Middle-class activism, transnational links, and evolution of India’s broad rural environmental movements: from aristocratic preservation ethics to indigenous peoples’ rights and ecological sustainability

Unbridled economic development based on heavy industrialization has led to severe ecological degradation affecting our environment in many ways. Consequently, the late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a mushrooming of environmental movements worldwide. India was no exception. This article attempts to understand the trajectory of broad rural environmental movements related to forests, water, and land in India and presents the dominant debates in the field. Specifically, it looks at four prominent movements: the ‘Chipko’ the ‘Narmada’, the anti-mining movement against ‘Vedanta’, and the ‘Seed protests’. The study argues that in the case of the broad rural Indian environmental movements’ concerns, there is a shift from aristocratic preservation ethics to an increasing emphasis on local indigenous peoples’ rights and ecological sustainability. Second, the movements’ framing of concerns is based on a broader social perception of existing inequalities in society triggered by a model of development that has different consequences for different sets of people. Finally, the paper suggests that both transnational activism and educated middleclass activists influence and shape the trajectories of these movements in significant ways.