Revision summary
Environmentalism of the poor defends land, forest, and water as the economy of survival, not as a recreation good. Guha and Martinez-Alier distinguished it from Northern wilderness environmentalism. Chipko, Narmada, and Niyamgiri are Indian illustrations. Articles 21, 48A, and 51A(g) and the Forest Rights Act give it a legal language. The type names a pattern of struggle; it does not claim that poverty automatically conserves nature.
Model answer
Introduction
Environmentalism of the poor is the name Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martinez-Alier give to struggles in which livelihood, not wilderness recreation, is the first environmental claim. Poor users of land, forest, and water defend those resources because their survival is attached to them.
Body
The idea
- Northern environmentalism often began as protection of wild nature from industry and as a middle-class amenity.
- Environmentalism of the poor begins from displacement, pollution of working bodies, and loss of commons.
- Chipko in the Garhwal Himalaya, the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and Dongria Kondh resistance at Niyamgiri are Indian cases of this pattern.
- The claim is not that the poor are naturally conservationist. It is that their political action often has an ecological content because the economy of the poor is resource-based.
Constitutional and theoretical links
- Article 21 has been read to include a habitable environment; Articles 48A and 51A(g) state environment as a state task and a citizen duty.
- Gram Sabha consent under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the Niyamgiri gram sabha votes after the Supreme Court’s directions, give a local legal form to this environmentalism.
- Gandhi’s critique of industrial civilisation in Hind Swaraj and the constructive village programme supply an Indian intellectual ancestor, without making every livelihood struggle Gandhian.
- Foucault’s government of populations helps describe how dams, mines, and forest law classify people as illegal users.
- Walzer’s spheres of justice fits the point that land and water are not only market goods.
Limit
- Livelihood defence can still degrade a resource. Public ecology still needs science, not only protest.
- The phrase is a political-theory type, not a census of all poor persons’ beliefs.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD EP[Environmentalism of the poor] --> L[Livelihood] EP --> C[Commons forest water] N[Northern wilderness] --> A[Amenity and wild nature] EP --> M[Chipko Narmada Niyamgiri]
Conclusion
Environmentalism of the poor is livelihood-based ecological politics of forest, land, and water users. Guha and Martinez-Alier named it. Indian movements and Article 21 jurisprudence are its public form.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Functions of District Planning Committee.
Next question in the 2023 paper (Q5). View answer →
-
Is this the same as deep ecology?
No. Deep ecology centres intrinsic value of nature. Environmentalism of the poor centres the poor’s material dependence on nature.
-
Does Article 51A(g) create a justiciable right of the poor?
It is a fundamental duty. Courts more often use Article 21 and statutes. The duty still names environment as a civic obligation.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2023 · Q3(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 20 marks
Fascism displays an ambivalent stance towards parliamentary democracy. Explain -
2023 · Q5(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Functions of District Planning Committee. -
2023 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Satyagraha and Indian Nationalism. -
2023 · Q6(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
The Constitution of India is the 'cornerstone of a nation'. (Granville Austin). Analyze -
2023 · Q7(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
Dr. Ambedkar's clarion call, "Educate, Agitate and Organize", strategizes the Dalit movement towards achieving civil liberty. Discuss -
2022 · Q4(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
"The Panchayats with Gram Sabhas should be so organised as to identify the resources locally available for the development in agricultural and industrial sectors." Examine the statement in the context of Gram Swaraj -
2022 · Q5(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Analyse the workers' movement in India in the pre-Independence period. -
2022 · Q5(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Legislative Council is a house without any effective powers. Comment.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2023 · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Normative approach in Political Science.
Political Theory
The normative approach asks what political life ought to be and argues about justice, liberty, and obligation. Plato, Aristotle, the contract theorists, Mill, and Rawls are central practitioners. Easton and Dahl supply empirical maps of systems and decisions that cannot replace the question of right. Communitarian critics warn that abstract persons can hide real communities. Indian Parts III and IV show that a constitution is itself a public set of ought-statements.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2023 · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Multicultural perspective on rights.
Political Theory
Multicultural theory treats culture as a condition of using liberty, not as a private hobby. Kymlicka, Taylor, Parekh, and Walzer argue for recognition and, in some cases, group rights. Indian Articles 25 to 30 and linguistic states are the constitutional form of that argument. Ambedkar’s Article 17 and sex-equality limits block a group veto over civil liberty. The perspective fails if it either ignores minorities or traps persons inside the group.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2023 · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
State of Nature as State of War (Hobbes).
Political Theory
Hobbes’s state of nature is a state of war: a condition of known readiness to fight where there is no common power. Competition, diffidence, and glory are the three causes of quarrel. Natural equality of vulnerability makes pre-emptive violence rational. The sovereign ends the war by monopolising judgment and force. Locke, Mill, and constitutional democracy keep a common power and then limit it, which Hobbes refused as a right against the sovereign.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.