Question

aricle on chipko movement​

Answer 1

Answer:

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Chipko Movement, started in 1970's, was a non violent movement aimed at protection and conservation of trees and forests from being destroyed. The name of the Chipko moment originated from the word 'embrace' as the villagers used to hug the trees and protect them from wood cutters from cutting them.

Answer 2

Chipko Movement in India!

The Chipko Movement was started in the northern Himalayan segment of Uttar Pradesh, the area that is well known as Uttarakhand. The word “chipko” refers “to stick” or “to hug”. The name of the movement comes from a word meaning “embrace”: where the villagers hug the trees, saving them by interposing their bodies between them and the contractors’ axes.

This became popular as “Chipko movement”. Chipko movement is a grassroot level movement, which started in response to the needs of the people of Uttarakhand. The rate of heavy depletion of forests was resulting in destruction, arid- making the Himalayan mountain range barren. Moreover, the construction of dams, factories and roads had already led to deforestation.

Most of the leaders of the Chipko Movement were village women and men who strove to save their means of subsistence and their communities. Sunderlal Bahuguna, a renowned Gandhian, with a group of volunteers and women started the non-violent protest by clinging to the trees to save them from felling.

This gave a start to the “Chipko Movement”. The main objective of this movement was to ensure an ecological balance and the survival of the tribal people whose economic activities revolved around these forests. His appeal to Mrs Gandhi resulted in the green-felling ban.

The 5,000-km trans-Himalaya foot march in 1981-1983 was crucial in spreading the Chipko message. Bahuguna coined the Chipko slogan: “ecology is permanent economy”. Chandi Prasad Bhatt, one of the earli­est Chipko activists, fostered local industries based on the conservation and sustainable use of forest wealth for local benefit. Dhoom Singh Negi, with Bachni Devi and many village women, first saved trees by hugging them in the “Chipko embrace”.

They coined the slogan:

“what do the forests bear” soil, water, and pure air”. Ghanashyam Raturi, the Chipko poet, whose songs echo throughout the Himalayas of Uttar Pradesh and Indu Tikekar, a doctor of philosophy, whose spiritual discourses throughout India on the ancient Sanskrit scriptures and on comparative religion have stressed the unity and oneness of life, put the Chipko Movement in this context and there are other prominent leaders of the movement.

The first Chipko action took place spontaneously in April 1973 in the village of Mandal in the upper Alakananda valley, and over the next five years it spread too many districts of the Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh. It was sparked off by the government’s deci­sion to allot a plot of forest area in the Alakananda valley to a sports goods company.

This angered the villagers, because their demand to use wood for making agricultural tools had been denied earlier. With encouragement from a local NGO (Non-Governmental Organization), DGSS (Dasoli Gram Swarajya Sangh), the women of the area, under the leadership of an activist, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, went into the forest and formed a circle around the trees preventing men from cutting them down.

The Uttarakhand region is a highly remote area due to its precipitous slopes, with thin and fragile soils. The area is highly resourced with abundant water resources and forests. The people living in this region are farmers, whose major occupations are ter­race cultivation and animal husbandry. The extensive network of roads, which have been built after the Indo-Chinese border conflict, made accessibility to this region easier.

As a result, the Uttarakhand region, which is known for rich minerals, soils, and forests, attracted many entrepreneurs. Soon the area became the object of exploitation by these entrepreneurs. Some products for which the region was exploited were timber, limestone, magnesium, potassium, etc. The major source of conflicts in this region was the exploita­tion of the forests by the entrepreneurs with the approval of the government.

The other reason for such conflicts was that the villagers were earlier denied the use of forests. The streamlined policies did not allow the local agriculturists and herders to cut the trees for fuel wood or for fodder and for certain other purposes.

Instead, they were told that dead trees and fallen branches would serve their needs. The agriculturists or herders could cut trees only for the construction of houses and for making implements. The policies were reframed, claiming that the overuse and misuse of the forests was causing deforestation.

Moreover, the timber and charcoal contractors conspired among themselves and blamed the local people for deforestation. The villagers, with the help of social work­ers, established labor and small-scale-producer co-operatives, which aimed at allowing the local people to share the benefits of development.