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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | In Tamil Nadu, environment is good politics -Nityanand Jayaraman

In Tamil Nadu, environment is good politics -Nityanand Jayaraman

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published Published on Apr 5, 2021   modified Modified on Apr 6, 2021

-The Hindu

There seems to be a shift from prioritising expressways and megaports to agriculture and forests

Environmental promises have made a visible entry into Tamil Nadu’s politics, along with a guarded valourisation of farmer and fisher rights over big-ticket infrastructure and industrial projects. All key parties in the 2021 Assembly polls barring the AIADMK dedicated a section for “environmental protection” in their manifestos. Setting aside the justified cynicism about fulfillment of poll promises, the appearance of environment as a political concern worth flagging signals a welcome cultural shift in Tamil politics. It would be a folly to dismiss these promises as tokenism. That would disregard the power of earlier culture-shaping projects such as the Self-Respect Movement and the depth of Tamils’ linguistic identity in birthing local brands of environmentalism. Agriculture, rather than industry, as a defining identity of Tamil Nadu has found new currency.

Politics responsive to protests

However, two anxieties mar the positivity of these political developments. One is that an environmentalism rooted in healthy self-respect should not degrade into a ‘blood and soil’ subset of a chauvisnistic Tamil nationalism. This fear, though, is mitigated by a dominant discourse that draws from inclusive traditions of Periyar, Ambedkar and even Marx. The second is an ominous certainty that the political class does not understand the urgency and magnitude of the planetary ecological crisis.

More than a new awakening within the political class, the shift is proof that politics in Tamil Nadu is populist and responsive to people’s aspirations articulated primarily through the medium of protests. Protests and agitations have shaped Tamil political culture. The decade has been especially busy. If anti-Hindi agitations launched the Dravidian era in politics, it would not be an overreach to say that the anti-nuclear protests from 2011 to 2013 launched a movement with a distinctly Tamil flavour to protect land, water and livelihoods from state-supported corporate grabs. The non-violent sit-in by fishers against the Kudankulam nuclear plants in the coastal hamlet of Idinthakarai failed to stop the project, but it forced a nationwide debate on nuclear energy and the right of people to participate in environmental decision-making in the face of obstinate, powerful and irate adversaries. The fallout of the protests left even avowedly pro-nuclear parties like the CPI(M) and agnostic pro-industrial parties like the DMK with weaker appetites for nuclear projects.

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The Hindu, 5 April, 2021, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/in-tamil-nadu-environment-is-good-politics/article34239016.ece?homepage=true&fbclid=IwAR1BmtgwAWFkfYZt5netFLsgHKgZfU1aYkHbQMBMmA-gHoNWIcWTSmglVb0


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