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India's extinct green Prime Ministers

To grow as a nation without depriving future generations of a rich natural heritage is a tough ask. As India tries to strike a balance between consumption-driven economic growth and conservation of priceless biodiversity, it can draw liberally from the policy wisdom of our few `green' Prime Ministers, a species that is endangered and virtually extinct. They endeavoured to make a dent on mass poverty, expand agriculture to avert famine, build infrastructure, and create new opportunities for millions — with minimal damage to forests, wetlands, and coastal habitats. The earliest to shoulder the burden, Jawaharlal Nehru, pursued his vision of an India powered by "modern temples" represented by big dams and public sector heavy industries. The programme entailed significant environmental costs, but India's first and greatest Prime Minister never failed to express his support for nature. Sadly, Nehruvian India witnessed the calamitous hunting of wild animals in the absence of enforcement of even the available laws. Nehru personally disliked blood sports, more deeply so after he reportedly saw a fawn dying pitiably of its injuries. In the foreword to E.P. Gee's The Wildlife of India, he advised the younger generation that it was "much more exciting and difficult to `shoot' with a camera, than with a gun."

It is time Indira Gandhi's virtues as India's first green Prime Minister — whatever her shortcomings as a leader — were highlighted and brought to the fore as a national policy resource. She acquired an iconic status among conservationists with her path-breaking initiatives that removed major lacunae in protection laws. A true lover of nature who praised activists in Parliament for confronting tree-felling contractors, she famously reined in trigger-happy princes with a ban on hunting, set up Project Tiger, invigorated the Indian Board for Wildlife, and prohibited trading in furs. She sanctified endangered habitat as sanctuaries and national parks and, as the Silent Valley cause (espoused by The Hindu in legitimate campaign journalism mode) demonstrated, protected them actively. The baneful effects of deforestation on climate and the need for inviolate spaces for wildlife echoed repeatedly in her speeches. She emphasised the need for more science in conservation and cautioned, with prescience, that forests could not survive unchecked consumptive pressures. The Wildlife Protection Act and the Forest Conservation Act, which control exploitation of protected areas, owe their existence to her. Indira Gandhi's 1981 direction, in a letter to the Chief Ministers of coastal States, that owing to their aesthetic and environmental value, beaches must be kept clear of all activities up to 500 metres from the highest water line was far ahead of its time. The key unfinished task of her Prime Ministership was the creation of a national wildlife wing.

Indira Gandhi's far-sighted policies on natural environment were largely continued and extended in the Rajiv Gandhi era. His most enduring contribution was the progressive Environment Protection Act, 1986. In turn it yielded, in February 1991, the Coastal Regulatory Zone notification, a unique statutory regime that was made instantly applicable, on paper, to the entire 6000 km coastal belt of India plus the riverine stretches affected by tidal action. The CRZ notification may be called the last, heroic gasp of the environment protectionist impulse from above; it has since collapsed under the onslaught of the new forces of economic liberalisation. From 1991, Prime Ministers as a rule have shown little policy or personal interest in conservation of nature. Some have been decidedly anti-green. With the Ministry of Environment and Forests generally abandoning its protectionist role and lapsing into a soulless bureaucracy — driven predominantly by commercial concerns — judicial intervention alone, among instruments of state, has come to the rescue of natural spaces. More than three decades ago, launching Project Tiger, India's by far the greenest Prime Minister provided timeless advice to policymakers. "The narrow outlook of the accountant," she noted, "must give way to a wider vision of the recreational, educational and ecological value of totally undisturbed areas of wilderness." How true these words ring today.

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