Revision summary
Indian climate forcing comes from coal, cities, forest loss and intensive farming. Harms are class-skewed: slums, rainfed farms, Himalayan and coastal poor. Chipko, Narmada and Ghats movements tied ecology to livelihood and displacement. Urban air and fisher struggles are newer fronts. Movements reshape law and delay projects more than they end the growth path.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Anthropogenic influence on India’s climate is the human forcing of heat, rain, and disaster through fuels, forests, and cities. Environmental movements arise where that forcing is lived as lost land, drowned village, or poisoned air.
Body
Nature and scope of influence
- Coal, vehicles, and industry emit the greenhouse load of a mixed-economy growth path.
- Green-cover loss in mines, hills, and cities cuts carbon sinks and raises local heat.
- Monsoon disruption, Himalayan ice loss, cyclones, and urban floods are the scoped harms, class-skewed in slums and rainfed farms.
- Agriculture both suffers and contributes: methane, residue burning, and water-intensive MSP rice.
Movements arising
- Chipko and later forest movements tied canopy to livelihood, often with women’s leadership against a commercial forest.
- Narmada Bachao Andolan made dam displacement the public face of planned climate-and-water violence on Adivasis.
- Silent Valley and Western Ghats struggles scoped biodiversity against power projects.
- Urban anti-pollution and anti-eviction groups, plus coastal fisher movements, are newer climate-adjacent publics.
- Media opportunity structures scale these fights; causes remain land and breath, not the studio.
Evaluation
- Movements have delayed projects, written FRA-type claims, and changed environmental law talk.
- They rarely stop the national coal-and-concrete path. Class and federal bargains still decide the stack.
Link
- Anthropogenic climate in India is a development-planning issue that environmental movements translate into justice.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD AN[Fuels forests cities] --> CL[Climate harm] CL --> MV[Chipko Narmada urban air] MV --> J[Justice claims FRA law]
Conclusion
- Human influence on Indian climate is wide: energy, deforestation, cities, and farm water. Environmental movements from Chipko to Narmada and urban clean-air fights arise from that influence as lived dispossession. They civilise the plan; they have not yet rerouted it.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Are the contemporary farmers' movements in India changing their course? Discuss.
Next question on this syllabus topic (2020 · Q7(c)). View answer →
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Are these climate movements or livelihood movements?
In India they are usually both. Carbon is lived as land and breath.
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Did they fail because coal grew?
They changed the moral map. The energy mix is still a state-capital fact.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2016 · Q5(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 15 marks
Discuss the various forms of environmental movements waged in india. ·. -
2017 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Discuss Yogendra singh's thesis on Modernization of Indian Tradition. And evaluate its applicability in the present day context -
2017 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Clarify the distinction between "household" and "family" and evaluate Whether joint families have completely disintegrated
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