Without travelling to India and experiencing the culture and people first-hand, it is difficult for a westerner to fully grasp the dependence that the people of India have on the environment. Entire villages and communities still attribute their survival to a thriving relationship with agriculture and what the earth can provide. With 70% of people in India living in rural areas, it doesn’t take a scientist or a scholar to recognize that the survival of the country itself rests in the protection and conservation of the environment which sustains it. This is why things like ecotourism are so crucial to the progress that India will make in the future. Something as seemingly small as saying “We are going to protect our land” has the potential to impact millions of lives in the future. Indian cities are becoming rapidly congested, much of this due to the fact that people are being forced out of the rural areas because environmental issues and degradation are leading to rapidly declining rates of success in the agricultural sector. Environmental concern is crucial for India as it progresses in the future and tries to balance its growing population. Unless the environmental issues are put at the forefront, India will surely struggle to see prosperity in its growth.
One of the issues that came up many times in our lectures was that of flood plains and water bodies disappearing because of urbanization. As we saw more than once, in Tamil Nadu there is an area where there used to be ample room for rice paddy and flood zones some 20 years. Now, any signs that it used to be an environmentally crucial area are gone. There are now buildings and construction in place of what was. These practices are detrimental not only to the environment and its availability to the people; they also have an effect on the urbanized areas. When flood zones are taken over by industrialized zones, there are multiple issues that need to be dealt with, including increased flooding in the surrounding areas and sinking of the buildings placed in that zone.
One of the professors who spoke to us spoke about Kaattuppalli Island, just to the northeast of Chennai. This island has been largely affected by the industrial plants that have built up around it. The water is now highly polluted and many of the species in the ocean are dying off rapidly. Similarly, the villagers in the area who have been making their living for centuries from fishing are now becoming sick and seeing both minor and major health problems due to the pollution. These villagers are losing their way of life because a supposedly “new and better” life is being implemented in the name of industrialization.
Neglect of the environment leads to multiple issues no matter where you are in the world. However, in a country where more than two thirds of the people rely directly on the land in some way or another, the demands and concerns become increasingly high. It is my view that India needs to stop looking to the Western world for examples of how to grow. While growth is necessarily to a country, especially economically, it should not require the country to sacrifice its people and its culture as the cost. India is a country which is very different from the U.S. The United States has its own slew of environmental issues, however it also has the money to make these problems less noticeable or to cover them up for a time with some “quick-fix” solution. India, in my opinion, should not see urbanization as the only path to success. There are many cultural practices in India, going right into religion, which have a much more innate and worldly environmental view than the practices in the West. India needs to embrace these aspects of its culture and use them as the catalyst for environmentally conscious growth. There are many ways to reach the top of a mountain, but tearing the mountain down is not one of them. India has the chance to learn from more “developed” countries and to see the multitude of negative impacts that urbanization has had.
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