Learning Objectives: After completing this lesson, students will be: a) aware about the colonial nature of environmental laws of Bangladesh, b) informed about the root and nature of legislation relating to use of natural resources and c) learn about the historical factors leading to today's development in environmental laws

1. BACKGROUND OF
DEVELOPMENT OF
ENVIRONMENTAL
LAWS-
Preeti Kana Sikder
Lecturer
Department of Law
&Justice
Jahangirnagar University

2. THE LEGACY OF INDIAN
SUBCONTINENT
 The subcontinent is surrounded by the great ranges
of Himalaya, the Thar Desert and the Indian Ocean.
 Over the centuries people have flowed in and out of
it through passages to the northwest, the northwest
and across the seas; but cultural exchanges have been
especially intense within its own boundary.
 Indian subcontinent existed as a cultural entity for
over two millennia before becoming instituted as a
State only two hundred years ago.

3. TRADITIONAL RURAL WAY OF
LIFE IN INDIAN SUBCONTINENT
Peasants in India cultivated tropical soils, which are mostly poor in
nutrients. They compensated such lack of nutrient by maintaining a
herd of cattle.
 The non-cultivated lands were converted into vegetation and used
manure for the crops. They also used nearby ponds for irrigation.
The families depended on such land for collecting fuel wood,
constructing huts and weaving their baskets from small timber and
bamboo.
 As the natural resources were shared by many, there was always a
well followed practice of restraint on overuse and shared contribution
to maintenance. For example, periodic desilting of ponds by
communal labour.

4. THE COLONIAL LEGACY
“The men presiding over the British Empire
perched on chairs of Burma teak at tables of
African Mahogany, consuming Australian
beef washed down with French and Italian
wines. Their women were decked in
Canadian furs and clothes of Egyptian cotton,
dyed with Indian indigo, glittering with
diamonds from South Africa and gold from
Peru.”

5. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
THE FLUXES OF RESOURCES
 The British wanted to retain India as a supplier of cheap
raw materials and a market for higher-priced
manufactured goods.
 Out of India flowed large quantities of biological produce,
rice and cotton, jute and mango, tea and teak, as well as
gold and precious stones – which were produced cheaply
by dint of severe injustice on part of the labour.
 There was little processing of these outgoing biological
products and mineral produce to add value to them. The
return flows were much smaller material quantities of
value-added products of British manufacture.

6. FUNCTION OF
COLONIAL STATE
APPARATUS
Collection of revenue and
maintenance of law and
order

7. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
ALTERATION IN LAND USE
 Since village communities could not conveniently be held
responsible to pay taxes, land either became private property or
was taken over by the Crown.
 The wood lots and grazing lands were taken over by the State
while declaring community control illegitimate.
 In South and Western parts of India, cultivators were assigned
lands, but unable to pay the high taxes, quickly became
chronically indebted, losing their lands to money lenders.
 In much of North and East India the ownership was handed
over to feudal landlords, which reduced the peasants to status of
tenants and share-croppers.

8. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
ELITE FAVOURITISM
o The upper strata of Indian population learnt the
English language and read English literature.
During the colonial rule they helped serve the
British objective of appropriating the surplus of the
country’s resource production.
o The task of collecting and transmitting
agricultural land tax was assumed principally by
the elite class who became owners of large tracts
of land. They also assisted the British in the task
of exporting natural resources and importing and
distributing the goods of manufacture.

9. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
FORESTRY AND AGRICULTURE
 The previously non-cultivated lands were either
dedicated to producing timber as reserved forests.
 Reserved forests were supposed to be managed
in a sustainable fashion, but their takeover by the
State amounted to confiscation of land.
 Mixed forests were replaced by single-species
stands of a handful of commercially valued trees,
such as teak, sal and deodar.
 This deprived the tribals and peasants of the
forest produce they depended on.

10. THE TREMENDOUSLY
DIVERSE TREE
GROWTH OF INDIA’S
FORESTS WAS
LIQUIDATED TO BUILD
BRITISH SHIPS AND
LAY EXTENSIVE
RAILWAY LINES

11. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
INFORMATION AND INDUSTRY
 The topographic survey of India, the compilation
of floras of British India, district gazetteers and
ethnographic memoirs consumed a great deal of
effort on part of the British. But very little technical
information flowed from Britain to India.
 Not only industries, but also scientific and
technical education was discouraged in this Sub-
continent.

12. THE COLONIAL LEGACY –
INFORMATION AND INDUSTRY
 Only a few textile mills were established in
Bombay while Tata iron and steel mill was
established in Jamshedpur. J.N. Tata also
proposed for establishment of and Indian Institute
of Science to promote indigenous industry, only to
be consistently discouraged.
 Even when the institute was functioning in
1909, the interaction between this institute and
industry were discouraged, forcing the faculty to
concentrate on basic research.

13. THE FACTOR OF
INDEPENDENCE
o The surplus of agricultural production was largely disappeared
by 1920.
o With the sprut in population growth that followed, a serious
deficit developed.
o India’s forest resources had been seriously depleted by Second
World War, while its mineral resources were not so promising.
o At the same time, the Indian elites had become increasingly
conscious of the drain of the country’s resources, and come to
appreciate the possibilities of diverting these resource fluxes in
their own interest.
o A section of the elite therefore took up the cause of Indian
independence.

14. NATIONALISM ON THE
RISE
 While there was a wide call for halting the drain of
India’s resources abroad, there was prevalent
eagerness to refashion the pattern of resource use to
serve its own interests.
 There was limitation to what could be achieved in
already depleted low-input agrarian economy – the
solution lay in industrialisation.
 By tapping the energy of coal and petroleum, or
hydro-electric power, in producing steel and cement
and using such resources to promote manufacture;
India opted for development.

15. MODEL OF DEVELOPMENT
– GANDHIAN MODEL
Crafting an agrarian
society of village
republics making low
levels of demands on
the resources of the
earth by living close to
subsistence. Called
central apparatus of
State to surrender its
power in favour of the
masses.

16. PROMISED NO
SURPLUS
TO CHANNEL TO THE
ELITE
and therefore, did not
become mainstream

17. SOURCES USED FOR THIS
LECTURE
 Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha,
Ecology and Equity: The use and abuse of
nature in contemporary India
 Syeda Rizwana Hassan, Application and
Reform Needs of the Environmental Laws of
Bangladesh, Bangladesh Journal of Law, Vol
9, 2005