Ground Realities

This chapter investigates the widespread and unchecked environmental abuse in India. Nearly a third of India’s land area has been degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil erosion, and depletion of wetlands. Reckless industrialization, mining, and urbanization, as well as deeply flawed agricultural policies and skewed land distribution have reaped a bitter harvest of dislocation and deprivation. This dispossession adds to India’s historically unequal land holdings. Along with the poisoning of life-giving water and air, land alienation and destruction create a hierarchy of citizens suffering unequal access to the fundamental ingredients of social life. The destruction of the elements by the entanglement of the state and big business, and the priority given to private profit over public good, have contributed to the systematic evisceration of democracy-defining social equality. The chapter raises the important question of whether people can be said to have the same right to vote and enjoy equal social dignity if they don’t have the same right to breathe or have equal access to water.