Environmental movements in India occupy a distinctive place in the study of collective action because they link ecological concerns to questions of livelihood, justice and the model of development itself. Unlike much Western environmentalism, which is sometimes read as a post-material concern of the affluent, Indian environmental struggles have most often been movements of the poor — forest dwellers, peasants, fisherfolk and tribals — defending the resources on which their survival depends. This has led scholars to describe Indian environmentalism as an environmentalism of the poor, a phrase that captures its fusion of ecology and equity.
Chipko and forest-based movements
The Chipko movement of the 1970s in the central Himalaya became the emblematic Indian environmental struggle. Villagers, many of them women, embraced trees to prevent commercial felling, asserting local rights over forests against distant contractors and the state. Chandi Prasad Bhatt and Sunderlal Bahuguna are associated with its two strands — one stressing local livelihood and appropriate use, the other a broader ecological and spiritual ethic of conservation. The Appiko movement in Karnataka extended similar concerns to the Western Ghats.
These forest movements raised the enduring question of who owns and controls natural resources, and they exposed how state forestry, oriented to revenue and commerce, dispossessed communities whose subsistence depended on common lands.
The Narmada Bachao Andolan
The Narmada Bachao Andolan, against large dams on the Narmada river, became the most sustained and internationally visible Indian environmental movement. Led by figures including Medha Patkar and supported by Baba Amte, it mobilised those to be displaced by submergence — many of them tribal — around demands for just rehabilitation and a reconsideration of large-dam development. The movement combined grassroots organisation with legal action and transnational advocacy, and it forced a public debate on the human and ecological costs of big development projects and on the meaning of displacement and rehabilitation.
Other movements and repertoires
Beyond forests and dams, environmental struggles have spanned many terrains: the Silent Valley campaign that halted a hydroelectric project in Kerala, movements of fishworkers against mechanised trawling and coastal degradation, resistance to mining and to the diversion of common lands, and anti-pollution and anti-nuclear mobilisations. Their repertoires range from satyagraha and non-violent direct action to public-interest litigation and expert advocacy, reflecting alliances between local communities and urban activists, scientists and lawyers.
Sociological perspectives
Scholars have theorised these movements in several ways. Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil analysed conflicts between omnivores, who appropriate resources on a large scale, and ecosystem people and ecological refugees who bear the costs, framing environmental conflict as fundamentally about resource distribution. Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier developed the idea of the environmentalism of the poor to distinguish livelihood-based struggles from affluent conservationism. Feminist scholars, notably Vandana Shiva, linked ecological degradation to patriarchy and to the marginalisation of women's knowledge, though this ecofeminist reading has itself been debated. Others situate these struggles within the framework of new social movements, emphasising identity, non-party organisation and novel forms of protest.
Sociological significance
The significance of these movements lies in their reframing of development. They insist that ecological questions are inseparable from questions of social justice — of who benefits from and who pays for growth. They have influenced policy on forests, rehabilitation and environmental clearance, strengthened the use of litigation and rights-based strategies, and given voice to communities usually excluded from decisions about resources. In doing so they connect environmental concern to the deeper sociological themes of power, inequality and the character of Indian modernity.
How to use this in the exam
Anchor answers in concrete cases — Chipko, Appiko, Silent Valley and above all the Narmada Bachao Andolan — and name activists such as Bahuguna, Bhatt and Medha Patkar. The decisive move for high marks is theoretical framing: use Guha and Gadgil on omnivores and ecosystem people, Guha's environmentalism of the poor, and Vandana Shiva's ecofeminism, while noting the criticisms of the latter. Present these as movements of the poor that fuse ecology with justice, not merely conservation campaigns. Conclude by showing how they challenge the dominant development model, and link the topic to displacement, tribal questions and sustainable development elsewhere in Paper II.