The Local in Governance: Politics, Decentralization and Environment by Satyajit Singh, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016; pp xiv+262, first edition, ₹ 895.
Despite large dams being decommissioned the world over, the government has now set its sights on the construction of the Pancheshwar dam on the ecologically sensitive Mahakali river. Wary of being sacrificed at the altar of so-called “development,” resistance to the project has transformed into a concerted people’s protest, which continues to gain momentum.
Victims of ill-conceived policies governing forest resources and environmental conservation, the Van Gujjars, a pastoral nomadic community residing in the Rajaji National Park, are struggling to get their forest rights and entitlements under the FRA Act, 2006.
There has been an unthoughtout rush to build hydroelectric power projects in Uttarakhand without assessing the ecological, social or economic costs of their implementation. The government is not even sure of how many projects are planned and of what capacity. Written well before the recent destructive floods hit the state, this article shows the extent and nature of the developmentalist disease which has afflicted our planners and policymakers. It will provide some background to the debates on the link between the damage to the environment and the destruction caused by the floods.
Preserving the fragile ecosystem of the mountains and its rich biodiversity requires people's initiative, involvement and commitment. Women in a village in the Kumaon Hills faced with the gradual destruction of the forests around have come together to protect and nurture them.
Electric power generation from small 'gharat's built over rivers have for over a century been in operation in the Uttarakhand region. With an imaginative and supportive state policy they could provide electric power in remote areas.
The institution of lath panchayats has successfully worked with the incorporation of long-held traditions of the people of Uttarakhand. However, such a system of collective village responsibility is now in danger of fading away as decision-making powers are centralised in the hands of a few bureaucrats, who are by and large unsympathetic to the immediate needs of the villagers, and their symbiotic relations with the forests.
A product of colonial times, the van panchayats in Uttarakhand, though lawfully empower the residents living on the outskirts of reserved and protected forests to nurture trees and consume forest products, paucity of financial resources and negligible participation of women are some of the reasons for the failure of the panchayats to sustain and spread in many villages.
