Late 20th-century environmental movements prioritized local knowledge and grassroots activism, challenging dominant development narratives and promoting inclusive, people-centered approaches.
Author
Kaushalya Bajpayee, Associate Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India
Summary
This chapter presents an alternative analysis of the environmental movements in the late twentieth century, where the lens of technological use was reposited to appropriate the self-assertion of the different dissident voices. Since the late 1980s, this chapter argues, an alternative discourse on development was formulated by capitalizing on the rising tide of democratic/participative movement.
The prominence of such movement lay in their prioritization of people as stakeholders of the natural resources and shaping up of the “mass-based” movement which opened up an unprecedented collaboration between “think tanks” and grassroot activism. Such activism, as illustrated through the example of Anil Agarwal, banked primarily on the local-knowledge-based technologies and crusaded against the hegemonic march of “modern” development marked by exclusion and non-egalitarian ideas.
Published in: Technologies of Knowledge: Rethinking the Archive in Modern South Asia
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