National
He made environment a national concern
By Anand Parthasarathy
With the passing away of Anil Agarwal, India loses perhaps the one person whom the world recognised as the authentic voice of the informed and concerned environmental movement in this country. He died on Wednesday in Dehra Dun, where he was undergoing treatment - the last of many heroic attempts - in his decade-long battle with cancer and leukaemia. He was 54.
The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, (CSE) an organisation which he founded in 1980 (www.cseindia.org), soon became the most respected environmental action group in India, trusted worldwide as an authentic people's voice with no governmental or political baggage. But even earlier, Mr. Agarwal (a B.Tech. in mechanical engineering from IIT Kharagpur) had made a name for keen and professional reporting on science developments. I first interacted with him when he was the Science Correspondent of the Indian Express in the late 1970s, a position he briefly held after a similar task at the Hindustan Times. Already in those days his developmental reports for the London-based New Scientist weekly carried the stamp of a firm conviction that science and environmental were primarily about people.
His concern about the environment led him to throw up these regular jobs and create a new platform to focus on environmental matters. Mr. Agarwal and like-minded citizens had a tough time being taken seriously by the establishment. But a few enlightened government officials ensured that the fledgling movement grew.
While national accolades (Padma Shri in 1986 and Padma Bhushan in 2000) and international recognition (the Global Environmental Leadership Award as well as the Normal Borlaug Award in 2000) piled up, Mr. Agarwal retained the common touch and the ego-less pursuit of environmental goals that was to become the hallmark of the CSE as well as of Down To Earth the monthly magazine that the Centre started in 1992.
The first Citizen's Report on the State of the Indian Environment the CSE brought out in 1982, followed by a second report in 1985, were models of their kind - and inspired many state-based NGOS in India to document their own backyards.
More than any other organisation it was the CSE that vigorously lobbied to educate the Government on burning issues - like neglected water resources, lopsided energy priorities and the like. Sadly, Mr. Agarwal could not continue the Citizens Report series for many years after that - and subsequent reports tended to tackle one issue at a time.
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