India is constantly struggling with environmental issues such as floods and droughts every year. The water scarcity in Chennai and the air pollution in Delhi are the prime indicators of this problem. And yet we do not have a strong political representation of these issues in the elections in our country. Therefore, there is an urgent need for green politics in India.
But what is green politics and why does India need it?
Let’s try and find out.
The values behind green politics in India are not exactly new; in fact, they have been found in mainstream politics since the freedom movement. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, strongly emphasized on social justice, grass-roots democracy, non-violence and respect for diversity in his vision for India. And all of these values have been the four basic pillars of green politics across the world.
Green politics first emerged on the political front in Australia when workers, under the leadership of a trade leader and environmental activist named Jack Mundey, launched the Green Ban movement. In May, 1973, the workers refused to work on projects that damaged the country’s ecological balance.
This ideology was soon replicated in West Germany where the political party called “The Greens” was inaugurated in 1980. The Greens became a powerful force in the German Politics forming a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party in 1998. By 2016, the Greens have joined 11 out of 16 German state governments in a variety of coalitions.
Since then, Green parties have made huge strides in the western world, The Italian Federation of the Greens, the French Greens, the German Alliance '90/The Greens were part of government during the late 1990s. India, however, has not really seen a defined prominent green party till now. For a country which saw movements such as Chipko Andolan and Narmada Bachao Movement, it is disheartening to see this gap. With an ever expanding population, the burden on the environment in increasing day by day and the scales are tipping in the wrong direction. If there was ever a time for Green Parties to flourish, it is now.
That’s not to say that Green parties don’t exist in our country. Some parties with a specific focus on conserving the environment have come up in the recent past. The first of these was the Indian National Green Party, which was launched on 7 January 1999. Soon, other political parties followed; Green Party of India, led by Subhas Dutta, was launched in January 2010; the India People’s Green Party started in Jaipur in 2011; the India Greens Party, was launched in November 2018.
But unfortunately, the real impact that these parties can have is limited; they are simply not big enough for them to have any sort of solid reach, popularity or political impact. This power still lies with either the prominent state parties, or the national honchos like the BJP and Congress.
When it comes to elections, although environmental issues do find a place in the manifestos of most major political parties, the follow-through is hardly visible.
For instance, the BJP made huge promises to clean the river Ganga in its manifesto when it came to power, but that hasn’t translated into any ground reality under its governance. The National Ganga Council headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t met even once since its formation in 2016. According to a study by Sankat Mochan Foundation, an NGO in Varanasi, which has been monitoring the water quality of Ganga since 1986, the water quality has actually worsened in the last three years.
On the other hand, last year, only four out of the 29 members were present at a Parliamentary Standing Committee of Urban Development in Delhi-NCR to discuss the rising air pollution. Even big names such as Gautam Gambhir representing East Delhi in the parliament were absent. He was seen in a picture shared online eating Jalebis in Indore while the meeting got cancelled.
The most effective way of engaging with ‘green politics’ is to force these parties to look at environmental issues as an active sector to work on and not something that they just mention in their manifesto.
This pressure on the parties can come only from one source; we, the voters. When the voters decide to hold their representatives accountable to environmental issues, even the ones that are the most localised, one can be sure to witness a significant change in our attitudes. The individual needs to become responsible in this regard to make the idea of “green” an indispensable part of their life and their politics.
The other way to address this is for politicians to realize the kind of limelight they can bring to an issue by making it a central part of their election plank. Like the AAP uses education as a central poll issue, making environmental concerns a matter of elections could also bring about a change. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this is far from happening any time soon.
With the rising concerns of climate change and the danger it poses to the other living and nonliving bodies that we share the planet with, it becomes our responsibility, as the “most intelligent species”, to protect and sustain this blue-green ball of dust we call our home. Making the environment an electoral issue is an important first step in this direction.