Ecology Is Permanent Economy: The Activism and Environmental Philosophy of Sunderlal Bahuguna

Chapter 9 A Permanent Economy

Chapter 9 A Permanent Economy I stated earlier that from the beginning of his engagement with the Chipko Movement there were two central themes that occupied Sunderlal’s attention . One was the establishment of community organizations to support sustainable, economically independent villages; the other was the condition of the forests upon which such village economies and local households depend. The one concern was related to issues of village social disintegration brought about by what Sunderlal calls a money order economy , wherein able-bodied men left the villages in the hills to find employment in the plains, from where they sent money orders home to address the basic needs of their families. The other was related to the needs of local households, the principal responsibility of the village women. In the course of time, these two sets of concerns came into conflict. From as early as 1973 the DGSS was effective in pressuring the Forest Department to end its policy of discrimination in the distribution of raw materials to local forest-based industries. Weber notes that by 1975 the state government had formed a Forest Corporation with the purpose of undertaking felling operations without the auction of forests to outside contractors. “Raw materials were made more readily available to small-scale industries and smaller forest lots were auctioned so that local industries had a better chance of competing where the Forest Corporation had not taken over.”1 By that time the government had implemented minimum wage legislation and other measures to improve the condition of the forest workers. From his experience especially with the protests in the Hemvalgati region and his observation of forest destruction from his many forest padyatras, it eventually became clear to Sunderlal that it makes no difference whether outside contractors were cutting down the forests or whether local forest cooperatives were doing the job. In both cases forests upon which local 121 122 Ecology is Permanent Economy household economies were dependent were being destroyed. Even local turpentine plants required the burning of two kilograms of pinewood as fuel to produce one kilogram of resin.2 For Sunderlal the destruction of forest cover would be disastrous for the people of the hills and ultimately for the nation. In May 1978 at Gaumukh, where the Bhagirathi the northernmost tributary of the Ganges has its source in the Gangotri Glacier, Sunderlal Bahuguna took a pledge to devote himself to the protection of the Himalayan environment in all its aspects. He found support for this perspective in Gandhi’s view of rural self sufficiency in which villagers lived in a nonexploitative relationship with nature in harmony with their natural surroundings. He believed that forest-based industries that destroy the trees were not necessary to address the economic needs of the villagers and concluded that the villagers could meet their needs for food, fodder, fuel, fertilizer, and fiber without cutting down the trees. There were a number of persons and publications that supported this change in Bahuguna’s perspective. During the Chipko Movement Sarala Behn had introduced him to a new book by the renowned British economist E. F. Schumacher. The book Small Is Beautiful (1973) was then an international best seller whose scholarly merit might be concealed by its eye-catching title and its popular appeal. It was a broad critique of the science of economics as it was currently understood in the Western world and practiced internationally. In it Sunderlal found intellectual support Gaumukh, the Source of the Bhagirathi River, Where in 1978 Sunderlal Bahuguna Took the Pledge to Protect the Himalayas in All Aspects 123 A Permanent Economy for many of the concerns and emerging objectives of the Chipko Movement . Its subtitle, Economics as if People Mattered made sense in light of the prevailing conflicts between the forest contractors with the support of a government policy of the economic exploitation of the forests and the survival needs of the local people. In his introduction to the book, Theodore Roszak makes the point that the work “belongs to that subterranean tradition of organic and decentralist economics,” whose major spokesmen include both Prince Kropotkin and Gandhi, authors of the two pamphlets which, under the guidance of Sri Dev Suman, Sunderlal had read at age thirteen. Schumacher was a close student of Gandhi whose economics started and finished, as Roszak points out, with the people.3 Schumacher agrees with other economists that the main subject of economics is “goods.” But...