The disbenefits of solar energy

Solar photovoltaics (PV) are an illuminating case study of the socioeconomic complexities around net-zero planning. PV is a frontrunner in India’s low-carbon planning. India has increased its solar capacity from less than 10 MW in 2010 to 70.10 GW in 2023. We can expect this trend to continue, given the Pradhan Mantri Suryodaya Yojana scheme to install rooftop solar for one crore households. There is massive potential for solar energy given that India’s land area receives approximately 5,000 trillion kWh/year of solar radiation and that solar is one of the cheapest forms of energy. Capitalising on this potential, the Indian government has sanctioned 50 solar parks in 12 states since 2014. As India grows its solar energy capabilities, it is crucial to understand and address the associated challenges. 

India’s solar parks have generated huge quantities of renewable energy. The government’s Development of Solar Parks and Ultra Mega Solar Power Projects scheme states, “a solar park is a large chunk of land developed with common infrastructure facilities like transmission infrastructure, road, water, drainage, communication network etc. with all statutory clearances…The scheme facilitates the installation of grid-connected solar power projects for electricity generation on a large scale.” Solar parks significantly reduce the cost and enhance the accessibility of solar electricity generation. This gives them enormous potential to help reduce poverty and energy poverty in rural areas. However, prioritising economic outcomes has, paradoxically, often led to amplifying inequality. 

While solar PV is indeed a clean, climate-friendly technology, it is a misconception that PV deployed at scale in large solar parks in otherwise ‘unused’ or ‘desert’ rural regions, is automatically a win-win situation. An analysis of Charanaka solar park in Gujarat, Bhadla solar park in Rajasthan, and Pavagada solar park in Karnataka shows that these large infrastructure projects need closer evaluation to prevent a deepening of inequality. These sites illustrate the following ill effects of inadequate policy planning:

Inequitable land acquisition: Solar parks require large swathes of land, usually located around scattered rural populations. Land is the sole or primary asset of rural households, to which their incomes and skillsets are inextricably linked; once the land is acquired by the government, families are often left without a livelihood. Therefore there are policies like the Land Acquisition Act 2013 in place; the act requires the relevant government to assess the potential impact of large renewable energy projects on “livelihoods of affected families, sources of water for cattle, grazing grounds, and traditional tribal institutions etc.” The government must make social impact assessment (SIA) reports accessible to local communities in order to ensure a “human, participative, informed, and transparent process for land acquisition”. Yet this Act is frequently ignored or circumvented. 

In the case of the Charanaka park in Gujarat, villagers were denied the opportunity to express their concerns at their Gram Sabha, and were provided with neither details about the project nor the true value of their land. Many villagers thus ended up selling their land for less than its true value. 

Laws to protect human rights being absent or inadequately enforced shifts the burden of vigilance on to locals. At the Pavagada park a new win-win policy model, said to be more focussed on equitable outcomes for local landowners, was suggested. The land was to be leased instead of purchased, allowing leasing farmers to earn rent and eventually have their farms returned to them, though no promises were made regarding the quality of the land once the park was decommissioned. Consultations hosted by the Karnataka Solar Power Development Corporation Limited were attended by up to 2,000 locals before the project began. This seemed like a strong start. And yet, the Shakti Sthala Farmers’ Group (consisting of leasing farmers from five villages near Pavagada park who aimed to safeguard the interests of their communities) had to hold an emergency meeting after they discovered that one of the solar companies had mortgaged their land lease documents to apply for a bank loan. 

Clearly, policies like the Land Acquisition Act are inadequate to protect the rights and livelihoods of marginalised communities. A potential solution is to incentivise compliance with the rule of law, and build state capacity to scrutinise the administration of solar parks. States are permitted to develop alternative mechanisms to bypass laws like the Land Acquisition Act. This decision should be reconsidered. Where new models like land leasing are tested, loopholes must be addressed and negative impacts monitored before they are reproduced elsewhere. 

Double marginalisation: Women, lower-caste groups, landless labourers, and small farmers are at greater risk of further marginalisation by large infrastructure projects. When landowning farmers sell their land for the creation of a solar park, labourers who previously worked on those farms lose their jobs. While the park is under construction, the number of jobs grows, but once it is established, unskilled labourers are unable to take on the few technical jobs on offer at the solar parks. The Pavagada solar park, for example, with its focus on cutting costs, employs robots to clean solar panels. 

Women also lose out when their family land is leased or sold. Traditionally, women are less likely to own land or other assets like farm equipment. Landed men earn rent, and those with tractors or experience with machinery are able to sell their skills in and around the solar park. Given that women are often less educated, their traditional roles on family farms are either lost or radically changed by solar parks. A Pavagada solar park administrator claimed he was hesitant to hire women, since inadequate security measures at the park had him worried about women’s safety. Unable to find work locally, girls from around Pavagada resorted to searching for low-paying, exploitative jobs in garment factories in Bengaluru. 

Other communities have also lost their livelihoods when their land was acquired to build a solar park. Local nomadic communities in Charanaka lacked access to information regarding the nature and details of the upcoming project; their needs were not represented in local bodies. As a result, they lost access to the government-owned, so-called “waste” land, which were pastoral lands where they had grazed their animals for centuries. 

Clearly, India needs to focus on energy justice in both the research and policy. For example, the nomadic communities of Charanaka felt that acquiring a large swathe of land, which was not in fact wasteland but was essential to their livelihoods, was not the appropriate policy. They suggested the park be disaggregated so that smaller plots from different villages could be utilised, safeguarding common lands. Such perspectives must be taken into account, even if they increase the cost of developing the park. Furthermore, methods of disbursing information should cater to all strata of society to ensure they are able to make informed decisions regarding their resources. 

Unfulfilled promises: Private solar companies are usually required by the Companies Act (2013) to spend 2% of their average net profits on CSR activities every year, and government authorities often promise that new infrastructure projects will include schemes to ensure benefits to locals. Despite such policies, promises of free electricity, better schools, and CSR funds remain unfulfilled and there is rarely a recourse for redressal. In Pavagada, most of the promises that were reneged on – like electricity for the leasing households, jobs, and new infrastructure for locals – had not been documented in any legal contracts. 

Monitoring and evaluation of the outcomes of solar projects has to be consistent, and state agencies must be held accountable to ensure that social welfare promises are honoured. Cooperation among different governmental and non-governmental agencies would help ensure equitable planning and execution of sustainable energy projects. 

Overlooked human and biodiversity externalities: Often, glaring flaws are left unaddressed in policy planning around large infrastructure projects. Pavagada, for instance, is well-documented as a drought-prone area. Yet the Karnataka state government conditionally approved the digging of borewells to extract 1,100 kilolitres of water per day, to supply the regular washing needs of solar panels. Worse still, this large amount of water was still inadequate to fulfil the requirements of the solar park. Water requirements should be accounted for well before a project is green-lighted. However, the Environmental Impact Assessment 2020 exempts solar farms from environmental clearance requirements. There are also no legal requirements for a water use plan unless state policies specify it; most state policies remain ambiguous on this topic. 

Beyond these large-scale issues, unique problems emerge in different contexts. Farmers who retained their land reported that, during the construction phase of the Pavagada project, pollinators like butterflies and bees stopped visiting the area, drastically reducing crop yields. Regional biodiversity is often severely impacted. 

Clearly, policy needs to change. Firstly, India should reduce policy exemptions and ambiguities in relation to solar and wind parks. A second suggestion is to improve prospective project assessment. Thirdly, India must ensure participation from local communities in all decision-making processes that involve the use of their land and resources. 

Harnessing energy justice for holistic decarbonization policies

If net zero policies are improperly formulated, implemented, or governed, they can entrench pre-existing societal injustices. Alternatively, low-carbon transitions can be re-designed in socially equitable ways. Solar energy has numerous potential benefits including reduced cost of electricity, jobs in remote areas, and cleaner air. However, to ensure that these benefits are equitably disseminated, and that disbenefits to marginalised communities are minimal, policymakers must be aware of the social dimensions of decarbonisation policies and projects. This is a vital step for India to meet both its climate targets and its Sustainable Development Goals. 

This article was originally published on Transitions Research.

Families most afflicted by poverty and deprived of formal housing were shortlisted for the project. Of the 143, 100 had been rescued from bonded labour and 43 had been displaced by the floods of 2015—all of them had been gathered from different parts of Tiruvannamalai district.

The long road to resettlement

Resettling marginalised and vulnerable Adivasi families into new housing projects isn’t simply a matter of building them new homes. Resettlement is a social transition after all—a gradual process where families adopt a new way of life. They therefore need help in overcoming anxieties about an uncertain future, one that they haven’t scripted themselves but that has been written for them. The challenge becomes even more pronounced when the sociocultural complexities of the communities are not completely understood by the facilitating and implementing organisations.

We learned this the hard way with the Meesanallur project—when the houses were ready to be occupied, the families were reluctant to relocate.

One of the reasons was the deep connection that Irulars have with the land they call home, even when it doesn’t legally belong to them. They consider it important to live in close proximity to the spirit of their ancestors, who are typically buried nearby. The other reason was assurance of work. Having found jobs—either as seasonal agricultural labourers or woodcutters—in and around their villages, they did not wish to give them up now for new and untested prospects.

And so, while they may have initially agreed to the offer of a self-owned house elsewhere, when the time came to move they wanted to stay where they were, even if it meant risking eviction later on.   

In order to convince the families of the social security they stood to gain at Meesanallur and help them successfully transition to the new model of community living, the Department of Social Work, Madras Christian College, was brought on board. We, along with a nonprofit, designed a three-phase plan for the project.

Phase 1: Building trust

The Irulars, classified as a particularly vulnerable tribal group, number 1.89 lakh in Tamil Nadu according to the 2011 census. Chronic poverty has driven many to daily wage and agricultural work and, invariably, to bonded labour. By some estimates, approximately 90 percent of rescued bonded labourers in Tamil Nadu belong to the Irular tribe. One study confirmed that 27 percent of them were trapped in generational bonded work—a situation exacerbated by their poor access to government schemes.

Discriminatory attitudes towards Irulars are prevalent everywhere. Because of their storied skills at snake catching, those seeking scheduled tribe certificates are sometimes asked to demonstrate these skills as proof of their ethnic identity. Their continued social discrimination makes it difficult for them to trust outsiders, and so whether in rural or urban settlements, Irulars largely keep to themselves.

Given this context, our immediate task was to win their confidence. The more we engaged with them, the more we learned about their world view, their customs, and their psycho-social make-up. We realised, for example, that many Irulars live for the day. This means they’ll only work as much as they need to for their immediate requirements, and stop working until the need for money arises again. It’s important to understand these aspects fully before planning living and livelihood projects for them. 

We started by engaging with the families in their homes. After a couple of such visits, which helped establish our credentials, we organised a cultural programme in a village close to the site of the proposed colony. We brought all the Irular families to the site in vans and invited a troupe of Irular performers to stage songs and dances and a street play for the crowd. A clear message was conveyed through these performances—that a new life awaited them and they must seize the opportunities on offer to experience it.

We drove home this message consistently through several exercises. One such exercise was to photograph each family in front of their old home and present the portrait to them at a ceremony. Most had never taken a family photo before, and we thought the image would also serve as a reminder of the life they had left behind when they later moved to their new home.    

Additionally, we encouraged them to imagine the future their children would have. We got them to think about what a stable future meant, with a land patta (a type of land deed), a community certificate that entitled them to government schemes, and assured work. We brought in influential Irulars and leaders from the rescued bonded labour community to convince them. Their children helped too.

Phase 2: Plotting the path

Once the majority agreed to move, we proceeded to plot their demographics and map their skills. Over a two-day camp, our team of 10–15 volunteers surveyed the children, youth, women, and men, noting their age, individual skill sets, current livelihood options, and aspirations for their children. This data was used by the government to customise the colony for them, setting up facilities they wanted and income-generating avenues that utilised their skills. A complete medical assessment was also conducted, and the necessary vaccines were administered.    

Progress, however, was slow: The families moved into their new homes three years after we started to engage with them. The delay was partly on account of the transfer of the officer who had conceived the project. There’s often a lag between the conception of a project and its implementation, particularly when new government officials take over. One has to then go back to square one, discussing plans and strategies with the new officer all over again. Before we do this, we give them time to settle into their new role and understand the project well. It’s only when they take no action that we gently remind them that the project is stuck. To compound the problem, some of them find it difficult to trust us. They don’t understand what an educational institution has to do with a resettlement project. Nonprofits are viewed with the same mistrust.

We have learned that patience, persistence, and diplomacy are crucial, and so we carefully curate and pace our conversations. This, however, takes time and, in the interim, people can lose hope in the project. The Meesanallur project took two years longer than what was initially promised. When timelines are extended, we not only have to build trust with new officers but also have to rebuild the trust we developed with the community itself, assuring them of the project’s continuance through constant engagement.

Phase 3: Homecoming 

The families moved into the colony a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, and we had to monitor their progress remotely over the next year and a half, given the curfews. We deputed colony leaders to send us regular reports on the phone about how people were adjusting to their new circumstances. When the curfew lifted, we sent our students to track ground realities.

On the whole, the families were content. They were proud of their new homes and invited us to enter them, when earlier they would talk to us at the door. We also noticed their attitudes changing—they now displayed a sense of confidence. Given new opportunities, some shone as born leaders, others as natural entrepreneurs. 

But problems arose too. Lack of integration between different groups was one of the main challenges we encountered when the colony was occupied. Being a motley group from across the district, and accustomed to living in small clusters of no larger than 10–15 people, the Irulars were indisposed to community life of this scale. Dr Abdul Kalam Puram had 564 residents—intergroup conflicts were certain to arise and factions bound to form. The challenge was greater for recently rescued bonded labourers, particularly those who had emerged from generational bondage. The power dynamics that started to play out in the colony, with some community members asserting their authority (evident in all communal groupings), rattled them. They were accustomed to intimidation by their captors, but not by their own kinsfolk.

A leadership council had been set up at the start, with 13 members elected by the community itself to settle internal disputes and bring people’s problems and needs to the government’s notice. However, this new authority did not find support from those who had been hailed as leaders back in their respective hamlets. Additionally, group affiliations favoured some for employment over others, creating more social tension. Despite 11 cottage industries being established, there weren’t enough jobs to go around. 

Some Irular families were from the village of Meesanallur itself, and their connections with local landowners and employers helped them secure farm work, woodcutting assignments, or lease land for fishing outside the colony. But those who struggled to secure work both within the colony and outside found life difficult, and eventually sought to return to their old homes. Thirty to 40 families ended up leaving. Some would return to the colony intermittently having found seasonal work elsewhere; others did not.

Learnings for future projects

Housing projects for Adivasis must be undertaken with thought to their distinct way of life. We impose urban standards of progress and development on them, when we should, in fact, pay close attention to their own norms and practices and design projects accordingly. Here are some of the lessons we learned from this project:

1. The houses designed for them shouldn’t be alien to them. Small adaptations can be made to make them feel at home—for example, instead of a flat roof, a slanting one to mimic the thatched roof they are used to, and a verandah for them to sit and chat with their neighbours or for the elders to sleep on. At other projects, I’ve seen houses converted into godowns or animal pens, with the window blocked and a lean-to erected against the outside wall, which then becomes their home. I’ve also seen poorly ventilated concrete homes blackened with soot because the family continues to burn firewood inside.

We design these schemes and projects with good intentions, but we should make sure that the people for whom these houses are built want to live in them. We cannot assume that just because it’s a free house, they’ll settle in willingly. We cannot also make presumptions about their occupational skills; an example is dairy farming. Each household at Meesanallur was given a cow to supplement their income through the sale of milk. However, the Irular tribe is unaccustomed to owning cattle, and goat rearing would have been better suited to them.

2. It is important to consider the location of these colonies. Are they so far removed from primary health centres, schools and community colleges, and affordable transport systems that they become unsustainable in the long run?

3. Instead of drawing people from different talukas to one mega housing colony, the Meesanallur model can be replicated in smaller colonies for 35–40 families across talukas, so that people are not removed from familiar surroundings. This will also ensure that everyone has access to livelihood opportunities. We all have social bank accounts that grow from the social relations and economic opportunities we build over time in our cities and villages. When people migrate to a new place to start a new life, this account is often empty, and they have to rebuild it from scratch. This process becomes more onerous when the population outstrips available resources and competition ensues.

4. Resettlement projects for vulnerable groups must plan for a period of handholding not only before but also after people move in, for at least three years. This latter part—called community organisation—involves bringing the community together to foster a sense of solidarity through celebrations, by setting up self-help groups, and so on. Handholding includes helping them adjust to the new way of life and to new patterns of work. Government support helps plan and fund these interventions. Without this aided adjustment, there’s a high risk that people will return to their villages if social or economic expectations crumble.

5. And finally, the individual who conceives of the project should be part of its advisory council till the project is completed.

Social housing projects have a crucial role to play in helping marginalised people access a better quality of life. However, an alternative to exclusive, homogenous (or even mixed-group) housing colonies could be to develop inclusive models that empower, integrate, and anchor people firmly within their existing environments. How can entrenched systems of class- and caste-based inequities be weeded out and equitable models of community living be seeded? How can marginalised families step out of the margins and into the heart of a community? In other words, instead of sending people away, can we imagine a new and radical type of ‘homecoming’?

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Know more

• Read this article to learn why and how development plans for the Adivasis should be co-created with them. 

• Read this report to understand the challenges and opportunities of developing sustainable social housing in India.

Over the past three years, Land Body Ecologies (LBE)—a global transdisciplinary network exploring the deep linkages of mental and ecosystem health—has sought to understand the long-standing connections between forests, land, and people. LBE is based in the Arctic North, India, Kenya, Uganda, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. It aims to document stories of loss emanating from being at home and yet feeling that your own home is leaving you. This concept, solastalgia—coined by Glenn Albrecht—was resonant across all our research sites.

In India, we worked with communities in the eco-sensitive zone of the Bannerghatta National Park (BNP), located on the outskirts of Bengaluru city. The BNP was declared a national park under the WPA in 1974, with a notified conservation area of more than 250 square kilometres.

The BNP eco-sensitive zone comprises 16 hamlets or doddis, which are typically quite small, with fewer than 20 houses. The doddis are home to a diverse mix of people, such as settled agricultural communities, indigenous populations that have been moved out of the forests, migrant pastoralists, and other marginalised groups that have found a refuge here. For our research study, we engaged with more than 55 respondents in Bannerghatta through design research methodologies, including in-depth interviews, and activities that involved the community using polaroid photos to document spaces in their doddis and then telling us the stories of the photos they took.

The Iruligas are an Adivasi community living in the region. There are many theories about the origin of the word ‘iruliga’—some believe it comes from ‘irulu’ (darkness), while others trace it to ‘ili’ (rat)—a reference to the widely held view that Iruligas hunt and subsist on rats. However, in the Bannerghatta region, Iruligas are identified by other communities as panditru, or forest saints, in recognition of their deep knowledge of the forest—including the medicinal properties of various herbs—and their understanding of animals, rooted in centuries of lived experience.

Madamma, an old Iruliga woman, recalls how her people relied on their awareness of medicinal herbs in the forest. “When we fell ill, we would medicate by applying the knowledge passed down from our grandparents. We would use the juices of the roots and plants available to us. Why would we need to get injections and tablets when our forest can take care of us?”

For the Iruligas, the forest has been an intrinsic component of their culture—this has engendered in them a duty to care for it. Thimarayappa, an old Lambani conservationist in Bannerghatta, adds, “If they (the Iruligas) had to chop down a tree, it would be a very thought-out decision. If they had to cut greens, it would be only the top parts, not the roots. If they had to dig a root vegetable, they would not remove it completely from the roots because they believe it needs to be there for the coming year. Not one tree would be chopped down unnecessarily.”

Thimarayappa attributes his familiarity with the forest to the time he spent learning from the Iruliga elders, and is keen to give them the credit and respect they have often not received. “I want to reiterate one important thing—if the forests are surviving today, it is because of these people. They have been the unofficial forest department for centuries. But look at their plight now. For all the work they have done for the forests, they have only got humiliation and hurt in return. This is why they do not like the forests any more.”

So what has caused the Iruligas to feel a disconnect with their homes?

Based on our work in the region, the implementation of the WPA and the Forest Conservation Act has contributed to this disconnect. The WPA states that “no individuals can damage, destroy, exploit or remove any wildlife or forest produce” and that flora and fauna are categorised as “government property”. It also put in place harsh control measures in the form of penalties including a three-year prison sentence, a fine of INR 25,000, or both.

The control measures on the conservation laws have led to the state taking on the role of sole owner and guardian of the forest while alienating and meting out harsh treatment towards the Iruligas, who contest this space with the state. An elder spoke about how these acts have become an excuse to harass and detain her community. “The forest officials beat and lock us up in police stations. We have become tired of this nuisance. We do not need this. Going to the forest brings us shame, so now we have stopped going.”

It must be noted that while the Forest Conservation Act technically allows for communities to use forest produce for ‘personal use’, this does not happen in actuality. Instead, they are often stopped from even entering the forest by local authorities. 

With the passage of these two acts, the state positioned itself as the protector of the forest and viewed the local tribal communities as a threat to the flora and fauna of the BNP and as an obstacle to the preservation of the ecosystem. This in turn affected tribal livelihoods, disrupting their economic activities and eroding their cultural identity.

This loss has further given rise to an intergenerational conflict within the community. The Iruliga elders, regarded as unofficial stewards of the forest, now face the painful reality of their children trying to shed this identity and seek a new one.

An elder we spoke to lamented about how their generation worked hard to raise their children, who now turn around and accuse them of having done nothing. “The youth don’t understand our circumstances and how much we struggled. Now the forest department comes and imprisons them and uses them as scapegoats if anything happens in the forest. That is why they are angry.” Thimarayappa adds, “They are not interested in learning about medicines or the forest any more.”

“There is no work for us here,” says a young man. “We too want a ‘standard’ life. None of my friends here are married and nobody will let their daughters marry someone who lives near the forest. They say we don’t have any facilities or a future here. We are looking for opportunities in Bengaluru so we can move away.”

Today, the Iruliga youth are in search of a new identity that commands respect; for example, living as a gainfully employed person in Bengaluru. This decision to move away has been met with disappointment and concern and is echoed by Madamma, who says, “In my time, we were struggling to survive and nobody drank that much. Now the youth are confident of earning INR 1,000 wherever they go. With this, they do not mind buying alcohol and drinking. They have learned everything and none of us are able to control them or help them get off alcohol. We are trying to help them salvage their lives, but they do not listen to us any more.”

Through all this, the role of the state must be examined. The implementation of the WPA and the Forest Conservation Act has been successful, to some degree, in achieving its goals of increased forest cover and protection of wildlife. However, it has failed to provide alternatives to the communities it has upended, while also falling short in curbing commercial activities such as mining within and outside the boundaries of the forest. Communities like the Iruligas that live in the BNP region must be meaningfully integrated into the state’s efforts to preserve the forest and wildlife. Scholars who have highlighted the varied kinds of mistreatment and discrimination faced by the communities have also emphasised the need for the state to take on measures such as providing alternate livelihood opportunities as well as revisiting and easing the strict control of forests. This will allow communities like the Iruligas to reforge their connection with the forest in a way that can revive a culture on the brink of disappearing.

Romit Raj contributed to this article.

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Know more

• Listen to this podcast to learn more about solastalgia.
• Read this article about increasing incidents of human-wildlife conflict caused by climate change.
• Read this report to understand how forest-dwelling communities in Madhya Pradesh are systemically prosecuted under wildlife protection laws.

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• Sign up for Land Body Ecologies’ newsletter.

I completed most of my education in Mumbai. My first job was in the share market, but it couldn’t keep my interest for long. I realised I might not be built for the typical nine-to-five job. While looking for alternatives, I came across an advertisement in the newspaper about a paraprofessional course in social work that trained volunteers in the field of development. I was curious about the social sector because, to me, it combined a study of human behaviour with contribution to the society. The three-month course took me on many field visits where I met a lot of social workers, which gave me confidence. During the course, I also learned about the master’s in social work (MSW) programme, which I undertook and completed. After the MSW, I started interning at Prerana—a nonprofit that works on anti-human trafficking and rescue and rehabilitation of women and children—in 2013. Later, I joined Naunihal—a children’s home run by the organisation in Maharashtra’s Raigad district—which provides a safe space for young girl children in need of care and protection as categorised by the JJ Act 2015. Most of the girls at the centre are survivors of violence and abuse.

I am now a superintendent at Naunihal. Working with children is not something I always aimed for, but over the years I have started enjoying it. I have realised that children, when compared to adults, are more open to discussions and learning, and they can be easily sensitised and made aware of social issues.

5.00 AM: In the months when I have morning duty, I wake up at 5 am and get the children ready for school. I check that their lunches are packed and that they have had breakfast and are wearing clean shoes and uniforms. I also handle administrative tasks such as ensuring their documents are up to date.

Our centre falls under the jurisdiction of the district’s child welfare committee (CWC), which is responsible for the care, protection, and rehabilitation of a child under the Juvenile Justice Act. Most of the children referred to us are victims of child sexual abuse, which means their cases fall under the POCSO Act. This figure used to be less four to five years ago, but recently we have noticed a jump. Of late, we’ve also noted an increase in consensual romantic relationships among underage children. Naunihal is only for female children aged seven to 18. However, in emergency cases, age isn’t a restriction and we take in any child sent to us under the CWC’s orders. We have even admitted a seven-day-old at the institution.

At any point in the last two years, with some monthly variations, we have had 20–25 children living in the facility. This means that there are always children coming and going. If a child is sent to us from a different district in an emergency situation, they are usually sent back to their own district. But as long as they are at the facility, the responsibility of their holistic development—which includes health, education, recreation, and counselling—lies with us.

9.30 AM: I start attending to the cases that the CWC has sent us either the previous night or the same morning. These cases are brought to us by the order of the district CWC. I make sure the children have everything they need, such as their welcome kit and orientation details, and then proceed for breakfast. We have a briefing meeting at 10 am with the entire staff to plan our day. Every member is assigned a task; for example, going on a home visit to a child’s place, accompanying them to their medical test, taking them to their court hearing, and escorting them when they are being sent back home.

We are with the child during every step of the process. We visit their home within 15 days of admission and inform them about their rights, the legal process, the information that’s needed, and the time frame of their case to the best of our knowledge. When there is a procedural delay from the police, the CWC, or the medical staff, we look into it and try to learn more about the cause, and communicate the same to the child in a sensitive manner.

Care requires human interaction, consistency in intervention, and a lot of time and effort.

The case is not closed after the child is restored to their home. With the order of the CWC we are officially required to follow up and then submit reports to the CWC monthly for three months, and then quarterly for a year, but we continue to follow up depending on the need of the case and support with counselling, medical, and educational needs. Care is not a vaccine that you give a dose of and get done with. It requires human interaction, consistency in intervention, and a lot of time and effort.

Cases of familial abuse call for a deeper understanding of the child’s family because the actions of people close to them put extra pressure on them. For example, a mother wanted her child to take back the complaint because the accused was the child’s stepfather. We talked to the mother and learned that the stepfather was the sole earning member of the family; her concern was that if the father was arrested, she would not be able to run the household as she had two other daughters to raise. So we helped the mother get a job, which in turn ensured that the child is not pressurised to withdraw her complaint.

However, in all situations, we ensure that we do not influence the child’s decision. If they decide not to participate in the process, such as the legal case, we don’t try to change their mind and let them choose their own pace. At the same time, we continue giving them information so they can make an informed decision. Our job is to discuss the pros and cons of the legal process with them, especially if they express the need for it. We equip them with the tools to make an informed choice. It is a difficult situation for us knowing that an accused might run free, but supporting the child is our priority.

1.30 PM: The staff eats with the children because the lunch table is an informal space for casual conversations. Children can relax and talk about things that aren’t triggering in nature and they are able to make friends with one another.

During these chats, we also get to understand how the kids perceive the children’s home and how their ideas about it are formed.

Children have told us that they have heard both extremes—from parents saying, “At the children’s home, you’ll understand how other children live, how difficult their lives are” to authorities stating, “If you live here, you can become a police officer, air hostess…” At times, the police tell them that they will be out of the children’s home in a couple of days. But this false hope doesn’t help anyone. The children give statements to the police and the district magistrate separately; we familiarise them with these processes and let them know about child-friendly procedures of the law. Then there’s a medical examination and a social investigation report for which we speak with the child, visit their house, and document every aspect relevant to the case; we submit this report to the CWC, and it plays a crucial role in the decision about the child’s restoration and rehabilitation. So, the child is often at the children’s home for a month or two if not more. There have been cases where children have stayed for six months to a year.

4.00 PM: We take a two-hour break at 4 pm. I spend this time with the kids or do other recreational activities. I really like gardening and have planted many trees. I invite the girls to plant trees with me if they show an interest. We grow items such as spinach, okra, and curry leaves. It makes the children happy, which brings me joy. Naunihal also has a kitchen garden. We encourage the children to participate in planting samplings and nurturing them—it helps them relax.

Since we’re constantly exposed to trafficking and POCSO cases, we can sometimes get desensitised.

The proceedings of the case can be exhausting for the children. They are expected to talk about and share the details of their case with multiple stakeholders such as the police, the CWC, the medical staff, the counsellor, and the caseworkers. They get so lost in the chaos that they feel tired and angry, and think they’ve made a huge mistake by reporting the case. We have to be mindful of these things. Since we’re constantly exposed to trafficking and POCSO cases, we can sometimes get desensitised to the child’s condition.  

I remember, as a fresher, I was working with a child who confided in me about the abuse she faced and I became a complainant in her case. During her medical examination, the doctor brought in four or five trainees to show them the procedure. I intervened to tell them that the child had suffered enough and this wasn’t the time for education. I was hesitant as it was my first case, even though I had undergone trainings to understand the intricacies of the POCSO Act, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, and the JJ Act. But that was theoretical knowledge, and here I was actually witnessing what a victim goes through.

8.00 PM: Our team debriefs after dinner, discusses the progress made during the day, and decides what needs to be done the next day. I make sure that child protection training is undertaken by the team every month and is implemented correctly. I also ensure that the staff to child ratio at the centre is maintained; as of now, every member handles nine to 10 cases at a time. My team should never be overwhelmed because that is good neither for them nor for the children.

I follow up on all administrative tasks and check if the team has submitted their case files; I also give them feedback and try to understand and address any issues they might be facing. We learn from one another by discussing how we solved a certain issue; it can be anything, including a problem someone had with the police, the CWC, or the rehabilitation process.

Although we’re a facility for institutionalisation of children in need, we also follow the principle of the JJ Act that institutionalisation should be the last resort. We evaluate each case to understand whether a child needs institutionalisation. We had a case of child abuse where the parents were from a low-income, migrant family and the mother had medical issues. We thought it was better to help the family arrange valid documents to avail government benefits, such as ration, and get the child admitted to a school rather than keep her at the children’s home for a longer term. We always make sure to assess needs before suggesting rehabilitation options.

10.00 PM: Sometimes we take the children out for dinner; otherwise, we watch movies with them. I personally like Govinda’s Bollywood movies from the ’90s; when I am alone, I also watch Comedy Nights with Kapil. Comedy shows and movies lighten the mood after a long day of stressful work and I consider them good for my mental health.

We conduct routine checks of the children’s rooms at night before everyone goes to sleep. The kids know which room belongs to which staff member and can approach us at any time if they need anything.

My parents worry about me since I live away from home. I don’t discuss my cases with them; as long as they know I’m safe, they’re happy.

I do other things to keep my mind off work. On my day off, I work at an animal shelter. Whenever I am free, I help with taking the cats and dogs to the clinic. Another interest of mine is minimalism. I recently attended a workshop on it that explained how frugality and reducing the burden on nature can make life easier for everyone.

As told to IDR.

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Know more

• Learn why intrafamilial child sexual abuse requires more nuance in justice.
• Learn more about why the juvenile justice laws need to uphold the objectives of justice and deterrence.

On our podcast On the Contrary by IDR, we spoke with Christina Dhanaraj and Dhanya Rajendran about anti-caste allyship, what needs to shift in the current discourse, and what the future must look like for anti-caste movements.

Christina is a writer and consultant for women- and minority-led initiatives focused on social justice, self-determination, and collaborative models of scholarship. She is currently an adviser for Smashboard, Dalit Women Fight, and The Blue Club’s Media Fellowship for Dalit women. She is also the co-founder of the Dalit History Month project. Dhanya is the editor-in-chief of The News Minute, which has established itself as one of the most credible sources of news from the five southern states. She is also the chairperson of DigiPub, India’s biggest association of digital media publishers.

Below is an edited transcript that provides an overview of the guests’ perspectives on the show.   

We must look beyond affirmative action

Dhanya: I think that affirmative action is very important and should be followed in all organisations, whether they are government or private. And institutions have to be careful and thoughtful in implementing it. According to statistics that the Union Government submitted to the Supreme Court, in which they had looked at 19 government departments, SC/ST representation is problematic—most of the people who got jobs [under these categories] were in class II and class III, and very few were class I employees. So, even when we look at affirmative action in government jobs itself, after so many years, why is it that people are limited to jobs in class II or class III in the government?

I remember a debate in which someone said, “It’s not just about [caste-marginalised people] getting jobs, it’s also about whether they rise in the hierarchy.” And that applies to not just government institutions but also the media and other institutions—we do not have chief secretaries and joint secretaries in the bureaucracy; we do not have editors-in-chief in the media.

And there is a lot being said against affirmative action, therefore, we need to change the dialogue itself. There’s so much more to achieve and nobody should be under this misconception that a lot of gains have been made because of affirmative action or reservation for so many years.

Christina: I do believe affirmative action and representation are absolutely important. But thanks to the context that we are all operating in, my fear is that the case for affirmative action and ‘reservation’ is going to get more challenging. The more conversations we have about how people from SC/ST are already in these positions, the stronger the counter against practices of affirmative action will get. So, it’s probably time for us, like Dhanya mentioned, to change the dialogue—and also perhaps the strategies—around it.

To give you an example, within the corporate space, which I have been part of for the last 12 and a half years or so, I can assuredly say that taking the formal route of having more people from caste-affected communities gets us nowhere. Even conversations as rudimentary as ‘we need to have caste-based diversity and inclusion’ being part of the larger conversation around diversity and inclusion…instigates people into going into ‘fight mode’. Even having people in analyst positions—regular, not-so-middle management positions—is difficult at the moment. And to even envision that they would be CEOs and be part of the C-suite is just completely unimaginable right now.

Certain kinds of formal routes also give way to tokenism—[Dalit people are hired] to satisfy a certain standard, parameter, or metric. But the atmosphere conducive enough for them to grow in that system does not exist, which can cause them to leave the organisation. I’ve had to leave the corporate space because I was invisibilised and made to feel worthless, despite showing up consistently. So, while formal routes are absolutely important, we should start thinking about some informal ways—be it job advertisements, word of mouth, or very proactively looking [to hire] people from caste-marginalised backgrounds. Finally, it’s not just about getting people in, but also about creating a culture and an environment where they are able to thrive.

I’m speaking with a corporate space in mind, so this will have to take shape depending on the context you’re working with. It would look different in a university space or in a public sector space.

Caste-oppressed people, and not Savarnas, must be the ones shaping the narrative

Christina: We’ve had thousands of years of an oppressive system in place, and we’ve barely understood how caste has expressed itself in society, even in interpersonal relationships. So the level of overhaul required of people and systems is huge.

In the last few years, the way anti-caste discourse has shaped up [is to emphasise] making better allies out of caste-powered people. That very thought needs to change. For me, as a Dalit woman, I feel Dalit communities must be at the centre of these anti-caste discourses and progress. [It is important] not to think that Savarnas, as people who are holding the stage, should pass the mic, open up spaces, or include people. Such discourses assume that it’s Savarnas who will continue to hold power and be at the centre, and that they are just including people from the outside.

[For example,] we tend to think that the people who hold [sway in] publishing companies will have to give opportunities to Dalit authors. But most often even that does not happen. What we [need] to do is flip that and think about what a publishing company with Dalit people on the editorial board—as chief editors or as commissioning editors—would look like, and what kind of authors, books, and stories they would be commissioning. So I think it’s important for us to flip that imagination and think of it as caste-oppressed and caste-marginalised people holding power and being the ones originating these very discourses.

Dhanya: One trend I have noticed among ‘atoning Savarnas’, as I call them, is that they simply want to listen sometimes and keep passing the mic. They don’t think that they have anything to do other than pass the mic, which I think is problematic too—they don’t want to get involved at all as they think someone else will do the job. So, I think the most difficult conversations have to occur among Savarnas themselves. For example, people in my friend group would say, “But we never spoke about caste in school,” or “But we were never casteist in school.” Once I had to point out to my school friends that we are the greatest example of a gang where everybody is a Savarna. So, I told them that look, we may not have been casteist, but the point is that from the time we are born, it’s sort of inbuilt in us, because our parents have told us [to stick with people from similar caste backgrounds] in various different ways. And, okay, maybe I was not [explicitly] casteist, but I was [implicitly] casteist in many ways, because I did know that these are the friends I should have, or these are the people I should hang out with. These are very intrinsic in us, and I think we have to have those conversations among ourselves. And when someone criticises us or calls us out, I think to immediately feel victimised [and wonder], “Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have been an ally; the one time I did something wrong, why am I being called out?” is also something that I’ve been noticing lately. So I tell myself that I’m not being punished for the sins of my ancestors. But I have to be educated and aware of what happened. Therefore, I am a continuation of that process.

Traditional media houses must be more inclusive

Dhanya: I represent news media, in which most editors are either Savarna men or women. This has not changed over the years. Because of this a lot of people are dejected, and I see this parallel movement of websites that are run by people from Dalit and other communities because they believe that they are not represented in other media houses.

We always speak about having more women in the newsroom. Why? Because we need people with lived experiences to speak about [these issues]…for example, there’s a huge difference in the kind of stories that are chosen and in the way stories are written by a woman editor and a male editor in a newsroom. The same applies if you have a Muslim [member on the team], or someone from the LGBTQ community, or from any caste-marginalised community—everybody comes with their own lived experiences.

I did think around five years ago that just representation, as far as journalists are concerned, will help. But I’ve realised that lived experiences should not be translated into just that one journalist writing about that one subject. It has to impact the entire newsroom. For example, I’m a Savarna. As an editor, I make it a point for everyone to refer to certain people in the newsroom who come with a lived experience, and they can be the ones who advise the others, no matter their seniority. Newsrooms, I think, are changing that way. Unfortunately, changes take place when more calling out happens from within the organisation itself.

Oxfam and Newslaundry conducted research on the composition in newsrooms. I believe that’s also [a form of] calling out. They asked organisations questions like, “Is your editor a Savarna?” or “How many people from marginalised communities do you have?” When that report was published, there was also a call for action for the media houses to do something about it. However, most news organisations did not even respond to them.

Social media is useful, though calling people out on it may not be

Christina: Social media can be extremely helpful in many ways. For example, several Dalit women activists who are working on the ground may not have access to media outlets that would readily pick up their stories. The kind of atrocities that become big news or that have in some way gained momentum in that particular place get reported, but there are many atrocities that we never get to hear about. And this news doesn’t ever get covered, even in local newspapers. In that sense, if they do have access to social media—in the language that they are comfortable in—they can always have an outlet not just for reporting, but also for analysis. They may be able to find very powerful allies who might take notice of what’s happening and help them in some way. Partnerships and collaborations can happen. In my work with Dalit Women Fight, this is something that we have talked about time and time again, where they feel extremely glad that they have social media, particularly Twitter, where they can put up stuff.

However, I don’t entirely agree with [the idea that] calling out is the only way forward in terms of change—it requires a lot of emotion and labour. I have participated in [calling out on social media] only to realise that over a period of time, it erodes you as well. As a Dalit woman, if I were to spend my time looking for things on social media that I feel are casteist and that I’m going to be calling out, it’s not helping me in any way—not just individually, even collectively as a community. It is still very Savarna- and upper-caste-centric when I’m trying to tell people, “Hey, this is where you were wrong.” The kind of calling out that is happening seems to take up so much more real estate than the issues that we should be talking about.

What the anti-caste movement needs going forward

1. Alliances with other movements

Christina: We need to come up with strategies that are very specific to our context, which is fairly complicated because of intersectionality. I have a lot of admiration for the queer movement, which has done such great stuff within the Indian corporate space, to the extent that today actual policy changes have happened within organisations, such as medical insurance for same-sex couples. Organisations have made it a point to mention in their code of conduct that you should never say anything that is queerphobic. These are huge milestones that the queer movement in India has achieved as far as the corporate space is concerned.

But we have not been able to make any comparable headway as far as the anti-caste space is concerned. Of course, it is not just due to our strategies; it has much more to do with the fact that the people who are sitting on the other side, who happen to be mostly upper caste, may have queer people—but not caste-marginalised people—in their family and friend circles. So that makes it more difficult for them to even look at this as an issue. But there’s definitely something for us to learn from the way in which [movements for queer rights] have designed campaigns. They have just gone at it with a lot of courage and gumption.

And I think there’s space for not just adopting practices, but also for partnerships and collaboration between the anti-caste and queer movements. Because there are a whole lot of us who are both queer and Dalit. And the same thing goes for the feminist movement as well. None of us are leading single-identity lives—we are all part feminist, part queer.

2. Active anti-caste action alongside learning

Dhanya: I feel that the people who are aware and who say they are anti-caste cannot keep learning forever. They have to start reacting. Every time something goes wrong, people say, “I learned, I unlearned.” I don’t know how frustrating it must be for Christina, but I find it very frustrating. I want to give a small example. I go to a lot of colleges for lectures, and the most problematic thing is when we speak about affirmative action or reservation. Immediately, people will say, “But my merit goes away; I work very hard.” In one famous Bangalore college, in a hall of 700-odd students, many were agitated with this merit point. A professor stood up and he said that he is from a caste-marginalised community, and the entire auditorium was stunned because they never knew this. He had never spoken about it and may have been triggered by the conversation. I felt very good that he spoke up, but then I also wondered, is the onus only on him to speak up? Shouldn’t the other Savarna teachers have made interventions earlier or at that point? One of them had told me, “We are also still learning.” So, at what point are we going to stop learning and start acting? That’s the question we need to ask ourselves.

3. Building awareness among the younger generations

Dhanya: Alongside [building coalitions across social justice movements], we need to speak to our younger generations.

As the mother of a 10-year-old and as someone who visits schools and colleges to speak, I feel that if young people are made aware of their privileges and the lack of privileges of other people, it really makes the journey much easier than trying to convince them when they’re 30 years old and tweeting away. We should have more literature around that—now there are books for children that explain the caste movement and Ambedkar’s vision. So in small, small things, I think we need to introduce those changes.

And I think the language that we use, for example, using the word ‘reservation’ itself…we have to watch our language, especially around the young.

You can listen to the entire podcast here.

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Know more:

• Read this article to learn why fighting against systemic oppression takes a sustained effort.
• Learn how Dalit women are ignored in corporate spaces in India.
• Watch this critique of the anti-caste movement in India today.

Localised conglomerations of the sex trade were convenient not only for customers, but also proved useful to the police and health authorities. For the police, RLAs were the focus of raids, rescues, closure of brothels, and crackdown on sex traders (a move that was sometimes genuine, and otherwise tokenistic). For health authorities, hundreds of victims could be found in one place and kept ‘clean’ to protect society from sexually transmitted infections and diseases.

However, modernisation has led to changes in the nature and speed of activities in localised sex trade. Even as RLAs grew more populated, there were limits to their expansion, surrounded as they were by mainstream society. This led to a forced dispersal and delocalisation of the sex trade, which has in turn thrown up several challenges to rescue and rehabilitation efforts. 

Changing patterns in commercial sexual exploitation

1. New sites

The RLA is no longer the locus of sex trade; it has splintered into dozens of unmarked sites of commercial sexual exploitation that include boarding and lodging houses, small hotels, and private residences. When trafficking networks are traceable, it becomes easier for anti-trafficking agencies to intervene, report about commercial sexual exploitation, rehabilitate rescued women and children, and bring perpetrators to book.

Yet, despite the decentralisation of the trade, new sites of commercial sexual exploitation continue to be unearthed, thanks largely to civil society organisations (CSOs) that conduct on-ground surveys where victims are likely to be found. They then share this information with law enforcement agencies. For example, we received a child at our shelter facility in Raigad district who was rescued by the police while on the way to being sold by a pimp to a customer. The transaction was to take place at a boarding and lodging house in urban Raigad. The police were tipped off by a local CSO.

Scenes like this play out often: One or two rooms in a private establishment become sites of exploitation—the makeshift brothel—while the rest of the lodge continues to serve the general public. (Recently, four rescued minors submitted draft guidelines to the Supreme Court demanding that owners of properties deployed as brothels pay damages to the women and children found there.)

2. New routes

Over the last fifteen years, the supply areas, routes, and destinations of trafficked persons have changed. When Prerana started work in the Kamathipura RLA in 1986, more than 20 percent of women in the brothels of Mumbai were trafficked from Nepal. Domestic trafficking exposed a rural-to-urban movement, with women and children from West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and the border districts of Karnataka and Maharashtra brought to cities such as Mumbai, Kolkata, and Delhi.

Our current data show that both the source and the destination are now urban areas, and the physical distance between them is closing. In Maharashtra, for example, we have a number of cases of girls from marginalised communities transported from source districts such as Thane and Mumbai to destinations like Raigad, the district next door.

There has been a sudden proliferation of small hotels and lodging–boarding establishments in urban Raigad, to which customers and victims are brought. It is increasingly expensive to run the sex trade in Mumbai, but Raigad costs half as much. Given its proximity to Mumbai, customers from the metropolis can be ferried there in a few hours and assured anonymity. There has also been an increase in the migration of single male migrants to Raigad district and they too have driven up demand for commercial sex.

We also notice a growing incidence of girls born and raised in the same city (Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane) where they are exploited.

3. New dynamics

Earlier, women and their children lived in the brothel, and customers were entertained right there. In sex tourism, customers travelled to places where victims were made available. Now we see both the customer and the minor girl or young woman transported to a new site, and afterwards her handler sends her back to her family.

We witnessed this recently in eight cases, where the girls were asked to report to a particular spot from where they were transported to the customer. They were sent back late evening, with their families told that they worked at an event management company to justify their late hours.

Perpetrators are increasingly fishing in families, particularly where dysfunctionality and duress are evident; for example, one or both parents have deserted the children, leaving them in the care of elderly grandparents. One of the grandparents may be alcohol-dependent, or one or both are very ill but have to support their wards. This is the narrative we frequently encounter.  

In the last couple of years, almost all the rescued girls we worked with were school dropouts, having left school after standard 8 or 9. More recently, some of them told us that they discontinued schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caste and distress mobility

Various stressors increase the vulnerability of women and children to sex trafficking. These include chronic poverty, loss of livelihood, and cultural practices like intergenerational trafficking prevalent in communities such as the Bedia–Banchhada and the Devadasi.

• Caste plays a major role in the induction of girls into the sex trade. It’s usually girls from the scheduled castes who are more vulnerable to trafficking compared to the middle or upper castes who are exposed to similar socio-economic pressures. We’ve had families of rescued girls who claimed to belong to a scheduled caste, but 90 percent of them didn’t have a caste certificate. This document makes it possible to prosecute perpetrators under The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, which stipulates severe punishment and grants the women financial compensation.

• Distress mobility born of famine and drought has always been a prime hunting ground. But as the intensity and frequency of climate-change-related disasters increases, this risk is likely to escalate. One of the cases we handled involved a family affected by the tsunami of 2004. Tricked by traffickers who promised to help them avail of government relief programmes, the entire family was lured to Ahmednagar, where their two adolescent girls were sold into the sex trade. The Latur earthquake of 1993 also trapped women in trafficking networks.

Social media: Ground for grooming

In many cases, adolescent girls are brought into contact with perpetrators via WhatsApp and Instagram. These platforms are used in the initial stages to woo, groom, and make introductions. We have noticed a rise in the number of school-going girls among such victims. Formal education per se does not grant immunity against sex trafficking.

Perpetrators also approach girls with job offers through WhatsApp. “Contact us within four hours for a job that pays quick money,” the ads say. Many of these jobs are at escort agencies, spas, beauty parlours, call centres, and event management companies—grooming grounds where women are gradually eased into the sex trade. Eventually the women are told they can make money on the side if they escort a client to a party or accompany him on a tour of Mumbai.  

However, while perpetrators may use certain occupational sites to target women, it cannot be emphasised enough that these are legitimate places of work and a source of income for women. They should not be stigmatised. At the same time, we want women and young girls to take extra care when approached with job prospects at these worksites.

Preventive mechanisms are crucial to curbing sex trafficking.

To help women become aware of early signs of exploitation and new tactics that traffickers are adopting, Prerana has published a knowledge resource manual called Jagaran. This manual is intended for community frontline workers and development practitioners who work with adolescents and young women in vulnerable populations. A preventive tool (with lesson plans and contextual information), Jagaran can be used to build awareness, help young women protect themselves from vulnerabilities, and guide them towards support systems.        

Preventive mechanisms are crucial to curbing sex trafficking, particularly now that rescue and rehabilitation has become even more challenging. Decentralisation of the sex trade has made tracking difficult because it invisibilises the victim. Conventional indicators of trafficking such as malnourishment and signs of physical abuse no longer apply to the current reality.

Invisibility also isolates women, denying them access to traditional support systems such as CSOs, the public healthcare system, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), law enforcement agencies, and legal aid services. It also impacts data collection, which was a challenge as it is. NACO estimated the population of female sex workers in 2004 to be between 8 and 12 lakh. Given the growing diffusion of the trade, the numbers will become even more unreliable now.

Building a resilient rehabilitation programme

Prevention and rehabilitation programmes should be strengthened simultaneously. We haven’t invested enough in imagining a holistic rehabilitation system; what we have instead is a morality-centred, incarceration-based system, with conditional laws and policies. For example, the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, stipulates that rehabilitation is possible only after the victim is rescued by the state machinery. But what if a victim wants rehabilitation without coming into contact with law enforcement agencies and the judiciary? They are denied compensation or support from the state and the only support they receive is from CSOs.  

We also need a mindset shift in society where we turn away from our messianic attitude and cultivate a compassionate approach. Without it, rehabilitation will continue to be a challenge, and this will only make perpetrators stronger. It will lead to re-trafficking, and the victims will eventually lose faith in the rehabilitation system.  

Some years ago, Prerana trained several minors rescued from dance bars to work as petrol pump attendants in Mumbai. Word leaked about their former circumstances, and customers started name-calling and propositioning them, making it impossible for the women to forget their life in the sex trade.  

Following this incident, we developed an orientation protocol for rescued victims, counselling them on their rights, particularly the right to privacy and confidentiality. The protocol advised them on when disclosure was necessary and with whom to share sensitive information. If they felt that their safety was compromised, they had the right to reach out to relevant support systems. We share this safety protocol with every adolescent girl at our shelter homes.  

This intervention has prompted girls to talk more openly about risky situations they encounter. We once worked with a girl employed in the service sector whose colleague harassed her for sex when he learned she was the daughter of a prostitute. But because she was aware of a statutory body like the Internal Complaints Committee, she immediately reached out to them with her problem. She also approached Prerana and the one-stop crisis centre. She knew the importance of contacting multiple people and wasn’t dependent on a single support system because of the protocol we had framed.

Why collectivise?

We have understood the value of partnering with multiple stakeholders in the space of anti-human trafficking, women’s rights, and child safety. Given our limited resources, it’s important for CSOs to collectivise and pool resources because it’s difficult, independently and individually, to protect victims after rescue. Two decades ago, Prerana filed a public interest litigation on standards of care in shelter facilities for rescued victims. Organisations like Committed Communities Development Trust (CCDT), Pratham, and Centre for Inquiry into Health and Allied Themes (CEHAT) lent their support to the campaign, and our collective effort resulted in public advocacy. Today, every state is required to have well-defined, rights-based standards of care and protection in all shelter facilities for women and children.

The need for CSOs to collaborate has grown more urgent than ever.

Collectivisation can take two forms: organisations can assemble to form a formal network, or they can come together when the situation demands it. A recent example of this situational collectivism was when the Supreme Court launched the Handbook on Combating Gender Stereotypes, a glossary of gender-just terms that would replace traditional terms in legal documents. A whore or a prostitute ought to now be called a sex worker.

Several CSOs working on anti-human trafficking immediately spoke up against this revision. We believe that by blanketly using the term ‘sex worker’, we fail to acknowledge that many of these women are victims of human trafficking and forget the modus operandi of violence that was used to sell them into the sex trade. Deciding to write to the chief justice about it, we drafted a letter within a week, signed it, and e-mailed it to his office.

The need for CSOs to collaborate has grown more urgent than ever. Mounting an allied front does more than add weight to advocacy and breadth to relief efforts. It can protect potential victims from entrapment by raising awareness of trafficking risks at the grassroots itself. This is one of the ways we can stop the human trafficking web from growing.  

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Know more

• Read this article about how, India does not fully meet the minimum standard to tackle trafficking.
• Read this article about the victim–saviour dichotomy in dominant narratives of human trafficking.
• Listen to this podcast called ‘Humans Not for Sale’ produced by Prerana, which creates broader awareness around human trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation.

Union government data show that 315,302 people were released from bonded labour in over four decades between 1978 and January 2023, of which 94% have been rehabilitated.

Based on the data, the government, since its statement in 2016, has been able to release only 32,873 people from bonded labour, a yearly average of 4,696. This would mean that at the same annual rate, by 2030, the government would have achieved only 2% of its 18.4 million target, our analysis shows, leaving 18 million Indians in bonded labour.

Bonded labour is a form of modern slavery which has been illegal in India since 1976, when the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act was passed. It defines ‘bonded labour system’ as the system of forced labour under which a debtor enters into an agreement with the creditor that he would render service to him either by himself or through any member of his family or any person dependent on him, for a specified or unspecified period, either without wages or for nominal wages, in consideration of loan or any other economic consideration obtained by him or any of his ascendants, or in pursuance of any social obligation, or in pursuance of any obligation devolving on him by succession.

In order to restart their lives and provide meaningful livelihood and job security to rescued bonded labourers, the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labourer is supposed to provide financial and non-financial support once they are issued bonded labour release certificates by district magistrates or sub-divisional magistrates (DM or SDM). But identifying bonded labour is not a priority for governments, and district authorities often do not issue release certificates, say activists and experts.

Anuj Kumar*, 30, was rescued from a brick kiln in Ambala and has gone back to working as a mason in his native village in Uttar Pradesh’s Deoband. Forty-three-year-old Mahesh Kumar*, another former bonded labourer who was issued a release certificate in March 2022, has migrated to work in construction to neighbouring Telangana from his hometown in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. Despite entitlements under the scheme, neither Anuj nor Mahesh, both from Dalit communities, have received any rehabilitation assistance, they told IndiaSpend.

Though it was declared illegal in 1976, each year hundreds of fresh cases of bonded labour and trafficking for work are reported. In 2021, around 11 million people in India were in modern slavery, which includes forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, other slavery and slavery-like practices, and human trafficking, according to Global Slavery Index estimates by Walk Free, an international human rights group focussed on the eradication of modern slavery. India is only one of the four countries–Iran, North and South Korea–in the Asia Pacific that did not have a National Action Plan on modern slavery, showed the index.

IndiaSpend has written to and called senior officials of the Ministry of Labour and Employment to provide responses to the government’s target of releasing 18.4 million bonded labourers by 2030, the process of full rehabilitation, extent of centralised data collation of government’s bonded labour rehabilitation assistance, and scheme related survey to identify bonded labour. The story will be updated when we receive a response.

Burden of proof of bondage

The majority of jobs created in India are in the informal sector, often leading to job insecurity, low wages and lack of labour protection. According to the State of Working India 2023 report, the levels of informality are a “concern”. The report said that between 1983 and 2019, “the share of the non-farm sector in employment rose 20 percentage points, but the majority of such jobs were of the informal variety”.

When earnings and wages are below the statutory minimum wage and workers have to live by borrowing, the condition of the workers slide into bondage, said the 2002 Report Of The National Commission On Labour.

Rehabilitation for rescued bonded labour has been provided since 1978 through a centrally sponsored scheme. The ceiling of assistance was Rs 4,000 for each worker, which was shared between the respective state and the Union governments. After revisions in the scheme over the years, in May 2000 the assistance to rescued labourers was fixed at Rs 20,000 and district level survey component, awareness generation activities and evaluation studies were included.

The rehabilitation scheme was revised again in February 2022, to provide immediate financial support of Rs 30,000 to the rescued labourer. It also includes Rs 1 lakh for a male worker, Rs 2 lakh for each woman and child, and Rs 3 lakh for transgender persons or women and children involving extreme cases of deprivation, sexual exploitation and trafficking, based on the discretion of the district magistrates.

In addition to financial assistance, the beneficiaries are also entitled to non-cash assistance including land allotment for a house, allocation of agricultural land, provision of low cost dwelling units, enforcement of minimum wages etc.

The standard operating procedure to identify, rescue, and rehabilitate bonded labourers mandates that DMs or SDMs must rescue the affected worker within 24 hours of receiving an oral or written complaint of bondage. According to a December 8, 2021 advisory of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), once a bonded labourer is freed and issued a release certificate within 24 hours, they should be compensated and rehabilitated. However, the government’s support is accessible only if the bondage is recognised by the DMs/SDMs issuing the relevant certificate. In many cases this does not happen, said experts.

Anuj, his parents and three siblings were given an advance of Rs 20,000 by a middleman and promised wages based on the number of bricks they produced. “We were supposed to receive wages every 15 days based on the number of bricks made per person (at least 1,000 bricks daily),” said Anuj, who worked for four months at the brick kiln in Ambala.

The owner however did not pay them their dues, and the family is owed Rs 1.75 lakh. Anuj claims that he has not received his release certificate from the district administration since his rescue in 2019 despite signing documents and being told that the cheque for financial assistance was ready. Fifty bonded labourers were rescued from the kiln, as per a letter from the district, which also says it has issued release certificates for them, but the labourers say they have not received the letters.

Mahesh, a landless migrant worker, was issued his release certificate on March 14, 2022, but till date, he has not been provided any support. There were 22 workers in all from his village, including his wife, who were promised Rs 700 a day for making bricks, said Mahesh who had worked as a reporter with a small local news outlet until 2008.

“We were treated badly by the owners because the dalal (contractor or middlewoman in Mahesh’s case) cheated the brick kiln owner of Rs 5 lakh,” said Mahesh.

According to him, the Bilaspur labour department claims to not have received the documents, and told him that they did not have funds for rehabilitation. “Since the release, the families must have visited the offices 30 km away a dozen times, spending thousands of rupees.”

Complete rehabilitation must include financial and nonfinancial assistance, said Nirmal Gorana, convener, National Campaign Committee for Eradication of Bonded Labour (NCCEBL), a national-level network for identification, rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked bonded labourers. “The cash assistance includes an interim relief of Rs 30,000,” he said. “But even after being given a release certificate, the meagre interim relief is not given to rescued labourers.”

The state governments may get the workers rescued but they are reluctant to issue a release certificate recognising that the workers are bonded, said Sudhir Katiyar, Founder, Prayas Centre for Labour Research and Action, a rights-based NGO. “Due to this, workers are not able to access rehabilitation. We often get workers released from bondage but hardly anyone gets certificates.”

IndiaSpend has written to the Ambala division commissioner and deputy commissioner, and to the Barara sub-divisional officer, for comments in Anuj Kumar’s case. The office of the commissioner stated that the request has been forwarded to the concerned official in Barara. We have also written to the Bilaspur collector and reached out for comment to a labour official in Mahesh Kumar’s case. The story will be updated when we receive a response.

On October 13, 11 days after this story was published, Chhattisgarh’s labour department wrote to the collector in Kushinagar asking for release- and rehabilitation-related information.

Data show reluctance to acknowledge bonded labour

A February 2023 government response in Parliament showed that between 2019 and January 2023, 2,650 people were rescued/rehabilitated, but no cases of bonded labour rescue or rehabilitation were reported in India in 2019-20.

However, the National Crime Records Bureau data reported 1,155 cases (96% crimes were against SC and ST) in 2019 under the Bonded Labour System Abolition Act, 1976 (BLSA). Similarly in 2020, 1,231 cases (94% against SC/ST) were registered and in 2021, 592 cases (96% against SC/ST) were registered under the Act, showing that rescues and rehabilitation data do not tend to match the number of cases registered.

State administrations are reluctant to acknowledge the presence of bonded labour in their jurisdiction, say experts.

“The FIR has to be filed after the rescue and after it has been identified as a BLSA case,” said Amin Khan, activist and advocate practising at Madhya Pradesh High Court. “If there are 1,155 cases [in 2019] reported, at least that many rescues should be shown.”

There is pressure on district officials to not show bonded labourers because it damages the reputation of the government, and politically powerful people may be involved, he said.

Establishing a person’s bondage is the first hurdle because officials lack training and awareness, and there’s an impression that someone who is walking around without shackles is not bonded, said Santosh Poonia, programme manager (Legal Education, Aid and Advocacy), Aajeevika Bureau, a non-profit that provides services to migrant and informal workers.

“Usually SDMs do not go for raids, which are conducted by [official] representatives who depend on the police and labour department. They are not a deciding authority,” he said.

Insufficient “political will” in many states has impacted efforts to address bonded labour, said the US Department of State’s 2022 Trafficking in Persons Report on India. “NGOs previously estimated police did not file FIRs in at least half of bonded labour cases nationally, especially in Bihar and Rajasthan.”

For example, NHRC’s 2019-20 annual report showed that when a Special Rapporteur visited Pakribarwan block in Bihar’s Nawada district in July 2019, to assess the situation of bonded and child labour, they found that the state government had “failed to allot the immediate cash assistance of Rs 20,000 [before the scheme revision] to most of the identified bonded and child labourers in the district” and no charge sheets had been filed “against the people who were employing bonded labour in the district”.

IndiaSpend accessed data from activists and organisations and found that there are many cases where rescues have not resulted in issuance of certificates or rehabilitation assistance.

Based on the NCCEBL data shared by Nirmal Gorana, in 2019, at least 652 labourers were rescued of whom 207 were issued release certificates. In 2021, 320 bonded labourers were rescued of whom 65 were given release certificates and 49 have been provided financial assistance. No one has received non-financial support for housing or agricultural land.

Similarly in 2022, 212 bonded labourers were rescued; fewer than two in three received their release certificate and only 27 received an interim amount of Rs 30,000, showed NCCEBL data. In 2023, not one of the 59 rescued bonded labourers were issued release certificates and associated rehabilitation support. The majority of bonded labourers are from SC and ST communities, per NCCEBL data.

According to Aajeevika Bureau’s data, of 14 cases that were received since November 2020 by their labour helpline and registered with the state governments, only in one case–Mahesh and others–were workers issued a release certificate. Often, workers did not want the hassle of registering a case and preferred to negotiate the pending wages and return home, said experts.

Amin Khan’s data showed that at least 105 workers were rescued and 73 were issued release certificates. But only 15–from a 2021 case–were given interim assistance of Rs 20,000 (the smaller sum is because they were rescued before the 2022 revision), said Khan.

IndiaSpend has filed an application under the Right to Information Act with the Ministry of Labour and Employment, on September 7, for details of rescue and rehabilitation since 2016, state-specific data on financial and non financial support for rehabilitation, and bonded labour identification survey data. We will update the story when we receive a response.

We received an RTI response from the Ministry of Labour and Employment dated October 17, 2023, 15 days after the publication of this story. The government said that 296,508 bonded labourers have been rehabilitated in four decades until September 30, 2023–that is, 203 more people have been rescued and rehabilitated since January 31. The RTI response shows that between 2016-17 and 2022-23, 13,946 bonded labourers have been rehabilitated and provided financial support through the scheme. It also shows ‘nil’ rehabilitations for 2019-20, same as Parliament data. The scheme provided around Rs 20.4 crore as central assistance during the six-year period. Uttar Pradesh reported at least one-third of the rehabilitation and was given 42% of the cash assistance.

While the rehabilitation scheme has been implemented for decades, after the revision in the scheme in 2016, it became mandatory to conduct a summary trial, said Katiyar. A summary trial is supposed to be conducted within 24 hours of the rescue or the date of identification, and completed within three months by an executive magistrate who has been conferred powers by the state to try cases under BLSA.

“The summary trial is mandatory, and the rehabilitation including financial and non financial assistance can be completed based on it. But the trial may take time and the workers cannot be asked to wait until its completion,” said Katiyar.

The release of the overall compensation remained contingent upon conviction of the trafficker or conclusion of magisterial processes, which could take several years, said the US government report. While the government “did not adequately implement any stage of this program”, when it did, it was mostly due to sustained NGO advocacy. Further, some states, as allowed in the Union government’s 2016 bonded labour scheme, controlled how victims could use their compensation, it said.

According to a 2018 study by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, no expenditure was reported on cash assistance and other components of the scheme in 2016-17 despite a Rs 5 crore budget allocation. This was increased to Rs 10 crore in the subsequent two years.

In the three years until February 2023, the government expended only half of the budget allocation at most, each year, for the scheme. The highest expenditure was reported in 2022-23 where Rs 4.6 crore of the allocated Rs 10 crore were spent.

The spike is deceptive–this period is after the 2022 scheme revision where the interim relief was increased by Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000. Thus, while the total amount expended shows an increase, the actual number of workers rescued in 2022-23 was only around one-third of the previous year.

Activist and lawyer Khan said that once the bonded labour release certificate is issued, the summary trial has to only determine compensation and punishment for offenders. “Although there is no law on providing support only after [summary] trial, there are instances where support is delayed because the trial has not been completed.”

Scheme is demand-driven, says government

Contrary to the 2030 vision target of rescuing 18.4 million bonded labourers, the 2023 Lok Sabha standing committee report shows that the Ministry of Labour and Employment said the scheme is demand-driven due to which “target cannot be fixed to identify and rescue the bonded labourer”.

Corroborating the lack of priority for bonded labour rescue and rehabilitation, as alleged by activists, the Lok Sabha report shows that the Union government did not have full rehabilitation details of the central sector scheme. The Ministry of Labour and Employment said it did not have details on the non-cash assistance being provided by states as it came “under the purview of state government”.

The RTI response echoed the statement shared in the Parliament report, stating that the information for rehabilitation may be directly obtained from state departments as rehabilitation falls under state purview.

“The mechanism of distribution of available funds among different components of the scheme was not reported clearly by the Union Government,” said the CBGA report. The bonded labour scheme has always worked in the “mode of reimbursement, and not through advance payment of funds to the districts”.

Further, according to the rehabilitation scheme, each district has to create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh which is renewable and which would be used for the immediate assistance of rescued labourers. Twenty nine districts in three states–Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh–utilised funds from its corpus in 2022-23.

It is unlikely that all districts have corpus funds, and the data on bonded labour under the scheme have discrepancies, said Gorana. “There is no clarity on rescue and rehabilitation. Those who have been given Rs 30,000 have also been included in rehabilitation data, which is wrong.”

The Union government also provides Rs 4.5 lakh to states to conduct a survey of bonded labourers once every three years per sensitive district [where high incidence bonded labour is reported], besides an awareness generation fund of Rs 10 lakh a year to each state and Rs 1.5 lakh each for up to five evaluatory studies per year for eradication of bonded labour.

Surveys do not happen properly, which in turn means that survey-based rescues do not happen, said Ravi, an independent researcher on bonded labour who has helped in the release of 180 labourers. “It is usually based on individual or NGO complaints.”

States have been tasked to monitor this. To identify bondage, the labour ministry advised states “regularly to conduct more and more surveys, awareness generation and evaluatory studies to identify and release the bonded labourers”.

What more needs to be done

The parliament committee has recommended that the government should maintain a central database of assistance provided, irrespective of the jurisdictional aspects.

Experts and policy documents show that surveys and evaluations on bonded labour at the district levels must be conducted on time, and a management information system along the likes of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the rural jobs programme, and Swachh Bharat Mission for household sanitation, should be created to monitor progress.

The scheme is good overall, but there is a need for sensitisation, particularly because bonded labour may also be a case of human trafficking which attracts Indian Penal Code 370 on buying or disposing of any person as a slave, said Katiyar. “If this is properly done and monitored it will increase registration of cases, and data collation will also improve.”

The solution to eradicating bonded labour lies in changing the conditions of work, and not rehabilitation alone, he added.

Anuj, who was rescued from a brick kiln in 2019, does not own any land, and stays in his parents’ two-room house. The two bighas (1.2 acres) of land that his family had was sold for his sisters’ marriage. “No one has contacted me since I went to meet district labour officials in Ambala to sign for the issuance of the cheque, and I have not received any money yet.” He continues to face delayed wages as a mason, but after his previous experience, the safety of being at home trumps his urge to migrate for better wage work.

Mahesh, who is yet to receive any government rehabilitation support since his rescue in 2022, too faces a similar plight. When he and his wife return after months of work, they stay in his mother-in-law’s one-room house. “We can manage if we get rehabilitation money and then get land for a house or farming [under the scheme],” he said. “We are not asking for anything big.”

*Names of the rescued labourers have been changed to protect their identity.

Update:

1. This story has been updated on October 13 to reflect communication from the Chhattisgarh labour department.

2. This story has been updated on October 22 to reflect RTI information from the Ministry of Labour and Employment.

We welcome feedback. Please write to respond@indiaspend.org. We reserve the right to edit responses for language and grammar.

This article was originally published on IndiaSpend.

More than 1 billion people in the world live in informal settlements, with 80 percent of them residing in the Global South. Sakina bibi’s lament is thus part of a growing chorus of voices. As the world urbanises, cities in the Global South remain structurally unequal. On the one hand, these cities are sites of resource consumption and growth, but on the other, millions still struggle to access basic resources such as water, sanitation, and housing. People residing in informal settlements around the world are disproportionately impacted by climate change and resultant phenomena such as overheating and waterlogging.

Human-induced emissions, natural resource exploitation, and the inequitable distribution of resources across regions, countries, classes, and castes manifest as nested, complex challenges for humanity. To enable Sakina and her neighbours to adapt to these wicked problems, the development sector needs longer, sustained partnerships between civil society, donor agencies, private players, and governments; long-term funding cycles; and flexible, innovative approaches towards technology, economics, and governance that allow us to reimagine our collective futures.

Climate resilience programmes have structural inequalities

While we strive for climate-resilient futures, the flows of finance, technology, and decision-making power for resilience and adaptation programmes are still unidirectional and have a top-down approach. The poor continue to be considered ‘beneficiaries’ and the ‘transfer’ of knowledge and technology continues to be a norm in resilience and adaptation programme design. In order to arrive at a more holistic climate justice lens, it is important to include the marginalised in decision-making at various stages. This includes keeping their experiences and knowledge in mind while planning, designing, and implementing proposed resilience and adaptation interventions.

Funding that does reach local communities stays tied to narrow metrics and a constant need to report ‘success’ and partner with ‘successful organisations’.

The late Jockin Arputham, founding president of Slum Dwellers International (SDI), said, “The poor are never allowed to fail, and when they do they have to hide it because they can’t get another chance.” This is evident in how climate funding works. Climate adaptation and resilience funding aims to support the communities that face disproportionate impacts of climate change due to structural inequities in access to land, basic services, or housing rights. However, less than 10 percent of climate finance is dedicated to local action, less than 2 percent of humanitarian aid goes to local partners, and less than 5 percent of funds for environment protection go to indigenous peoples and local community representatives.

Moreover, the funding that does reach local communities stays tied to narrow metrics and a constant need to report ‘success’ and partner with ‘successful organisations’, without taking the time to reflect on lessons learned or on wider drivers causing projects or organisations to fail. Add to this the limited ability to attribute or predict climate impacts with reasonable accuracy in many parts of the Global South due to inadequate data availability, and we have projects that are not able to achieve their goals of climate resilience and adaptation for the most at-risk communities.

Locally led adaptation recognises the need for a shift in agency

It was in the spirit of addressing these issues that the principles for locally led adaptation (LLA) were drafted by founding signatories such as the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), the World Resources Institute (WRI), and the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP). Since their launch, the principles have been endorsed by government and non-governmental agencies from various parts of the world. These principles include building capacities of marginalised communities, providing patient funding, and investing in science while keeping the needs of the communities at the forefront.

While the strength of the words in these principles have attracted more than 100 organisations to endorse them, we have a long journey before we can realise their spirit. Questions of how to measure success and learn from failure to implement these principles still need to be answered. If the LLA principles are cornerstones for climate resilience, can the lack of transparent decision-making, access to patient funding mechanisms, and strengthening of capacities to address the evidence needs of marginalised communities be considered our failure in implementing them?

How to work towards LLA principles

The broader community of adaptation practitioners and researchers has been trying to create pathways to operationalise these locally led adaptation principles. A few points have emerged, and these have the potential to become inflection points for changing the status quo and operationalising the LLA principles.

1. Putting the needs of communities at the centre

By defining the role of communities as ‘beneficiaries’ of technology, money, and capacities, development programmes have traditionally left out an important point—people are already adapting and are resilient, not just to climate change but to all kinds of change, be it wars, pandemics, or chronic issues that affect health, education, economic, and political systems of countries across the world.

But this resilience without systemic support comes at a cost. For instance, urban communities defied India’s lockdown to migrate back to their villages en masse but suffered enormous shocks on their way home, and if they were fortunate to survive accidents, illnesses, or economic losses and get home, they stared at uncertain futures without jobs or basic incomes.

However, while communities require support, there is still a need to change the current model. According to Emilie Beauchamp and others, the effectiveness of climate adaptation interventions is diminished when accountability structures aren’t examined. Donors and international organisations often emphasise aggregating and ranking interventions around the world to assess their effectiveness. This initiates a cycle of underinvestment in the ‘underperforming’ regions. ‘Underperformance’ or failure in the development and climate adaptation sector might, unfortunately, impact the people living in these regions who stand to lose the most.

There is, accordingly, an emergence of calls from within the adaptation and resilience measurement communities to change this model. Increasingly, local priorities are at the centre of decision-making, and programmes are designed based on principles of downward accountability. The call for ‘downward accountability’—or the accountability of interventions towards the beneficiary communities—rings loud to address this failure in deciding what counts as effective evidence, and for whom. This failure weighs heavy on how implementers therefore design and implement interventions on the ground.

Thus, donors and policymakers, as users of evidence, should start putting communities’ needs first in planning, designing, and implementing initiatives by aligning their priorities with the priorities of people and nature in specific contexts.

2. Shifting the role of experts and implementers from ‘knowers’ to ‘listeners and facilitators’

In the current scenario, there is a clear hierarchy in funding, knowledge, and technology flows. And experts—researchers, practitioners, all the way up to extension workers—are used to a prevailing status quo with regard to how power and knowledge flow when projects are implemented. This holds true for both urban and rural contexts.

The ‘expert’ has to become a facilitator or a listener in the face of uncertain and complex change.

As a result of this power relationship where the expert is widely regarded as the ‘knower’, adaptation projects are often designed using reductionist technical templates without the recognition or acknowledgement of community context, values, existing norms, or the complexity and uncertainty of the environment. Unless these prevailing patterns are disrupted, marginalised communities will continue to be primed for failure.

The LLA principles call for a shift in funding, governance, and knowledge transfer formats. This cannot be operationalised by simply placing community representatives in steering committees, through proposal writing, or, worse still, by carrying out ‘consultations’. In such a scenario, community members who lack the capacities to manage funds, write proposals or project reports, and carry out projects are further set up for failure—the burden of adapting is placed on them without the provision of capacities, knowledge, or evidence to act in the face of climate change.

The Resilience Evidence Forum held in June 2023 in Cape Town recognised this problem in the implementation of climate adaptation and resilience based on the LLA principles. The recently released Resilience Evidence Forum Synthesis Report highlights that this problem of operationalising the LLA principles can only be solved by shifting the role of the expert. From being a ‘knower’ who strives to reduce uncertainty by templatising climate adaptation projects, the ‘expert’ has to become a facilitator or a listener in the face of uncertain and complex change.

What role must practitioners play?

To operationalise LLA better, we as practitioners need to listen to communities and facilitate the process of reconciling their needs and desires with their power to negotiate their rights. By taking on the role of listeners and facilitators, we as experts should be able to adopt facilitative and adaptive learning approaches with communities in adaptation and resilience projects. To be able to do this, it is important to build functions and incentives for transparent, effective programming. Doing so will also encourage important qualities such as problem solving and innovation at the local community level. Thus, the solutions aren’t preconceived and template approaches to adaptation and resilience building give way to equity-driven and consensus-forming processes that create agency within communities. For instance, in India, participatory groundwater management approaches have sought to empower communities as barefoot hydrogeologists. Equipping them with applied groundwater science enables them to make decisions on crop-water budgeting, watershed development, and water allocations. 

Innovative approaches for capturing and disseminating communities’ lived experiences have emerged as tools for experts to facilitate adaptive learning in the climate and development space. For instance, Ruth Meinzen-Dick and colleagues found that behavioural games and community debriefing helped shift people’s mindset on groundwater governance and collectively empowered them to act on governing their groundwater sustainably and equitably. Public art also has a place in this. Murals and comics have been used by artists and researchers led by Gina Ziervogel to capture and share evidence—collected from people’s stories on drought resilience—that was intended to help the city of Cape Town address emergency as well as systemic measures.

Sakina bibi and her neighbours from the Baiganwadi slum of M-East Ward imagine a very different life for their future generations. “We want respect and trust and don’t want our children to keep fighting for the right to survive in this city.” Their voices are strong and clear in their need for justice, and as practitioners, we need to reflect and introspect on whether we are designing programmes that chart the ways to enable the futures that the most marginalised communities in the world desire and deserve.

—

Know more

• Read this article to learn why India’s climate discourse needs to be shaped by local forms of expression.
• Read these FAQs on locally led adaptation principles.
• Read this article to learn why solving complex social issues requires a blend of top-down and bottom-up leadership.

Flavia co-founded Majlis, a legal and cultural resource centre that provides women and children with quality legal services. She has written incisively and extensively on a raft of social and legal issues around women’s rights, family law, minority rights, and secularism.

Flavia talks to IDR about her long and eventful journey with the women’s movement, commenting on its major milestones and the path it is currently on. She underscores the need for affordable legal services and tells us why working with the police is an inalienable part of Majlis’s campaign to help women secure their rights.

Can you tell us about your early life and the influences that led you to the women’s movement and to law? 

I was born in Bombay in 1947, but I grew up in Mangalore, where I was raised by my maternal aunt, who was unmarried. My parents were in Aden, Yemen at the time with my four sisters; I had a brother too, but he passed away early on. I studied in a Kannada-medium school till standard 10. Just before my SSC exam, my aunt passed away in her sleep. I then joined my parents in Aden. But shortly after, my father died too. To help support the family, I took up work as a typist at a post office. It was in Aden that I learned English. I lived there for three years before returning to Mangalore with my mother and sisters. I was 20 at the time.

On returning, I was almost immediately married off. But my marriage was a wreck. I was physically and mentally abused and didn’t know what to do. I tried to break the marriage off several times, but I just couldn’t.

In 1980, I became involved with the women’s movement in Bombay. I found moral support among the women I met there, and it was with their encouragement that I ended my marriage that same year. By then I had been married 13 years and had three children. I took my daughters with me and left my son with my husband. I put my daughters in a boarding school and sold whatever jewellery I had to buy a small place in Borivali.  

It was around then that I set up the Women’s Centre in Bombay for women who had suffered domestic violence. It was a safe place where they could gather and talk, share their stories, and exchange resources such as references to good lawyers, counsellors, and jobs. We first ran the Women’s Centre from a friend’s house. Then Smita Patil—who had heard me speak at a conference and was impressed with my work—donated to us the proceeds of her film Subah, and we were able to buy a place of our own. News of the centre soon spread through word of mouth and articles in the press. 

Alongside running the centre, I studied law and earned my degree in 1988. By 1997, I secured my MPhil from the prestigious National Law School, Bangalore. One of the factors that motivated me to study law was the challenge of finding good lawyers whom we could recommend to the women who came to the centre.

It was a difficult time…my children were young, and I was working at the centre, not earning much. I sometimes wonder how I came so far. (Laughs)

Tell us about the beginnings of Majlis. 

In 1990, my friend Madhusree Dutta and I started Majlis, a legal and cultural resource centre in Bombay. (Majlis means ‘association’ in Arabic.)  

I set up the legal support cell and Madhusree set up a broad forum for interaction between different arts practitioners. She was a theatre and documentary film director who wanted to cultivate a new feminist cultural practice through theatre and film. We were joined by activists from academia, architecture, and other professions, all working to make Majlis a creative, social, cultural, and legal locus of the women’s movement in Bombay. As for me, I wanted to move away from protest and activism to ground-level interventions. Protests were important to raise awareness about an issue, but once legal reform was achieved, it was important to set up a sustainable practice of strong litigation support for women to ensure that the impact of those reforms was felt on the ground.  

I considered writing a powerful tool for the campaign, and published articles, reports, and books on legal reform, women’s rights, secularism, the cases we came across, and the legal and systemic bottlenecks we encountered. All of it helped build advocacy and raise public awareness on a range of issues—from domestic violence and sexual abuse to the Uniform Civil Code debate and the death penalty. At the time, there was very little writing on women’s rights and legal reform in the mainstream.   

We are now Majlis Legal Centre because our focus is wholly on legal support. Earlier, on account of the word’s association with Muslim fundamentalism, we had been under pressure to change our name, but we stood our ground. The name speaks for our secular ideology and our allyship with minorities. We also run a support centre for victims of sexual violence called Rahat, which is doing well.      

The way we work has also changed and become more structured. Earlier, our interventions were ad hoc and wide-ranging. Later, as we grew and raised larger ticket funding, donor preferences led us to making our work more streamlined.

You have been a part of the women’s movement for 40 years. How has it changed?

In the 1980s, the women’s movement concentrated on law reform, with rape and domestic violence—particularly dowry-related abuse—forming a key concern. It championed women’s empowerment, challenged patriarchal power structures, and questioned the conservative role of women as subordinate in the home and in society. The movement drew public attention to women’s issues, thanks to which they started to figure more prominently in the state’s development schemes and welfare programmes.            

Many issues that we campaigned for in the ‘80s and ‘90s ended in legislative reform. For example, our two-decade-long campaign against domestic violence resulted in the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA) 2005, a civil law that gave women rights within their matrimonial home, maintenance, child custody, and protection from future violence. Our campaigning also led to amendments in the rape law in the 1980s and in 2013; reforms in Christian personal law; and subsequent amendments to the Indian Divorce Act that made it possible for Christian women to seek divorce only on grounds of cruelty.       

Today, the women’s movement has taken a different shape; more nonprofits have cropped up and a lot of welfare work is going on. There’s also more professionalism in the field. It’s important however to remember that the women’s movement cannot operate in a silo; it is an integral part of other social movements such as human rights, sexual identities and sexual orientation, people in same-sex relationship, social transformation, and against caste-based violence.

Women today have rights, but are they exercising them? Are they filing more cases?

Unfortunately, legal services have become commercialised, expensive, and consequently unaffordable for women from low-income and marginalised communities. And the free legal aid available to them is often of poor quality. This is the most challenging aspect that organisations like Majlis face today—the lack of experienced lawyers willing to work for the poor. People spend huge amounts to get a legal education now, and they’re anxious to earn it back.

Individual lawyers take up pro bono cases occasionally, but it’s not enough. We have many interns working at Majlis, but they largely come for the experience and seldom return on graduating. Our organisation survives on grants, but without experienced lawyers how can we support women at scale? Today, unlike in the past, Majlis doesn’t have many in-house lawyers; we have 10–12 empanelled ones to whom we refer our cases, and then we monitor their progress.  

It must also be said that contrary to people’s presumptions that the Domestic Violence Act would give women licence to file false cases against their husbands, women aren’t filing as many cases as they should because they are scared to go to the police. Women want rights for themselves more than they want punishment for their spouses.

Majlis has been working with the police since the 1990s. What does it take to build trust?

We started actively working with law-enforcement agencies when we realised that laws, in and of themselves, would not help the cause of women until they were implemented on the ground. A crucial part of this was working with law-enforcement agencies. This wasn’t easy, because it meant making inroads into the criminal justice system, which was inaccessible to nonprofits.

Our earliest intervention was with the Mumbai Police—we trained them on the new provisions of the amended Rape Law and monitored the impact of that training. The training was initiated by Sadanand Date, an officer we met during the Bombay riots.

In addition to acquainting officers with the nuances of the laws, our training teaches them how to interrogate women and children sensitively.

We conduct separate training around the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. This involves changing perspectives and helping the police look past prejudices (such as disbelief that a family member could be the perpetrator of a sexual crime against a child). We train DCPs, ACPs and police station heads, and the lessons percolate down to other staff.

In addition to acquainting officers with the nuances of the laws, our training teaches them how to interrogate women and children sensitively; what guidelines to follow when escorting perpetrators and survivors for medical examinations; how to prepare detailed case reports to secure government aid; and so on. These guidelines are contained in the Standard Operating Procedure we drafted for the police. The right procedures can strengthen police investigations and improve conviction rates. 

Forty years ago, dowry and domestic violence were prominent issues. What plagues women today?

Domestic violence continues to be big. The terminology has changed—from dowry to domestic violence—but the problem still persists. Newer issues, such as sexual harassment at the workplace, have cropped up. We’re also seeing more cases of child sexual abuse, especially in domestic settings. The police refers these cases to us because of our experience in litigation. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, one seldom encountered cases of sexual abuse, be it of women or children. Having a law like POCSO in place has helped improve the reporting of crimes against children.

As with POCSO, dowry, rape, trafficking, and other crimes, I believe the thrust of the law should be on supporting survivors rather than fixating on extreme punishment, like the death penalty, for perpetrators. The death penalty is not a deterrent to crime. The real deterrent is certainty of punishment, not the severity of it. Increased punishment is touted as the most effective solution, but my question is, can stringent punishment bring about change in society or an increase in conviction rates? What other mechanisms and structures do we need for this?

You have been central to the women’s movement in India; what do you hope for the future? 

Sometimes I get the feeling that the more we do, the more there is to be done. You can’t rest in peace and say, “Okay, I’ve done my work.” New complications spring up all the time and you have to stay on your toes.

Take the case of the Domestic Violence Act. It’s a good act, very nicely framed, but magistrate courts assign trial dates after two or three months, and don’t pass interim orders either. Moreover, courts are clogged, and when a woman goes to court, she becomes frustrated with the delays and complicated procedures. So even if the law is good, its purpose is lost when the supporting system is faulty. You need to campaign for more courts, for better functioning of those courts, and so on—all that needs to happen alongside having the law. This is why the struggle must continue. There are many women’s organisations launching campaigns, and that’s very positive, because you need to have these campaigns to build public awareness.  

I do however worry about the future. We worked for law reform and respite for individual women, but issues have now blown up to such an extent that there’s work to be done not just at the individual level but also at the community level. Women from marginalised and minority communities find themselves caught in a hostile environment, fuelled by a communal hate campaign. Violence against women has started to take new form.    

Crimes against women are not individualised; they’re political.

I was asked to write a piece on how I see things shaping up for women 25 years hence, but I see this future as very dismal. I titled the article From Mathura to Manipur, from the perspective of the violence we’re witnessing. With Mathura, the violence was directed at an individual. But with Khairlanji and, more recently, the rapes in Manipur, sexual assault has been weaponised against communities.

There were many more elements involved, not just an individual person. Crimes against women are not individualised, they’re political. And for them to stop, the political climate has to change. We can no longer only look at changing lives at the individual level; we must look at change at the community level. Individual solutions cannot give us the kind of respite that is required unless the broader political context changes. Securing women’s rights today seems much harder than it was in the ‘80s.

What would you like your legacy to be?

I don’t know about legacy, but I want to be remembered as somebody who, through her experience, has addressed questions of community, of secularism, and of law reform, who has struggled, travelled this journey, lived a certain kind of life, and shared that life with others as an inspiration for them so that they can change their own situation. This is how I want to be remembered.

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Know more

• Learn how the police can be made more responsive to gender-based violence.
• Read this article to learn how gender attitudes in India have changed.
• Read this report to learn about digital feminist activism in India.

Stalin spoke to IDR about what it takes to build a people’s movement, why such movements should not be labelled ‘anti-development’, and why litigation is every environmentalist’s last recourse. 

Based on your experience of mobilising support for the Save Aarey movement, can you speak about the importance of public participation in environmental movements?

Climate change is not going to be restricted to a select class of people. The rich may get away with whatever resources they have to mitigate its impact, but the poor—who are more in number—will still suffer. Any decision or event related to climate change will have a bearing on the larger public. So it’s important that they—the ones who deal directly with solutions to the issue—be its spokespersons.

But the problem is that there’s no consensus on the solution. Different stakeholders are never at the same table. This disconnect makes it difficult for the global population to move forward in unison to fight the effects of climate change. It is therefore important that every movement has people participating from all walks of society—from different socio-economic strata and with different academic qualifications and means of livelihood.

When the Save Aarey movement began, the criticism levelled at us was that it was ‘an English-speaking people’s movement’. And yet, the first people to break into the Metro car shed site to save the trees were the tribals who said, “This is our forest; you’re not touching it.”

The Save Aarey movement consisted of people from all walks of life. There were doctors, engineers, actors, teachers, homemakers, students, and professors. And standing alongside them were labourers, mathadi workers (head loaders), fishers, Adivasis, students, senior citizens, women’s rights organisations, and, curiously, even the political class.

Aarey was offered as a sacrificial lamb to help builders, and we have the documents to prove it. People understood this, which is why they rallied around the cause. This is why the movement was a success. In a city like Mumbai, where getting 10 square feet of land out of the government’s or builders’ hands is a Herculean task, we managed to secure 830 acres of forest. This is what the citizens who fought for it achieved, and we take pride in it. We couldn’t stop the Metro car shed from being built, but in today’s world, wherever democracy is crumbling, it is difficult for people to win immediately. The government bulldozes every sort of opposition and uses every resource it has—from disinformation to intimidation—to do what it wants.

How did you mobilise wide participation across different strata of society?

When news of the tree felling first came out in 2014, schoolchildren—for whom we conduct environmental education sessions—started asking us about Aarey. We told them that the forest was being cut down and the children said that they wanted to see it before that happened. So we took them there. They climbed trees and hugged them and that was the first protest, the first ‘Chipko’ in Mumbai.   

Then it became contagious, spreading to citizens who lived around Aarey. They felt connected with it and understood its value. They were the ones who mobilised more people. The cause eventually became viral, with a protest being organised every Sunday. However, this was not a planned movement at all. We could have never imagined that it would go on for nine years.

For a movement to be successful, it has to be ground up and local.

One of the factors that influenced its success was nostalgia. Many of the protestors in their 40s and 50s had strong childhood memories of Aarey. You always want to retain a part of your childhood, and so you’ll step up to defend those sites. When you come in with your children, and they see your connection with the place, they too will support your cause. So we were lucky in that sense. The movement happened in a city where people still remember Aarey as a forest and a picnic spot.

Another example of a successful citizen’s movement was the one at Nanar in Ratnagiri district, where the villagers’ protests led to the proposed oil refinery being relocated to another village, Barsu-Solgaon. Women were at the forefront of those protests, and eventually, the people’s will triumphed. Now the residents of Barsu-Solgaon too are fighting against the refinery.

Are these protests against development? They are not. Because you’re not taking your projects to places where people don’t have access to water or are suffering from other socio-economic hardships. These projects should go there and help those people. Instead, you’re disrupting the economic and social fabric of people who are self-sufficient and peaceful. And you call it development!

If you want people to support a cause, there isn’t a single formula you can apply; every context will be different. But for a movement to be successful, it has to be ground up and local. Having said that, I do think people will rally around you if you hit the right buttons—talk earnestly and present evidence to support your claims.

How does one strike a balance between the needs of a growing city and preserving urban ecosystems?  

Cities today face the effects of climate change from sea-level rise, increasing temperatures, pollution, and solid waste management. Let us look at all four factors. When the sea pushes into the land, what do you do? You can’t push back; you have to withdraw. You must give space to the sea to come in and go back. But what are we doing? We are pushing into the sea. We are building a coastal road. That coastal road is like giving a person with liver cirrhosis a bottle of country liquor. It’s the worst thing to do for the coast. The road could have been built on stilts if it was such a necessity. Now, it will only create more pressure points along the coast where the water will push its way into the city and cause more flooding.

The second factor is rising temperatures. How are you combating it? By chopping down more trees and concretising roads to reflect heat back into the atmosphere.  

Then comes pollution. If you go to the slums, there is no ventilation, no circulation, no open spaces; people live next to sewers and children are born with diseases. Every Mumbaikar has respiratory problems because of the dust in the atmosphere from never-ending construction and the increasing number of vehicles.  

There’s water pollution, too. Mumbai is blessed with two beautiful wildlife areas, one of which is the Thane Creek Flamingo Sanctuary, a Ramsar site. There are 1.5 lakh birds there. What is in their creek? Only sewage and plastic. And yet those birds are desperately trying to stay there because that’s the only habitat left for them. So, you’re losing your wetlands and polluting what wetlands are left.

What is the state of our solid waste management? India’s biggest garbage dump is the Kanjurmarg dumping ground, built on 120 hectares of wetlands. The law specifically prohibits the construction of waste landfills on salt pans, in coastal regulation zones, on wetlands, and inside mangroves. But all of Mumbai’s dumping grounds are inside mangroves.

What can be done for the environment when laws are flouted?

I would say whatever is saved today is because of the judiciary. But the judiciary has a lot more to do and the orders are not coming at the pace they should. If you’re starving for a long, long time, and someone gives you a packet of biscuits, you’re still grateful to them. Every so often, the judiciary hands us a packet of biscuits, and we are grateful because we are starving.

There is another systemic shortcoming—the people hearing environmental matters are not experts. The specialised body for environmental disputes is the National Green Tribunal (NGT), which consists of judicial members who are experts on law and members who have expertise in environmental matters. But the NGT’s orders are often challenged in the Supreme Court, and many times stay orders are issued. Then these cases take forever to be heard and disposed of. Take the case of the Mumbai Coastal Road Project. In 2019, the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, Justice Pradeep Nandrajog, rightly noted that this was a land creation project and not an infrastructural one. But his order was overturned by the Supreme Court, which told the BMC that they could go ahead with the work, subject to the Supreme Court’s orders. How will you restore the natural landscape of the coast if you hear the case after 10 years and then realise you did something wrong?

In such a situation, is litigation the last recourse?

It’s the very last recourse. It’s a painful decision for us to go to court. But we do believe that you stand a chance to get justice there. However, justice delayed is justice denied. And in matters of the environment, time is of the essence. We move heaven and earth before we go to court—making requests, pleading with officials. It’s only when nothing happens that we’re forced to go to the judiciary. And then, the first thing you have to do in court is prove that you don’t have a vested interest in the case, because there’ll be all kinds of accusations brought up by the other side.

Moreover, those with money and power know how to prolong litigation, hoping to wear you down. In one case, there were court orders to put a stay on mining in a forest. The hearing was yet to begin, but the government held a public hearing with the intention of starting the work. When we approached the concerned officers with the court order, they smiled at us saying, “How long will you stop us? We will come back after two years, or after 10 years. But the mining will happen.”

The warnings about climate change started coming in as early as 2006. But what was predicted to happen by 2030–40 is already happening now. We can’t sit back and say we still have time to get our act together. We’re behind the clock. What we are trying to do is grab on to something to stop our free fall. Litigation is not rosy. It takes resilience and patience, and it also creates disillusionment, depression, and anger when you see your efforts defeated time and again. But we need to persevere. We’re happy with the odd success that comes our way. It is better than not doing anything at all.

What holds people back from doing more than volunteering?

People are not ready for the long haul. They want instant results, and they want to satisfy their conscience. They ask us why we haven’t taken this or that matter up. We tell them, you do your part, and if it doesn’t work, we’ll help you. But don’t expect us to fight every battle. People call us to say mangrove trees are being cut in front of their houses. But their interest is only limited to their view, not their love for trees. We say call the cops. But they don’t. Their fear is understandable; the amount of intimidation people can be subjected to is worrying.

The deterrent to greater environmental activism is lack of money, bandwidth, strength, and courage.

During the Save Aarey movement, people were picked up randomly and detained. Cops would take videos of people protesting and ask them, “Who called you here? Where do you stay?” The common person doesn’t want to get into all this. There’s a Marathi proverb, “Shivaji janmala aana paije, pan aamcha gharat nahi.” We want Shivaji to be born, but not in our house. Because we don’t want our children to take the risks that the great warrior king took.

People need to step up, but that’s not happening. You need the resources and the bandwidth to stay on this course for a long time. The deterrent to greater environmental activism is lack of money, bandwidth, strength, and courage.

What are your takeaways from environmental activism?

We should continue our fight in whatever way we can. People try to cleanse their minds or souls by planting a sapling and forgetting about it. That’s the worst thing to do. If you spend time talking to that sapling and making it grow into a tree, it’s a different story. It is said that you should have the fortune to sit in the shade of the tree that has grown from the sapling you once planted.

Environmentalism is not only about judicial activism or advocacy. It’s a mixture of everything; it’s about connecting with nature and taking that relation to its logical end. Every person must individually connect their soul with nature, not just because religion or a political party demands it. I believe that each citizen should give at least two years of their life to the cause of conservation. That karma will stay with you.

The conversation today is about mitigation of damage done. But how do we build better at the very outset?

How to build is a very valid question. Every government project can be executed without destroying the environment. If you want to go from point A to point B and there’s a forest in between, go overhead without touching the trees. You have the design, the technology, and the money to do it. If you can build a railway line 30 metres below the ground, you can certainly pass over a forest. Infrastructural projects should factor in the environment. It can be a win-win for everyone. But there’s a reluctance to spend money to make it happen. The standard defence is, “I’m cutting 2,000 trees here and planting 10,000 saplings in Timbuktu.” If it’s raining in Mumbai, I’ll need my umbrella here, not in Delhi.

It has been ingrained in our system that development must happen at the expense of the environment.

But the reason for going through the forest is never for the convenience of the road itself; it is to perforate the forest and create land parcels inside it. Let the law state very clearly that no built project should destroy the environment. Which law in our country allows you to destroy the environment? Even the Tree Act is a preservation act, not a tree-cutting act. It’s the Environment Protection Act, not the ‘Destruction Act’. The term ‘sustainable development’ is unfortunately an oxymoron.

It has been ingrained in our system that development must happen at the expense of the environment. But there’s always a workaround where the environment can be preserved. Yet, those technologies are not being deployed; the money is not being spent where it should be.

What implications will the amendment to the Forest (Conservation) Act have on wildlife and the environment?

These amendments are not at all welcome; they will only promote more destruction.

The amendments say defence areas need to be protected. My counterview is that you can still do that through engineering and design. Habitat destruction shouldn’t be the collateral. The government could have recommended working around those habitats, or at least providing the animals there with a suitable alternative habitat if they intend to take away their current one. If your intentions are right, you have no dearth of resources. Our Constitution tells us to be compassionate. Where’s the compassion in watching an animal lose its habitat and starve to death?

Wildlife and forests are inseparable. When you remove one from the equation, the other suffers. Unfortunately, forested lands are seen as free to plunder. India has set a target of 33 percent forest cover, but it is currently only 21 percent. When you already accept that it is less, how can you go on decimating it? What they did with the Forest Survey report itself was ridiculous—by classifying sugarcane plantations, grasslands, everything as forests, and saying the forest cover had increased.

When you talk of habitat and forest destruction, you’re also talking of depleting water. Forests and water have an inseparable relationship that is not understood by the government. By depleting forests, we are pushing India into water scarcity.

Given the vested interests in land and the political pressures exerted on businesses, can environmentalists rely on philanthropy/CSR funding in the long run?

At Vanashakti, CSR comes for educational, plantation, and livelihood activities. Philanthropy pays for litigation, because there are people who strongly believe we are doing the right thing. But funds are very hard to get.

FCRA clearances have been taken away from many nonprofits on the argument that the money is being used to sabotage India’s interests. This has caused many organisations to shut down or go dormant. The government is trying to starve nonprofits. Again, the fundamental question is, what is in the nation’s interest and what is not? Is it in the national interest for us to sit back and watch a forest being destroyed and tribals being displaced, farmers losing their farmlands, and industrialists giving them jobs as labourers? As per the current regime, borrowing foreign money to destroy ecosystems is acceptable, but trying to save the environment using foreign money is a crime.

What you’ve shone a light on paints quite a bleak picture. Is there hope for the future?

There is hope, so long as you are willing to put your resources into it. It’s like this: There was a man who kept praying to God asking why he didn’t win the jackpot. He kept asking for over a month, and one day God said, “But you need to buy the lottery ticket first!”

So it’s not enough to just pray, you have to do something; everyone has to do something. There is always hope. We have to keep that hope alive and keep at it. When you’re starving, be grateful for every packet of biscuits you get. You never know when you’ll land up at the buffet.

Someday, the masses will demand for conservation to be at the forefront of governance. With that hope, we continue our struggle.

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Know more

• Learn more about India’s progress on climate action through this tracker.
• Read this article on lessons from five decades of conservation work in coastal Gujarat.
• Read this photo essay about the Adivasis of Aarey and their protest against the Metro car shed.