Environmental Movements of India: Notes and PYQs

The correct answer is A, Chamoli. The movement began in 1973 at Mandal village in Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya, then part of Uttar Pradesh and today in Uttarakhand. Villagers who had been refused a few ash trees for making farm tools learnt that a sports-goods manufacturer had been allotted the same trees, and declared that they would embrace the trees rather than let the axes reach them. Option B, Pithoragarh, is a hill district of Kumaon and was not the scene of the first action. Option C, Shimla, lies in Himachal Pradesh, a state often wrongly given as the home of Chipko. Option D, Nainital, is again in Kumaon rather than Garhwal. Remember Chamoli for 1973 and Reni village, also in Chamoli, for the famous action of 1974 that Gaura Devi led.

The correct answer is B, Karnataka. The Appiko movement began in 1983 at Salkani village in the Sirsi taluk of Uttara Kannada district, in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, under Pandurang Hegde. Appiko is the Kannada word for hugging, and the villagers used the Chipko method against the felling of the Ghats for plywood, paper and polyfibre. Option A, Kerala, is the state of the Silent Valley movement, another Western Ghats campaign of the same decade, which is why it is the commonest wrong choice here. Option C, Maharashtra, hosted the Save the Western Ghats March of the late nineteen eighties but not Appiko. Option D, Tamil Nadu, has no link with the movement. Fix the pair in memory as Chipko in the north with Uttarakhand and Appiko in the south with Karnataka.

The correct answer is C, Medha Patkar. She has led the Narmada Bachao Andolan since it took shape in 1985 against the Sardar Sarovar and other large dams on the Narmada, arguing that the displaced, many of them tribal, were never given land or proper rehabilitation. Baba Amte joined her, and the writer Arundhati Roy later lent the campaign a wider audience; after an independent review the World Bank withdrew from the Sardar Sarovar project in 1993. Option A, Vandana Shiva, founded Navdanya and works on native seed and biodiversity, not on the Narmada. Option B, Gaura Devi, led the women of Reni village in the Chipko action of 1974 and died long before the Narmada campaign matured. Option D, Sunita Narain, is associated with the Centre for Science and Environment and with air pollution and water policy research rather than with this movement.

The correct answer is C, Kunthipuzha. The Kerala State Electricity Board proposed a hydroelectric dam across the Kunthipuzha river in Palakkad district, which would have submerged a tract of undisturbed tropical evergreen rainforest and the habitat of the lion-tailed macaque. The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad took the case to the public through the nineteen seventies, the project was abandoned in 1983, and the area was declared Silent Valley National Park in 1984. Option A, the Periyar, is the longest river of Kerala and feeds the Idukki project, but not Silent Valley. Option B, the Bharathappuzha, is the second longest river of the state and the Kunthipuzha is in fact one of its tributaries, which makes this the most tempting distractor; the dam site itself was on the Kunthipuzha. Option D, the Pamba, flows past Sabarimala and has no connection with the movement.

The correct answer is B, khejri. At Khejarli near Jodhpur in 1730, the men of the Maharaja of Jodhpur came to fell khejri trees for lime kilns needed to build a new palace. Amrita Devi Bishnoi clasped a tree and was killed, her three daughters after her, and 363 Bishnois from 84 villages died in the same way before the felling was stopped and the Bishnoi villages granted protection for their trees. The khejri is the state tree of Rajasthan and the lifeline of the Thar desert, giving fodder, fuel and shade. Option A, the banyan, is the national tree of India but was not the tree at Khejarli. Option C, the neem, and option D, the peepal, are both revered in India and are planted widely, but neither is the desert tree the Bishnois died for. The Bishnoi faith, founded by Guru Jambheshwar, forbids the felling of green trees.

The correct answer is A, Rajendra Singh. Through the Tarun Bharat Sangh he revived the johad, the traditional crescent-shaped earthen check dam, across the dry Alwar district of Rajasthan. Thousands of johads recharged the groundwater, wells filled again and streams that had been dry for decades began to flow, which earned him the popular title of the Waterman of India. Option B, Anil Agarwal, founded the Centre for Science and Environment and edited the State of India s Environment reports; he wrote on water harvesting but is not given this title. Option C, M. C. Mehta, is the public-interest lawyer whose petitions led to the orders on the Ganga, on the Taj trapezium and on vehicular pollution in Delhi. Option D, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, is a leader of the Chipko movement and the founder of the Dasholi Gram Swarajya Sangh.

The correct answer is B, Sunderlal Bahuguna. He carried the Chipko message on foot across the Himalaya and summed up its argument in the phrase that ecology is permanent economy, meaning that a standing forest yields soil, water and pure air for ever while felled timber yields money once. He later led the long fast and campaign against the Tehri dam on the Bhagirathi. Option A, Baba Amte, founded Anandwan for people affected by leprosy and supported the Narmada Bachao Andolan, but the slogan is not his. Option C, Salim Ali, is the Birdman of India, the ornithologist who wrote The Book of Indian Birds and whose intervention helped save the Bharatpur wetland. Option D, Kailash Sankhala, is remembered as the Tiger Man of India and as the first director of Project Tiger, not for this slogan.

The correct answer is B, the replacement of natural sal forest with teak. In 1982 the government proposed to convert the natural sal forests of Singhbhum, then in Bihar and now in Jharkhand, into plantations of teak, which fetches a far higher price as timber. For the tribal communities the sal forest was a source of leaves, seeds, fruit and grazing, so the teak plantation was nicknamed political teak and resisted. Option A is wrong because, although the Subarnarekha project did displace people in the region, the Jungle Bachao Andolan was about the forest and not the dam. Option C, iron-ore mining, is a real grievance in Singhbhum but came to the fore in later campaigns. Option D is wrong because no tiger reserve was at issue. Remember the pair: sal is what the tribals wanted and teak is what was imposed.

The correct answer is A, Majuli in Assam. From the late nineteen seventies Jadav Payeng planted saplings year after year on a bare, eroding sandbar of the Brahmaputra near Majuli, and the patch grew into a forest of several hundred hectares that is now called the Molai forest after him. It shelters deer, rhinoceros, tigers and a herd of elephants, and it holds the sand against the river. He was honoured with the Padma Shri. Option B, Divar, is an island in the Mandovi in Goa and has no such plantation. Option C, Sriharikota, is the barrier island in Andhra Pradesh that carries the Satish Dhawan Space Centre. Option D, Munroe Island, lies in the Ashtamudi backwaters of Kerala and is known for its sinking land, not for a planted forest. Majuli itself is one of the largest river islands in the world.

The correct answer is B, the Tawa dam. The Tawa project on a tributary of the Narmada in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh brought canal irrigation to black cotton soil that already held water well. Within a few seasons the water table rose, fields became waterlogged and salts came to the surface, so yields fell instead of rising. The farmers organised the Mitti Bachao Abhiyan in 1977, demanding compensation and a change in the way water was released. Option A, the Bargi dam, is also on the Narmada, near Jabalpur, and is remembered for displacement rather than for waterlogging. Option C, the Indira Sagar dam at Punasa, was built much later. Option D, the Gandhi Sagar dam, is on the Chambal in the north of Madhya Pradesh and is unconnected with Hoshangabad. The lesson the movement taught was that irrigation without drainage ruins soil.

The correct answer is B, Vandana Shiva. Trained as a physicist, she turned to agriculture and founded Navdanya, a network of community seed banks that collects, stores and freely exchanges traditional varieties of rice, millet, pulses and oilseeds, and that campaigns against the patenting of seed and of plants long used in India. The name means nine seeds and stands for the diversity of a farm. Option A, Sunita Narain, directs the Centre for Science and Environment and is known for work on air pollution, vehicular emissions and water policy. Option C, Medha Patkar, leads the Narmada Bachao Andolan against large dams on the Narmada. Option D, Tulsi Gowda, is the Karnataka tree planter known as the encyclopaedia of the forest for her knowledge of seeds and saplings, honoured with the Padma Shri, but Navdanya is not hers.