Mine sweeper: A Wknd interview with environmental activist Alok Shukla

How much does coal cost? Shukla would argue no one has the real answer. See how he united Chhattisgarh to protect an ancient forest, keep out a host of mines.

It was love at first sight, says Alok Shukla.

Shukla recently won the Goldman Environmental Prize. 'The $200,000 was a surprise. It will enable us to do so much more,' he says. (Devendra Shukla)

Despite all his years in Chhattisgarh, a region of crisscrossing rivers, torrid monsoons and lush green fields, the Hasdeo-Arand forest took his breath away when he first saw it in 2011.

Fed by the Hasdeo river, a main tributary of the Mahanadi, with a large reservoir irrigating fields and providing water to local villages, “it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen,” says the environmental activist, 44.

Surrounding the villages is one of India’s oldest contiguous forests. Beneath the forest, is one of the country’s largest coal reserves, estimated at 5.6 billion tonnes.

It was a former legislator, Hira Singh Markam, who invited Shukla to visit. Coal mines were moving in, the legislator said, and he was concerned that villagers and tribal residents were giving up their land because they didn’t see another way forward.

Two mines were already operational; the government was in the process of denotifying land for 21 more. Twelve years on, these parts of the forest remain largely untouched, because of an effort led by Shukla. This year, in recognition of that effort and achievement, he was awarded a Goldman Environmental Prize.

The prestigious international award recognises one grassroots leader from each inhabited continent, with an award of $200,000 (about ₹1.67 crore). “Alok Shukla led a successful community campaign that saved 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forests from 21 planned coal mines in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. In July 2022, the government canceled the 21 proposed coal mines in Hasdeo Aranya, whose pristine forests—popularly known as the lungs of Chhattisgarh—are one of the largest intact forest areas in India,” the citation states.

Seventeen of those proposed coal blocks, in fact, now sit on land that was notified as a wild-elephant reserve in 2022, offering additional protection from future exploitation.

“This award is global recognition for every man, woman and child who fought to save Hasdeo for the last 12 years,” says Shukla. “We intend to use this money to further our work against climate change, and to develop community-based forest management systems and climate resilient agriculture, among other things.”

The money is a surprise to a man who grew up tending the family farm and attending the local government school. Shukla moved to the city of Durg for college, acquiring a Master’s degree in political science in 2004. Chhattisgarh had recently achieved statehood, in 2000, and was changing rapidly. As industrial activity boomed, protests were growing too.

“I saw how the system favoured the government and large industrial companies,” he says. “Who was on the side of the people?”

***

Shukla’s life as an environmental activist began with volunteer work for the Nadi Ghati Morcha (River Valley Forum). He met and learnt from the late activist and former IAS officer BD Sharma, who had dedicated his life to helping Adivasis retain their rights over forest resources. This was becoming increasingly hard to do, in a mineral-rich Chhattisgarh with 44% forest cover and over 30% of its population made up of scattered tribal groups.

Shukla began by unifying the effort, setting up the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (Save Chhattisgarh Movement), an alliance of more than 25 NGOs, in 2010.

The primary objective, he says, was to help local communities understand their rights. The next goal was to use existing laws to claim those rights.

“There is pro-people legislation in place that recognises the rights of forest-dwelling communities to forest resources. There are laws in place that seek to strengthen environmental resilience in a bid to fight climate change,” he says.

Then he visited Hasdeo, saw what was at stake on both sides and realised that this would be the fight of his life, he says. For this agitation to work, “we knew that the whole forest region had to be in it together and agitate as one against the destruction of their land, their sustenance and their culture, which is tied to the forest.”

The 12-year protest unfolded efficiently online and offline, on social-media platforms and in mainstream newspapers. There were marches, sit-ins, bike rallies and a viral song by the Chhattisgarhi rapper Appy Raja that has over 4 lakh views on YouTube. In part, it goes:

Jab bin varsha paida na hoga aanaaj,

Toh bachchon ko koyala khilaoge kya?

Bhavishy tumhaara aur mera savaal,

jal jangal jameen ko bachao, beta

(When the rain stops falling and the grain stops growing

Will you then feed your children coal?

It’s a question of the future of you and me,

Save the water, forest and land, son)

“We wanted to send out the message that saving the forest would benefit everyone. Losing it would harm Chhattisgarh’s air and water. We wanted to communicate that this was a fight for survival, a fight of corporate profits versus the right to life,” says Shukla. The message seemed to resonate. Artists, doctors, advocates and politicians from across the state spoke up in support of the movement.

In July 2022, the Chhattisgarh Assembly designated 1,700 sq km of the Hasdeo forests a mining-free zone; a few months later came the elephant reserve. But the fight is far from over.

***

As a country, a massive economy and a power-hungry populace, where do we go from here?

“On the one hand, India is trying to position itself as leader in becoming a carbon-neutral country, but at the same time we are seeing more coal block allocations, and the government doesn’t seem to bother where the power that fuels the economy is coming from,” Shukla says.

In December, more of the forest was cleared to expand one of the two existing coal mines in Hasdeo. Highways were barricaded to keep local activists from reaching the site. Many of those involved in the anti-coal agitation have faced threats over the years. It is the same around the world, Shukla says. “This is what environmental activists face.”

Of course it is necessary for a country and its infrastructure to develop, he adds, “but it is now possible for us to move away from coal and make use of alternative technologies.”

For him, the fight going forward remains simple: arm the people with information. “It is vital for people’s groups to stay vigilant, particularly about what is done to our forests, and to the laws that protect them,” he says. “Local communities must continue to have a say in what happens to their land.”