Gandhian Perspectives on Environment and Development
Domain 7: Gandhian Perspectives on Environment and Development
This domain tests the ecological reading of Gandhi: need versus greed, decentralization, simple living, and appropriate technology.
Core
Gandhi's famous formulation is: 'The earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not every man's greed.' He criticised industrial civilisation for treating nature as a mine and labour as a tool. His alternatives: village self-sufficiency, local renewable resources, handicrafts, sanitation, tree planting, and limits on consumption. Development is judged by its effect on the poorest and on future generations, not by aggregate output.
Worked example
A hydropower project will displace a forest village. Gandhian analysis: first ask whether the need is genuine and whether less destructive alternatives were considered; assess who bears the cost and who gains; require free consent and rehabilitation; support local non-violent resistance if consent is manufactured; propose decentralized energy and watershed works. Reasoning: the test is not 'development versus environment' but 'whose development, at whose cost, with what consent'.
Traps
- Saying Gandhi wanted to return to pre-industrial poverty; he wanted simple, dignified, self-reliant living.
- Treating all technology as anti-Gandhian; he accepted tools that reduce drudgery without concentrating power.
- Quoting the need/greed line as if Gandhi wrote it exactly in that form; it is a widely used summary of his argument, so attribute carefully.
- Ignoring caste and gender in environmental conflicts; Gandhian analysis includes social justice.