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Selecting the road to 'success'
Jyotsna Bapat?s experienced eye looks at what truly happens on ground, writes Benita Sen.
Decades ago, when we were students, some of us wanted to study Environmental Science. All we could find out was one institute, in distant Delhi, that offered the subject. Today, while study of the environment is certainly far more common, both students and on-ground workers often face the problem of a shortage of books that are relevant to India. While several issues may be common anywhere in the world, there are regional reference points that require addressing.
The first thought that strikes about sociologist Dr Jyotsna Bapat’s Development Projects and Critical Theory of Environment (Sage) is that, my friends working in this sector would welcome the book. After going through it, you wonder which of them gets to read it first.
The book looks at six infrastructure development projects that were meant to spur socio-economic growth of a region that was underdeveloped and therefore, rightly or wrongly, was earmarked as having the potential for “improvement.”
What happens later, is often overlooked, ignored or simply forgotten by those who benefit or seem to benefit, in the short run. And that’s just where this book steps in.
Bapat’s experienced eye looks at what truly happens on ground. She’s not quite a party pooper, as I can almost hear one group groan. Rather, with an almost forensic eye, she visits the party before, during and after it is through, taking dispassioante notes on who got how much of the spoils.
While the issue of amusement parks and mining may be more apparent, power projects bring several recent movements back to mind.
I read with great interest the chapter on the much touted feel-good subject of eco-tourism. She takes the trouble to spend much attention on an amusement park even though, as she aptly points out the general belief is that, “Tourism projects are generally considered as non-polluting and sustainable forms of economic development.” As anyone who has lived in the hills or along our coast will vouch, this is more likely the view of those who don’t live there, those who take policy decisions from a visit or from a distant office. It is an issue that has troubled all those who live there and watched the effects of tourism, both economically beneficial and otherwise.
Why just the hills and our beaches, every city and town in India would require several reference points like this book in the very near future to help well-meaning programme planning and implementation, much as they would guide Project Affected Persons (PAPs). Each of us has a different raison d’etre. For me, what came to mind immediately when I saw the title were two rather disparate issues: Kolkata’s Rabindra Sarobar, and possibilities and fears of eco-tourism in Ramban forests near Darjeeling.
The book is the result of Jyotsna Bapat’s time at the Department of Sociology, Macalester College, Minnesota, and it is certainly an academic exercise, with reference to the history of the environment movement, the changing perceptions of environmental scholars and sociologists and economists. Yet, with lucid case studies, even the lay person working on ground with villagers displaced by a highway to be broadened or with those whose humble homes are to be converted into shelters for tourists, ought to find it interesting to note that an environmental coin may have more than two sides. In fact, it is more often than not, a Rubik’s cube.
