Scratch the surface of most sustainability campaigns in India and you will find one major defect: the complete absence of the acknowledgement of caste based environmental conflicts. Riyosha Sharma writes in her essay 'How Indian Environmentalism Shelters Eco-Casteism' that even the UN's SDG 10 which aims to ‘empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status’, it does not specifically include caste as a category, and activists from the Dalit Rights Forum view this lack of acknowledgement as a critical lapse, owing to the deep links of the caste system with poverty and environmental injustice.
Cartoon from my column with The Hindu.
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