Integrating Political Economy, Ideas and Science in Interrogating the Political And Ideological Premises Of Environmental Controversies In India: A Case Study Of The Konkan Railways
The article revisits the environmental controversy around the Konkan Railway in the Western Ghats of India as symptomatic of the current tensions prevailing around mega-development projects.The rationale for specifically studying the Konkan Railway controversy is four-fold.Firstly, the immediate justification comes from the recent debate around the recommendations of two reports by two different expert panels, commissioned Government of India, for the conservation, protection and rejuvenation of the Western Ghats region.The first of these reports identified the Konkan railway as emblematic of this tussle between environment and development concerns.The second rationale is to understand the political and ideological premises of the environmental controversy around the Konkan railway through an integrated analysis of the ideas about nature and development, political economy and ecology (or science).The third rationale is to try and locate the KR controversy within the frames used to study environmentalism in India and in doing so enrich our understanding of the diverse political and ideological motivations of environmentalism in India.Fourthly, to use the lessons gained from the analysis to reflect on its implications for policy.To that extent,it reflects on a normative framework for sustainable development and concludes that any such framework will have to engage not only with the discursive, but also the empirical and historical analysis of nature and culture and its interaction while combining science and reason with ethics.
国际会议
北京
英文
481-521
2017-05-25（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）