Gandhi Journal Article-III (July 2015) : Ecology and Lifestyle: A Gandhian Perspective

Gandhi Journal Article-III (July 2015) : Ecology and Lifestyle: A Gandhian Perspective

By M. P. Mathai
 

The ecological crisis we confront today has been analysed from various angles and scientific data on the state of our environment made available. Humanity has come out of its foolish self-complacency and has awakened to the realisation that over-exploitation of nature has led to a very severe degradation and devastation of our environment. Scholars, through several studies, have brought out the direct connection between consumption and environmental degradation.

The climate change experienced today has convinced many that unless we take urgent remedial measures life might be wiped out of the face of the Earth. There have been several international summits and important conventions have been signed. But to our great dismay, most of the provisions of these covenants have been blatantly violated, rather than scrupulously honoured and implemented. Awareness of the issues involved has become almost universal, but the determination to take corrective steps is sorely missing.

READ FULL ARTICLE
        

Gandhi Journal Article - I

Ecology and Lifestyle: A Gandhian Perspective

By M. P. Mathai

Rising Awareness, Chronic Inertia

The ecological crisis we confront today has been analysed from various angles and scientific data on the state of our environment made available. Humanity has come out of its foolish self-complacency and has awakened to the realisation that over-exploitation of nature has led to a very severe degradation and devastation of our environment. Scholars, through several studies, have brought out the direct connection between consumption and environmental degradation. For example, Inge Ropke in his paper 'The dynamics of willingness to consume' raises pertinent questions like: why are productivity increases largely transformed into income increases instead of more leisure? Why is such a large part of these income increases used for consumption of goods and services with a relatively high materials-intensity instead of less material-intensive alternatives?

The climate change experienced today has convinced many that unless we take urgent remedial measures life might be wiped out of the face of the Earth. There have been several international summits and important conventions have been signed. But to our great dismay, most of the provisions of these covenants have been blatantly violated, rather than scrupulously honoured and implemented. Awareness of the issues involved has become almost universal, but the determination to take corrective steps is sorely missing.

The most pertinent question today, therefore, seems to be: 'why these violations?' Why sidestep the most crucial existential issues relating to the protection of eco-system? One direct answer to this vexing question is that we are not willing to change our lifestyles, the way we live. We have developed, adopted and internalised the values of a lifestyle which is a part of an unsustainable and destructive development paradigm. We seem to cherish it so deeply and religiously, so to say, that we can neither abjure nor modify it. Modern lifestyle has become addictive and has succeeding in entrapping an ever growing number to its fold, particularly the emerging middle classes. It could be reasonably argued that one of the most important reasons why humanity is not able to retrace its steps from the perilous path of self-annihilating eco-destruction is its addiction to modern or contemporary lifestyle.

READ FULL ARTICLE

Gandhi and Ecological Marxists: A Study of Silent Valley Movement ( Gandhi Journal Article - III)

Gandhi and Ecological Marxists: A Study of Silent Valley Movement

By Sasikala A.S.

E-mail: sasikala.iitm@yahoo.com

Abstract

The environmental concern was minimal at the time of Gandhi, but his ideas on Village Swaraj, decentralization, Swadeshi, Sarvodya etc made him an advocate of environmentalism. He is often considered as a man with deep ecological view. The ideas of Gandhi have been widely used by different streams of environmental philosophy like green, deep ecology, etc and different environmental movements across the globe. An eminent environmental thinker Ramachandra Guha identified three distinct strands in Indian Environmentalism, the Crusading Gandhians, Appropriate Technologists and Ecological Marxists. He observed that, unlike the third one, the first two strands rely heavily on Gandhi. The purpose of this paper is to identify the Gandhian elements used by the Ecological Marxists in India. The Silent Valley Movement from Kerala is taken as a case study to analyze how ecological Marxists resort to Gandhian techniques to fight against environmental injustice. The role of Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), a People’s Science Movement (PSM) from Kerala with a Marxist background is studied to understand different strategies they used in the movement. It is observed that the methodologies adopted throughout the movement are inspired by Gandhian methods as previously used by other environmental movements like Chipko. The paper concludes that, like the Crusading Gandhians and Alternate Technologists, the Ecological Marxists also adopted the Gandhian strategies to work for ecological stability.

READ FULL ARTICLE