[Reader-list] Obit: Anil Agarwal

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Hindustan Times
Sunday, January 6, 2002  

A down-to-earth dreamer
Darryl D' Monte
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Everyone thought that Anil Agarwal would defy death, in much the same 
way that he challenged anyone whom he thought was guilty of 
destroying the environment or who was opposing those that were doing 
their bit to save it. He had come close to it several times over the 
past eight years and had written about his illness, converting the 
personal into the political as only he could have done. He gave his 
cancers the toughest of fights, and carried on working right till the 
very end.

I first encountered Anil in the early seventies, when I was editing 
the Sunday magazine of The Times of India in Mumbai. He had just 
returned from a stint in Holland, after completing his studies at 
IIT, Kanpur, which was his home town. If my memory serves me 
correctly, this stranger wrote, offering me a 20-part series of 
interviews with eminent European scientists he had met during his 
Dutch sojourn. I wondered who this presumptuous person was and 
suggested one or two instead. He took his series to the Hindustan 
Times, which promptly published them and hired him too. He later 
worked in The Indian Express before he joined Earthscan, the media 
organisation which was affiliated to the International Institute of 
Environment and Development in London.

It was at an Earthscan workshop for journalists from the South that I 
met Anil again. It was the beginning of a long friendship. The period 
at Earthscan - the entire environment and development paradigm was 
first enunciated by organizations like this - helped Anil form his 
ideas on the many facets of the environmental crisis. In retrospect, 
it is somewhat ironical that he made a mark with an Earthscan 
pamphlet on drugs in what was then called the Third World: he later 
contracted such a rare form of cancer that he obtained free treatment 
as a test case at the National Cancer Institute in the US with new 
medicines, failing which he would have passed away some years ago.

He was restless in London and yearned to get back. He returned soon 
after and started the Centre for Science & Environment. It first made 
a mark with the inaugural "State of India's Environment 1982 - A 
Citizens' Report". It took a synoptic view of every aspect of the 
deterioration of the natural resource base of the country but relied 
- unlike the annual reports of the Environment Ministry and countless 
other official and non-official organizations - on the first-hand 
reports of people in the field. These were then edited by 
professional journalists and well- displayed with boxes and pictures, 
which made the book very reader-friendly and became an instant 
success.

The second report followed two years later and was much more 
ambitious, taking a more analytical view. Many government and private 
institutions and individuals came to Anil's help, buying copies in 
advance and helping the CSE defray the publishing expenses. It was 
very well received and one of the most revealing comments was from a 
reader in the West who said that it was a model for researchers in 
the North to emulate. Anil was insistent on getting both reports 
published in Hindi, and attempted to translate them into other 
languages as well. Incidentally, he is widely credited for being the 
first journalist to bring the Chipko movement to the notice of the 
English press in the seventies.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi obtained a copy of the second Citizens' 
Report and was most impressed by it. He ordered an unprecedented 
joint meeting of both houses of parliament to be briefed by Anil and 
his CSE team, which included Sunita Narain, who has recently taken 
over as Director and for years co-authored a fortnightly column with 
him. There was a huge number of MPs and Anil was understandably, 
though perhaps mistakenly, excited at the prospect of converting MPs 
into green warriors in their constituencies. There was a second 
meeting, this time when Mr Gandhi was not present himself and the MPs 
had dwindled to less than a score. Environmentalists criticised Anil 
for making the fatal mistake of aligning himself with the government.

Before the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992, Anil investigated the claim 
by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in Washington that China and 
India were the fourth and fifth biggest net emitters of greenhouse 
gases respectively. He found that the WRI, whose findings are 
considered "objective" science emanating from the world's most 
powerful capital, was taking the total emissions of each country but 
deducting the "sinks" - forests and oceans which absorb these harmful 
gases - in the same proportion as their emissions. Anil said that an 
if alternative yardstick was used - per capita emissions - India and 
China would figure right at the bottom of the list and added that 
both sets of calculations constituted politics rather than science. 
The CSE's findings were criticized initially - by this writer too - 
but eventually his formulation has come to be accepted by most 
environmental organisations.

It was this baptism in the politics of climate change that steered 
Anil and Sunita into looking at various environmental treaties after 
Rio, including that concerning biodiversity and the Montreal 
Protocol. The CSE has brought out well-argued critiques of these 
agreements in a tome called Green Politics and this has provided a 
perspective from the South to such global negotiations. The CSE's 
staff has tracked these deliberations minutely and the organization 
has countered the propaganda generated by many multilateral bodies 
about the benefits of these treaties.

It had always been Anil's dream to bring out a magazine of his own, 
which was eventually realized with the fortnightly, Down To Earth. It 
has served to provide information and analyse environmental problems 
within the country and globally. The magazine does not have a large 
circulation but remains one of the best environmental journals in the 
world. It is seldom that one can make such a claim about any 
publication from this country. The CSE's books on water harvesting 
techniques throughout the country are a resource book for activists 
and researchers alike.

When the Supreme Court appointed him on a committee to advise it on 
ridding New Delhi of its obnoxious air pollutants, it could hardly 
have foreseen what it was taking on. Anil attacked the diesel 
industry in particular for polluting the atmosphere and the Tatas, 
who manufacture diesel vehicles, had on one occasion threatened the 
CSE with a law suit. Characteristically, Sunita held a press 
conference welcoming such a move, and the Tatas withdrew. Anil 
crossed swords with other researchers on this highly controversial 
issue, including the Tata Energy Research Institute and Prof Dinesh 
Mohan of IIT Delhi a reputed transport expert. But if Delhi has 
anyone to thank for ridding its air of contaminants, it is Anil.

He has set very high standards for all of us to follow and the best 
tribute that we can pay to him is to try and emulate some of them. 
Sunita Narain and her fellow researchers at the CSE deserve the 
support of all of us who care for the environment. His family too 
needs our sympathy, particularly because he was always immersed in 
his work.

(Darryl D'Monte is the Chairperson of the Forum of Environmental 
Journalists of India and President of the International Federation of 
Environmental Journalists. He was previously a CSE Fellow.)

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