KERALA has recently been faced with an overall crisis of modernity, with environmental politics often taking centre stage, both as a success story and a failure of modernity. While much has been achieved in terms of environment and livelihood struggles, there remain insurmountable problems yet to be addressed, despite Malayalis leading the way in environmental activism.

Even as advanced countries take different routes to environmentalism – with the Green Party in Germany participating in government and NGOs playing a critical role in passing environmental legislations in the US, for instance – it was primarily the subalterns who unleashed their power of protest and invited other social sections to join them in creating history in terms of environmental politics in Kerala. This is particularly significant against the backdrop of an increasing normalization of environmental concerns, with the real causes of crises remaining hidden at the global level, as was the case with the Brundtland Report (1987).

The history of Kerala is unique in that it is one of the few regions in the world that has succeeded in ushering in modernity in the absence of advanced modernization or industrialization. Following Immanuel Wallerstein,¹ I would treat modernity in this context as ‘modernity of liberation’ rather than modernization (‘modernity of technology’), the latter understood as advances in technology, progress and economic development, broadly defined. It is the attitude and response of the collective public to the authorities, hegemony, injustice and systems of exploitation that makes environmental politics creative and a signifier of modernity of liberation.

Modernity could also be understood as crisis, according to Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, the authors of Commonwealth. Crises take various forms in the state: violence against women and reproduction of patriarchy, both in the private and public sphere, high rates of suicides among all sections of society, a rejection of any attempt at secular thought as in the case of Jeevan Without Religion,² religious fundamentalism descending to mindless violence, political silencing including killings, and so on. Kerala now presents a picture of a state in turmoil with danger and threat being its predominant shades as opposed to opportunity and liberation. Although these are extremely interesting issues that demand further elaboration, I do not profess to explore them any further in this brief comment. Rather, the current text dwells upon the notion of environmental modernity and the political-ecological interventions crafted by the people of Kerala since state formation – a reminder that the ideal of an ethical Kerala is within reach if only the subaltern voice is heeded.

 

Development and change were critical components of Indian nationalist politics and remained so throughout the period of the Nehruvian post-independence project. Despite coming under ‘communist rule’, this development content remained equally applicable to Kerala, with E.M.S. Namboodiripad, a veteran communist and the first chief minister of the state of Kerala, admitting that he had turned to communism under the influence of Nehru who had spread Marxist ideas in the country back in the 1920s.³ In keeping with this understanding, he was careful to avoid any confrontation with both the central government and pan Indian capital.

The developmentalist state that flourished after state formation could lay claim to some highly commendable achievements, with many of its modernization projects making Kerala a comparatively better place to live in.⁴ The environmental and livelihood risks inherent to some of these developmental projects were rather high, but rather than allowing them to be internalized, these flaws were unmasked and challenged by a highly conscious people, a reflection of the political-ecological modernity of their society which, however, has a long way to go in terms of achieving the perfect balance in terms of development and ethics. This task becomes all the more complex as the state, by and large, is integral to the neo-liberal agenda of the central government which in turn intensifies the enclosure of resources, with the livelihood of the subalterns and the larger environment being the first casualties.

I intend to explore here a few representative environmental narratives in which the question of livelihood and sustainability come together to pose a major challenge to the notion of political-ecological modernity or simply environmental modernity.

 

The first of these narratives relates to the pollution of the Chaliyar river in the early ’60s owing to pollutants discharged from the Birla rayon factory in Mavoor, Kozhikode. It was on the government’s initiative that the factory was set up in Mavoor, with the Birlas being attracted to the state with its rich supply of cheap raw materials such as bamboo. The Kerala variant of social democracy was equally attractive to Indian big capital. However, once factory operations were under way, the local people began feeling the ill-effects of toxic wastes generated by the plant. Although the dumping of toxic wastes and discharging of effluents by the pulp and fibre units of the Grasim factory were deemed illegal and unscientific, in the absence of a robust and effective waste treatment system, the waters of the Chaliyar became progressively more polluted, making it unfit for domestic use.

 

A meeting of the Pollution Control Board, Grasim Industries and the local people was called, and an accord reached on the issue of waste management. However, the company continued to breach the agreement, forcing the local population to staging a massive protest in the late 1970s. This also happened to coincide with the extension of the Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad’s (KSSP) activities to people’s livelihood problems that later led to the KSSP’s critical role in the Save Silent Valley Campaign. However, it took many years for the struggle to turn into a full-fledged movement, and despite the untimely demise of one of the leading activists of the Chaliyar Action Committee, K.A. Rahman, who succumbed to cancer, the movement carried on until the forced closure of the factory in mid-2001. Rahman had based his campaign against the factory on the obvious rise in the prevalence of cancers in the region as a result of exposure to toxins discharged from the factory.

 

Meanwhile, various scientific institutions conducted studies highlighting the environmental hazards stemming from the factory’s operations. It was revealed that the levels of hazardous elements such as lead, mercury, chromium and so on, were far beyond the safe limits in the Chaliyar river. The Kerala Pollution Control Board pointed out that the factory did not meet the stipulated standards for the treatment and discharge of effluents; it also observed that the factory’s effluent treatment plant was not capable of dealing with the large volume of toxic waste it generated every day.

Apart from the rise in deaths due to cancer, there was also a sharp rise in mortality due to heart and lung diseases, including tuberculosis – more than two hundred in a short period of five years in the early ’90s alone.⁵ Further scientific studies conducted by well-established institutions such as the Regional Cancer Centre, the state medical colleges and so on, could not find any reason for this rise in deaths other than the pollution of the river water which remained a source of livelihood for those living in its vicinity. Recommendations from various committees and commissions set up by the government in the second half of the nineties, however, remained on paper with the company paying scant respect to the issues involved.

This forced the people of Vazhakkad and other neighbouring villages, with a predominantly subaltern Muslim population, to launch their own protest movement with the support of the wider civil society. It was clear that continued factory operations demanded continuing supplies of bamboo and eucalyptus, which would further denude the bamboo forests, destroying the means of livelihood of the indigenous people; the expansion of eucalyptus plantations in turn was also likely to create fresh ecological problems. The struggle resulted in the formation of what could be called a ‘transverse solidarity’, with even the largest (leftist) trade union of the Grasim Industries in the state extending its support to the locals, even when faced with the prospect of losing thousands of jobs. This solidarity helped counter the corporate strategy of fragmenting the people in various contexts into environmental agitators and workers.

 

Earth Day in April 2002 witnessed the first major protest against the operation of the US owned Coca-Cola factory in Plachimada, an otherwise obscure village in Palakkad district. The Anti Coca-Cola Peoples’ Struggle Committee comprising both Gandhian as well as moderate-radical groups took a decision to blockade and picket the factory, declaring all out war until Coca-Cola quit Plachimada. This was only two years after the multinational had set up its factory in the midst of dalit and adivasi settlements.

Massive groundwater mining and the disposal of treated effluents began to produce adverse effects, with the local villagers facing an acute shortage of water. Further, the little water that was available was found to be polluted and unfit for drinking or cooking. The complete dependence of the populace on these very sources of polluted water resulted in a wide range of diseases, particularly skin and stomach disorders. Coincidently, the multinational Coca-Cola, which had been banned in India in the ’70s, re-entered the Indian market in the wake of the neo-liberal reforms of the central government and had set up its factory in Plachimada on the invitation of the Left Front government led by the CPI(M), as in the case of the Grasim factory.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been the target of attack in many countries, particularly Colombia, Guatemala, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, as also in their home country, the USA. While in these countries, the protest was largely against the activities of hired para-military assassins of trade union leaders and union-affiliated workers, discrimination against black employees and poor working conditions for migrant workers, in India it was in outright rejection of the multinational giants for groundwater over-mining, the thoughtless ecological degradation they indulged in, as well as the poisonous content of the soft drinks themselves.

 

The first major success of this solidarity was to persuade the local Perumatty panchayat – the local-level village council that had issued Coca-Cola its license in the first instance – to refuse a renewal of the production license. The panchayat pointed out that the digging of wells and borewells and the installation of electric pumps had not figured in the original agreement; not only had this led to the depletion of groundwater, making drinking water scarce, but the multinational’s operations had also resulted in a hazardous contamination of groundwater. The panchayat also noted that the conversion of paddy lands for industrial use was in itself a rank violation of the Kerala Land Utilization Act of 1967 which restricts such conversions.

Despite steady pressure from various quarters to repeal its decision, as also the full knowledge that it would lose nearly half of its revenue and 300-odd jobs once the factory was closed, the panchayat steadfastly refused a renewal of the license to the multi-national giant. This was a historic move marking a major turning point in the Plachimada struggle, which also generated a spate of legal haggling between the multinational and the panchayat.

 

Although Coca-Cola appealed against the panchayat decision, the Kerala High Court maintained that groundwater belonged to the people and that the company could not ‘claim a huge share of it’; nor did the government have the power to allow a private party to extract it in such a huge quantities, it being ‘a property held by it in trust.’ To quote, ‘…If (the company) is permitted to drain away this much of water, every land owner in the area can also do that, and if all of them start extracting huge quantities of groundwater, in no time the entire panchayat will turn a desert’; the company was thus directed to find alternative sources of water.

As with the controversy regarding the volume of groundwater extraction, there were contrasting reports with respect to the quality of surface water and the probable pollution of ground water in the nearby wells and other water reservoirs. Both private and public institutions recognized and acknowledged the concerns expressed by the local populace, with their studies revealing high levels of hardness, salinity and alkalinity in the groundwater as well as unacceptable amounts of chemicals such as chlorides and sulfides, thus making the water unfit for domestic purposes. Most importantly, it was found that the contamination had spread through the entire region, with levels of lead in nearby wells being well above the limits set by the World Health Organization.

 

Meanwhile, in yet another development, the Supreme Court of India directed the State Pollution Control Boards to issue closure directions to all manufacturing units which were operating in violation of the Hazardous Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 1989/2003. As the Coca-Cola factory came under the purview of the HW rules and as the company had no ‘satisfactory facility for the disposal of hazardous waste generated’ within the factory, authorization was refused to the multinational by the state, which in effect was a closure notice. At this point, Coca-Cola was also challenged by other agencies such as the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) which revealed toxic pesticide residues in their products, a result further ratified by the Joint Parliamentary Committee, all of which gave an added impetus to the anti-Cola struggle.

Thus, while the local community struggled to give voice to their subjugated knowledge, in an expression of the notion of environmentalism from below – with Mayilamma, a 56 year old woman belonging to the indigenous community, becoming an iconic leader – they were aided in their efforts by numerous agencies which again came together to form a transverse solidarity, finally bringing down the shutters of the factory; the struggle still continues with the agitators claiming compensation for the ecological damage caused by the multinational.

 

In a historic decision, the Left Front government in Kerala banned the use of more than a dozen toxic pesticides in the state in May 2010. This was a culmination of more than one and a half decade of struggle and protest movements against the aerial spraying of endosulfan in the state-owned cashew plantations in Kasargod.

The first major complaint against the aerial spraying of pesticides was voiced in 1979 when a small farmer in a village close to the cashew plantation found that three of the calves born on his farm had limb deformities and stunted growth. As more reports of such birth defects began to come in – now affecting the children in the villages as well – the local panchayat councils took due note and passed a resolution demanding that the state desist from aerial spraying of pesticide. However, these interventions did not lead to a sustained campaign against the use of endosulfan owing to the contrasting claims regarding the cause and effect of pesticide use.

The local panchayats kept up their efforts, highlighting the negative consequences of endosulfan spraying, exercizing their power as decentralized administrative units with a constitutional right to speak on behalf of the local communities. Gradually, a large number of environmental and civic groups and civil society organizations were drawn into the campaign, and the media too highlighted the protest movements and the suffering of the victims. The state was also persuaded to enter into the debate, not least because the cashew plantations were owned by it and it was seen to be responsible for causing such a tragedy in the region.

In this instance too, the various scientific and non-scientific bodies conducted studies in an attempt to establish/refute the connection between aerial spraying and the kind of diseases – including liver and blood cancer – found in the region. This opened up fresh debates on the causalities and the claims and counterclaims regarding the possible effects of aerial spraying. There was thus a massive mobilization of local opinion and this, in alliance with the large number of civil society organizations in the state (the local cultural clubs, community organizations, the Society for Environmental Education in Kerala, KSSP, Thanal Conservation Action, the CSE, Delhi and so on), ultimately forced the state to stop the use of many harmful pesticides in the state.⁶

Thus India, one of the major exporters of endosulfan, and a country which had consistently opposed its ban, was forced to change its stand, and join more than 80 other countries in declaring a complete ban on its use. The endosulfan victims in the state belonging to the poorest agrarian communities, however, still await justice in terms of compensation and rehabilitation from the authorities.

 

The above mentioned are just three examples in a series of movements – some in the past and some perhaps portending the future. There are at the moment hundreds of environmental struggles being waged in Kerala. They range from protests against the conversion of paddy lands and land-grabs, to the reclamation of backwaters, movements against quarrying and excessive trawling, thepollution of rivers such as the Periyar and so on. Perhaps the recent crises with respect to urban waste disposal in various parts of the state, particularly in Laloor in Thrissur and Vilappilsala in Thiruvananthapuram, demand special mention.

 

In terms of the hierarchy of power relations, this issue highlights that the burden of urban waste disposal is differentially borne by those on the margins, who themselves do not generate waste for obvious reasons.⁷ From a transnational point of view, it is as objectionable a practice as waste shifting from the North to the South, with relatively higher levels of consumption – a signifier of the western notion of modernity – remaining the privilege of an elite few. While the global South, which does not produce waste has had to bear the brunt of western waste disposal, a similar process is mirrored in Kerala in the urban peripheries where the villages became the dumping grounds for urban waste.

Many more struggles are fermenting in an illustration of what David Harvey calls accumulation by dispossession. The reclamation of paddy lands in Aranmula in the name of a greenfield airport, when there are already three international airports in the state and two on its border with Tamil Nadu (Coimbatore and Mangalore), indicates the predatory nature of corporate capital’s land grab; this is in stark contrast with the struggles in Chengara and Muthanga where the dalits and adivasis struggle for a piece of land for their livelihood⁸ – the forerunner of the contemporary ‘occupy’ events in the West. The emergence of a mafia in sand mining as well as quarrying, and land grabs in plantations whose lease periods have ended such as in Nelliampathy, are all indicative of the presence of a powerful lobby comprising capital and the state, often aided by diaspora remittances⁹ pushing for a privatization of public and environmental resources – by and large akin to the post-communist societies of Russia and Eastern Europe. These are often seen as avenues for quick profit and the struggles that lie ahead would be aimed at preserving these resources for livelihood and people’s development, but also to retain the political space for the subaltern in Kerala.

 

What sets this livelihood-environmental activism apart from environmentalism in the West is its subaltern origin and the broad-based support engendered in the course of the struggle. The first and foremost concern for these activists is their own livelihood and survival, which in turn is intimately related to the reproduction of nature and environment. It is in the knowledge that livelihood and environmental sustainability go hand in hand, that they combine their struggles and invite the support of other socially concerned sections to form a common platform for political-ecological justice. They do not declare war on globalization per se; nor do they militate against the symbols of globalization.¹⁰ Second, the state which was responsible for bringing in a corporate regime of accumulation as part of its wider developmentalist agenda was itself subjected to a wider conscientization through the agency of transverse politics/transverse solidarity, as I have pointed out elsewhere.¹¹

 

Third, the struggles embody both radical and Gandhian elements which blend together to form a powerful and irrevocable agency of change. This radical leftist-Gandhian confluence is imaginative, particularly in the light of globally influenced radical movements such as the Chiapas-based Zapatista movement in Mexico, which gradually moved away from guerrilla tactics to simultaneity of negotiation and protest. It implies that the ethical element of new struggles occupy an intermediate zone between violence and non-violence, the relative weight depending on historical contexts and socio-structural conditions. Binaries need to be questioned not only in determining the terms of protests but also in finding solutions: this signifies the relevance of locating alternatives, say in the case of Mulla-periyar, by going beyond the extreme decisions – for and against the dam – with civil society organizations having explored the middle ground options.

 

Further, it is worth noting that, as in the rest of the world, the environmentalists in the state are also by and large drawn from the left spectrum. If the political agenda was more in relation to livelihood and human rights issues, the ecological thrust was mainly in terms of sustainability in an effort to preserve nature for future generations and to thereby resolve the potential conflict between nature and livelihood – broadly, the ‘environmentalism of the poor.’¹² I do not, however, argue that the history of environmental politics is a linear narrative. As Irfan Habib maintains, the human responses to ecological circumstances can never be ‘politically neutral’. This is true whether we deal with transnational or local environmental and livelihood issues. Given the fact that Malayalis have clearly demonstrated the vibrancy and viability of a society built on social democratic ideals over half a century, Kerala should have evolved into a highly developed ethico-political society; sadly this has not come to be.

Overall, the environmental devastation attendant upon the various development projects and consumption patterns brings with it disease and affliction combined with and accentuated by other environmental issues. While health professionals and social scientists call these ‘lifestyle diseases’, I would prefer to attribute these maladies to a diseased lifestyle. In terms of governance, the state has miserably failed in its responsibilities, instead transporting the people back to a pre-modern culture that pays scant respect to human rights and freedom. While environmental activism in the state has largely succeeded in halting the advance of corporate regimes of accumulation by challenging ecologically unsustainable business ventures, new forms of environmental inequalities and social injustices continue to crop up and persist even after a generation-long struggle. In other words, while the negative effects of developmentalism have been challenged in some cases, no new ethical project has taken shape as yet.

 

It would be an illusion to think that this ethical project would be undertaken by the state or any party in power. It is worth remembering that no single mainstream party, not even from the left, has ever engaged in any of the struggles narrated above as a lead force, even perhaps acting as a deterrent on many occasions. This points to the necessity of exploring alternatives, including multiple modernities, outside the party state.¹³ The people, particularly the victims, have been making their own history, challenging power without actually appropriating it.¹⁴ The possibility of a reinvention of politics and the creation of an ethical Kerala, against the backdrop of a liberatory modernity, remains an ideal worth striving for.

 

Footnotes:

1. For a recent discussion on the intermingled processes of modernity from various perspectives, see I. Wallerstein, The Essential Wallerstein. New Press, USA, 2000, pp. 455-471; Gert Spaargaren, Arthur P.J. Mol and Frederick H. Buttel, Environment and Global Modernity. Sage, London, 2000; Ulrich Beck, Risk Society : Towards a New Modernity. Sage, London, 1992; S.N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Multiple Modernities. Transaction Publishers, 2005; P. Richard, P. Robbins and M. Watts (eds.), Global Political Ecology. Routledge, 2011. For a focus on India, see David Washbrook, ‘From Comparative Sociology to Global History: Britain and India in the Pre-History of Modernity’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 40(4), 1997, pp. 410-443; Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘An Outline of a Revisionist Theory of Modernity’, European Journal of Sociology 46(3), 2005, pp. 497-526; Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Muddle of Modernity’, American Historical Review 116(3), 2011, pp. 663-675; K. Sivaramakrishnan and Arun Agrawal (eds.), Regional Modernities: The Cultural Politics of Development in India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2003.

2. This relates to the Kerala government’s attempt to introduce changes in the religious content of primary and secondary school textbooks, a move which attracted much media attention and discussion. Despite its reputation as a state with a history of religious tolerance and amity, the attempt to introduce secular content into the social studies textbook for standard VII in Kerala met with opposition from almost all religious groups and led to the death of 48 year old James Antony, a teacher, who was attacked by protesting youth. The main reason for this violence was the inclusion of a chapter titled ‘Mathamillatha Jeevan’ (‘Jeevan, one with no religion’ – literally, it means Jeevan, a boy who has no religion); this drew massive protests from almost all the major religious/caste groups in the state which finally led to the withdrawal of the text altogether, K. Ravi Raman, A State Robbed of Power? Interstices of Education, Religion and Politics in Kerala, India? Paper presented at the CRASSH Seminar, University of Cambridge, 1 June 2011.

3. See Dietmar Rothermund, India: The Rise of an Asian Giant. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008, p. 17. For a discussion on the appropriation of Marxism by Nehru, see Sanjay Seth, ‘Nehruvian Socialism, 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Modernity’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 18(4), 1993, pp. 453-473; Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World. Zed Books, London, 1986.

4. Yet, the Kerala model of development is not free of critiques, see Govindan Parayil, Kerala: The Development Experience. Zed Books, London, 2000; K. Ravi Raman (ed.), Development, Democracy and the State: Critiquing the Kerala Model of Development. Routledge, London and New York, 2010; J. Devika, ‘Egalitarian Developmentalism, Communist Mobilization, and the Question of Caste in Kerala State, India’, The Journal of Asian Studies 69(3), 2010, pp. 799-820.

5. For the details of the struggle, see K.M. Seethi, ‘Cleaning Chaliyar River: Pollution Control or Jobs?’ Economic and Political Weekly 35, 15-21 January 2000 and 'Kerala-Grasim: Polluter does not Pay', Economic and Political Weekly 36, 2001; also see K.T. Rammohan and K. Ravi Raman, ‘Kerala Worker Rises Against Indian Big Capital: A Report Unfinished on Rayon Workers’ Struggle’, Economic and Political Weekly 23(27), 2 July 1988.

6. For details, see http://wikimapia.org/550448/Thanal-Environmental-Research-Organisation.

7. K.P. Kannan and G. Raveendran, for instance, explore how the economic gradation of poverty is closely associated with social hierarchy with the dalits and indigenous people being over-represented among the vulnerable, see ‘India’s Common People: The Regional Profile’, Economic and Political Weekly 46, 17 September 2011.

8. See C.R. Bijoy and K. Ravi Raman, ‘Muthanga: The Real Story: Adivasi Movement to Recover Land’, Economic and Political Weekly, 17 May 2003, pp. 1975-82; Luisa Steur, Adviasi Workers’s Struggles and the Kerala Model: Interpreting the Past, Confronting the Present, in K. Ravi Raman (ed.), Development, Democracy and the State, op cit., pp. 221-236; T.T. Sreekumar and Govindan Parayil, ‘Social Space, Civil Society and Transformative Politics of New Social Movements in Kerala’, in K. Ravi Raman (ed.), ibid., pp. 237-253; Subir Sinha, ‘Transnationality and the Indian Fishworkers’ Movement, 1960s-2000’, Journal of Agrarian Change 12(2-3), 2012, pp. 364-389.

9. Remittances from the Middle East worth nearly 50,000 crores drive the state to a situation of dependent development (see K. Ravi Raman, ‘Currents and Eddies: Indian-Middle East Migration Processes’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 5(2), 2012); S. Irudaya Rajan (ed.), India Migration Report 2012. Routledge India, Delhi, 2012. For Kerala Migration Surveys, see www.cds.edu/

10. It is worth noting that no such movement was instigated against PepsiCo; had the Plachimada struggle been a ritualistic exercise against globalization, PepsiCo too should have been equally targeted. On the contrary, Pepsi was permitted to operate in an industrial zone of the Puthusseri panchayat as, by and large, it complied with the legal requirements of the state.

11. K. Ravi Raman, ‘Transverse Solidarity: Water, Power and Resistance’, Review of Radical Political Economics 42(2), 2010.

12. Ramachandra Guha and J.Martinez Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South. Earthscan Publications, London, 1999; For a long-term historical view on society-nature relations in India, see Mahesh Rangarajan and K. Sivaramakrishnan (eds.), India’s Environmental History. Two vols. Permanent Black, Ranikhet, 2012; Arun Agrawal, Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects. Duke University Press, Durham, N.C., 2005.

13. While the current discussion in Kerala in the context of the political killing of T.P. Chandrasekharan is positive to the extent that it challenges the normalizing tendencies of the politics of silencing by the mainstream parties, it does suffer from shortcomings, being leader and/ or party centric.

14. For a theoretical discussion on such issues, see John Holloway, Change the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. Pluto Press, London, 2002; M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. Hamish Hamilton, London, 2005.