Blog Action Day is here. This post for what it’s worth, is a step towards that. One of the 15000 blogs that are participating on this day. 15th October, 2007. Maybe I am just lost. But that’s not what it’s about.

The forests of India are a critical resource for the subsistence of rural peoples throughout the country, but especially in hill and mountain areas. The villagers depend on the forests for firewood, fodder for their cattle, and wood for their houses and farm tools.

Over the years after independence, the government restricted huge areas of forest from their use, and then auctioned off the trees to lumber companies and industries from the plains—a practice inherited with little change from the British colonialists. Because of these restrictions and an ever-growing population, the mountain women found themselves walking hours each day just to gather firewood and fodder.

Large lots of trees were sold by the state Forest Department through the “contractor system,” which awarded the trees to the highest bidder, with the purchase price going to the state government. Sometimes the Forest Department sold selected trees, marked for felling; at other times, it sold the rights to a marked area, which was then clear-cut. Normally the contracts went to large businesses from the plains, which took the trees to the plains for sale and for factory use.

As these forests had been increasingly felled for commerce and industry, Indian villagers had sought to protect their livelihoods through the Gandhian method of ‘satyagraha’ non-violent resistance. In the 1970s and 1980s this resistance to the destruction of forests spread throughout India and became organized and known as the Chipko Movement. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The first Chipko action took place spontaneously in April 1973 and over the next five years spread to many districts of the Himalaya in Uttar Pradesh. The name of the movement comes from a word meaning ‘embrace’: the villagers hug the trees, saving them by interposing their bodies between them and the contractors’ axes. The Chipko protests in Uttar Pradesh achieved a major victory in 1980 with a 15-year ban on green felling in the Himalayan forests of that state by order of India’s then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Since then the movement has spread to Himachal Pradesh in the North, Karnataka in the South, Rajasthan in the West, Bihar in the East and to the Vindhyas in Central India.

One of Chipko’s most salient features was the mass participation of women villagers. Women were most directly affected by environmental degradation and deforestation, and thus connected the issues most easily.

The movement was honoured with a Right Livelihood Award in 1987.

Sources:

Wikipedia
IISD
Right to Liveihood Award