses on protecting nature to safeguard people's livelihoods and health. The environmental agenda should focus on the reassertion of people's rights over natural resources, and this should be coupled with an action-oriented promotion of nature-friendly cooperative enterprises in sectors like quarrying, and mineral and sand mining.
Of Myths and Movements: Rewriting Chipko in the Himalayan Historyby Haripriya Rangan; OUP, 2001, (first published by Verso, 2000); pp 272 + xvi, Rs 595
People's science movements in India have been viewed in terms of two opposite cultures: taking the scientist's science and technology to the people and opposing the scientist's science and technology for the people. This article provides a critique of science epistemologies behind those two cultures that has led to the so-called science wars among scholars. The article shows up the myth of science wars in India by identifying a common platform for both sides.
