Taking us through the art, science and her very own personal struggle to ensure that preservation of environment becomes everyone’s business, environmental activist Sunita Narain’s book isn’t your average weekend read.
Personal. Hard hitting. And coming at a time when we are fighting for a single breath of clean air this 200-odd pages book gives the reader an easy flowing but disturbing narrative about the ‘business of saving the environment.’ Offering an insight into an entire gamut of issues — from air pollution, endosulfan poisoning to the cola wars, climate change, tigers and/or people and water and waste wars — the book covers the many small, big and enormous battles that the non-government organisation Centre for Science (CSE) which the author heads has had to fight to be heard and eventually have this conversation.
It also gives readers a look into the many personal struggles that the author has had to face in terms of law suits, protests and dharna outside her residence, obscene cartoons and the mighty task of establishing that she means business.
In the centre of the much public CSE’s cola war she says: “We knew when the tables had turned against us. We knew when we had visits from the grey-clad men from the intelligence bureau to check on us. We knew when we were asked to submit to the government data on: twenty years of our account, twenty year of our funding data, twenty years of every staff member who has worked with us and their current addresses. The strategy was to trip us, somehow, somewhere.” Throughout the book, readers then would get a balcony view into the circus of this tripping and how year after year, issue after issue, state after state and generation after generation has had to deal with war of greed versus environmental responsibility.
The author while discussing the many problems facing us doesn’t forget to discuss ‘a blueprint for the future.’
“India’s and the world’s environmental movements are at a crucial crossroad,” she says.
Putting it plainly for anyone who dares to listen/read she says: “Today we are seeing a virtual breakdown in the world. There is no doubt that our world in the past 25 years has only increased inequality — the very rich has got richer and everyone else is waiting for deliverance.” A good read; even if it is just to remind ourselves that we are merely a passing blip on earth but are capable of causing lasting and permanent damage to this fragile ecosystem that offers us life.
Conflicts of Interest: My Journey Through India’s Green Movement ; Sunita Narain, Penguin Random House, ₹599.
