Ecology and Equity The Use and Abuse of Nature in Contemporary India

analytically sophisticated and empirically grounded interpretation of environmental degradation and social conflict in India, innovatively combining political economy with ecology and emphasizing a forward looking agenda for environmental reform in the Third World.

Environmental destruction is seen a matter of worldwide concern but as a Third World problem. Ecology and Equity explores the most ecologically complex country in the world. India's peoples range from technocrats to hunter-gathers and its environments from dense forest to wasteland. The bookanalyses the use and abuse of nature on the sub-continent to reveal the interconnections of social and environmental conflict on the global scale. The authors argue that the root of this conflict is competition within different social groups and between different economic interests for natural resources. Radical both in its critique of the causes of crisis in India and in its proposals for ecological reform, Ecology and Equity is essential reading for all concerned for the Third World's in the world.

Introduction; Part 1 The India that is; Chapter 1 Cornering the Benefits; Chapter 2 Passing on the Costs; Chapter 3 A Cauldron of Conflicts; Chapter 4 Ideologies of Environmentalism; Part 2 The India that might be; Chapter 5 Conservative–Liberal–Socialism; Chapter 6 Knowledge of the People, by the People, for the People; Chapter 7 What are Forests For?; Chapter 8 Is there Safety in Numbers?; Chapter 9 Resources of Hope;

Madhav Gadgil is a Professor in the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science., Ramachandra Guha is an independent writer. They previously collaborated on This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (1992).