Environmental Issues in India

INTRODUCTION

In January 1968, the special guest who presided over the Convocation of Bangalore University expressed deep concern about the impact of unplanned, haphazard development on the human environment: ‘In the name of modernity, we are doing violence to our landscape…We are recklessly cutting down trees and destroying wildlife. In building a project, if you have to pull down a hundred trees, you must instinctively deem it your responsibility to plant two hundred,’ she went on, ‘and this is also a practical need. We have today drought in parts of our country and I have no doubt it is due to the fact that we have cut down many forests.’ Four years later, the same leader as Prime Minister of India would deliver another major address, this ...