Arvind ji and yours truly attended the first VD Vartak Memorial lecture organised by the Botany department of Pune University on 25 Nov 2024. The speaker was Dr Madhav Gadgil. I have been a big fan of Gadgil ji – and the opportunity to hear him live was too good to pass. Madhav ji started by talking about his younger days. Most of what he said is captured beautifully in this article that he wrote in the Telegraph in Feb 2006:

I was born on the outskirts of Pune, close to the hill ranges of Western Ghats. From the terrace of our house I could see Torna, Rajgad and Sinhagad, the hill forts conquered by Shivaji and his general Tanaji. Every year our school used to organise an annual climbing expedition along the steep slopes of Sinhagad, to relive the adventures of the medieval Maratha warriors.

Although the hills bustled with wildlife, we never got to see any big animal, except for a variety of birds. I could spot handsome crested buntings, for my father had groomed me to be a bird-watcher as well as a naturalist early in my childhood. My father, Dhananjay Ramachandra Gadgil, an economist who headed Gokhale Institute, had very broad intellectual interests ranging from sociology, public affairs and history to biology and astronomy. He had a personal library of over 3,000 books and I would read them voraciously. I had decided quite early that I would pursue an academic career.

In spite of my academic bent of mind, I was very naughty. Because my parents never persuaded me to study hard, I, along with my younger brother, would explore the woods accompanied by three pet dogs. Both of us were avid athletes. I was a champion long jumper and my brother, a swimmer. I hated school because, except for the sports teacher, the others were strict disciplinarians. They also disliked a disobedient pupil like me but couldn’t complain much because I was also the topper in my class.

The high points in my childhood were opportunities to interact with great biologists like Salim Ali and Irawati Karve. I was barely 12 when I wrote a letter to the great ornithologist, after having noticed an anomalous feature of a bird called the common bee eater, which used to play cheerfully on electric wires close to our house. To my utter surprise, Ali replied to my letter enthusiastically, explaining the bird’s behavioural anomaly. Karve, a family friend, had taken us to Coorg valley in Karnataka in course of her research on ecological anthropology. When I came home, after exploring the unique flora and fauna of the jungles, I made up my mind to be an ecologist and work in India.

He then went on to talk about his older days. Here is a Wikipedia excerpt:

Madhav graduated in biology from Fergusson College of the University of Pune in 1963, and secured a master’s degree in zoology from the Mumbai University in 1965. Gadgil was encouraged to join Harvard University by Giles Mead, then curator of fishes at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Initially intending to do research under Mead, Gadgil later changed subjects by hearing lectures of E. O. Wilson, “the brightest young star in the ecology-evolution end of biology at Harvard at that time,” and subsequently did his doctoral research on mathematical ecology and fish behaviour.

It earned him a PhD in 1969. Subsequently, he received a Fellowship from IBM to continue his work as a research fellow at the Harvard Computing Center and simultaneously worked as a lecturer of biology at the university for two years. He returned to India in 1971 and took up a job as a scientific officer at Agharkar Research Institute of the Maharashtra Association for Cultivation of Science, Pune where he stayed for two years.In 1973, he joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, starting an association that would stretch for over thirty years, superannuating from the institute as its chairman in 2004.

Madhav then went on to talk about his association with Dr Vartak, who had been his teacher at Fergusson College. Dr Vartak was one of the pioneers in the environmentalism movement  and was the first one to suggest that the 1961 floods in Pune, which were caused by the dam breaking at Panshet, were due to deforestation in the Panshet region. Vartak was worried because the dam breach had resulted in stoppage of water supply to the botanical garden he used to maintain at Fergusson. 

He wrote an article in Sakal in 1967 about charcoal manufacturing’s impact on the environment. Till the 1960s, rural communities around Pune were not connected to the market economy. Only a small number of commodities would get sent to Pune markets for selling. MG remembers doing field surveys in the Varandha Ghat (near Bhor) – where the evergreen forests had been ruthlessly cut down to supply charcoal to Pune’s burgeoning population. Those were the pre LPG days, when charcoal was the primary fuel in kitchens. With more roads, access increased – and any trees that were within reach of roads got cut down to get converted to firewood. Infrastructure kills! Corrupt forest officials and irrigation officials were hand in glove with charcoal merchants. Corrupt officials now encouraged villages to sell off the trees – a mango tree fetched the villagers a royal sum of 50 paise.

In the seventies, botanists would do a lot of field work, staying with local communities. MG remembers sociologist Irawati Karve, a friend of his dad, buying ST tickets to talk to the common woman when she travelled. During the course of MG’s field work he came across untouched forests – which existed solely because maps did not show them to exist. The only other trees that were saved were the ones in Devrais or sacred groves.MG’s interest in anthropology and comparative religion led him to study these groves in Panshet and Velhe. These groves were spread all over – in all types of terrain, hilltops, riversides, plateaus. MG realised that more than religion, these groves provided ecosystem services to local communities. In earlier times, villagers would source timber from Devaris only in case of big natural calamities. In Mazgam, Velhe, the grove nurtures a local stream. The grove was also a refuge for barking deer. Locals went on to enjoy the meat of any deer that ventured out of the grove. The groves were also a source for many medicinal plants. 

At IISc, MG’s interest in economics made him spend time understanding the interplay between ecology and economics. About how environmental destruction leads to adverse economic effects. Locals have always understood this – trouble starts when outsiders enter the system. Since the outsider does not live in the ecosystem, he will be an exploiter with a short term profit motive. Rural India, most of us believe, lives in a subsistence economy, but MG disagrees. Fishermen, who sell their produce in open markets – are very much part of a market economy. The female folk of the community are known for their negotiation skills.

MG gave an example of the Vashishti river basin in the Western Ghats. The government decided to make the area a hub for the chemical industry. Most industries that got set up didn’t even bother with the formality of getting permission from the local Pollution Control Board. In any case, State governments have always blinded these boards – with instructions to ignore damage and not report environmental disasters. The valley suffered. The local industry created 1100 jobs – at the expense of 2200 fishermen, who lost their livelihoods as fish populations got decimated by  effluent discharge. There were protests by the locals – and some of the journalists who covered these protests were ‘supari’d by the local industries.

There was a short detour that the discussion took about best practices in forest management. Scandinavian countries, Germany, Sweden and Norway are vanguards of the local forests. They have pollution control boards which actually work. Yet the same German companies, when they set up shop in India, flout environmental norms – because they are allowed to do so. Short term RoI wins over long term environment. 

Sustainability will also need to enter agriculture. But natural farming can’t come in till fertiliser subsidies are withdrawn. That does not seem likely to happen in the next few decades. In the meantime, forest rights for local communities seems to be a good first step. Better tree growth benefits the active community in Pachgaon, Gadchiroli. The community has also restarted sacred groves in their area. Our forest act provides for these rights – we need to pursue them more seriously. Till now, ‘managing’ forests was the prerogative of the forest department, but we will now have to train communities to do that.