India
In the 1960s, the Green Revolution brought intensive industrial agriculture to India. With it came intensive applications of pesticides, fertilizers, and precious water. Industry expansion and Special Economic Zones came next, along with lax environmental regulations and the world’s worst industrial catastrophe—the 1984 Bhopal Disaster. Today, these agricultural and industrial legacies threaten the social fabric and environmental health of this rapidly growing country.
Our India Advisory Board is working with India’s rural and marginalized communities to educate and mobilize people around these top-down problems. Community training, individual fellowships, regional campaigns, and socially-conscious funding are some of the many ways they’re undoing the environmental inequities in India.
Learn more about the Green Revolution and the ‘suicide belts’ and ‘cancer trains’ it caused
Grantmaking Strategies
- Seek the redress of community grievances through documentation and community-based communication
- Support community-based resource conservation and ecosystem regeneration
- Build capacity, particularly for environmental issues
- Build networks and support solidarity actions
Board Priorities
Environmental health, occupational health, and pollution
Food sovereignty and safety through sustainable management of natural resources
Environmental justice
Indigenous community rights
Livelihood security
Corporate accountability
Climate change
Countries
- India (218 grants)
Arundhati Jena
Grant #: 53-374
Amount: $4,350
Country: India
Focus: SustenanceArundhati Jena works with rural Indian farmers, training them in sustainable and organic farming practices. A small grant to the activist provided for such training in three villages in Orissa. Arundhati used funds for the preparation of manures and bio-pesticides and to train participants on the proper preparation of organic manure and on seed selection and seed conservation.
Community Environmental Monitoring
Grant #: 53-375
Amount: $1,000
Country: India
Focus: WomenCommunity Environmental Monitoring (CEM) helps Indian communities impacted by industrial pollution by teaching them about the science of pollution and training them to monitor pollution's health and environmental impacts. The organization used a $1,000 grant towards supporting education for young women. In a five-month program, CEM taught teenage girls in pollution-impacted communities about gender and sexuality in order to educate them about their rights. The program also trained them in rights-based leadership so that they could become advocates for their communities.
Michael Mazgaonkar
Coordinator
Michael is the co-founder of both Mozda Collective and Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS). Through Mozda Collective, Michael is committed to soil and water conservation, developing women’s cooperatives, and promoting alternative energy by making parabolic solar cookers and LED solar lamps. With PSS, Michael works with marginalized communities affected by industrial pollution, organizing protests and meetings to reduce the toxic pollution that causes their suffering. Before founding these two organizations, Michael worked with Prayas, a nonprofit organization that promotes alternative technologies and alternative energy.
Priyanka Borpujari
Administrator
Priyanka Borpujari is an independent journalist based in Mumbai. Her work documenting human rights abuses takes her to different corners of the country. While she has been writing for various publications in India, she has also been blogging about India’s mad race for development and the adverse effects it has had on the indigenous populace. She has been awarded the 'Young Independent Journalist Fellowship 2011' by the New York-based SINGH Foundation. Most recently, she has also been facilitating documentary film screenings across educational institutions in Mumbai. Click here to read her blog.
Manshi Asher
Him Dhara, Environment Research and Action Collective
A Post Graduate in Social Work, Manshi has 12 years of experience in environment, development and livelihood rights issues. She has been associated with campaigns and grassroots struggles against Special Economic Zones, polluting industries and hydro-projects. With the support of Global Greengrants Fund, Manshi conducted an investigation into the impacts of Special Economic Zones in India in 2007. For the last four years she has been living and working in Palampur, Himachal Pradesh. In 2010 along with fellow activists, she co-founded Him Dhara (land of Snow), an Environment Research and Action Collective, to lend support to mountain communities asserting their rights over their natural resources. To read her writings click here.
Sayantoni Datta
Independent consultant
Sayantoni Datta is an independent researcher working on environmental, cultural, and human rights & justice issues. She has currently been helping small community-based organizations and rural activists with research and designing initiatives around culture, ecological equality and dignity, and ESC rights specifically for women, Dalits and tribal’s. As an independent consultant, she has worked with the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights; the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social, Cultural Rights; and Child fund International. She got her BSc in Geography at the University of Calcutta and continued her education at TISS in Mumbai where she earned her Masters in Urban and Rural Community Development.
Benny Kuruvilla
Focus on the Global South
Benny Kuruvilla is a Research Associate with Focus on the Global South and is based in Mumbai. There, he works on trade and development finance issues, focusing on the policies of the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank with regards to India’s engagement in trade agreements. Benny holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai and a Master’s Degree in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
Rohit Prajapati
Independent Activist
Rohit works with Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (PSS), an environmental organization based in Vadodara, Gujarat, India. He is an engineer by training who chose to join with workers protesting against the lax environmental standards of Indian corporations. His protests and legal actions have been highly effective in forcing Indian companies to follow environmental regulations and pushing for proper government response plans in industrial districts.
Usha S.
Thanal
Usha S. is the Program Director of Thanal, a public interest and research organization based in Trivandrum, Kerala. With a PhD in Horticulture, Usha’s main focus is working on issues related to agriculture, including the impacts of pesticides on the environment and people. Usha is currently working on issues related to the World Trade Organization, free trade agreements and farmer suicides. She is also coordinating a national campaign to save native rice strains and build awareness about the dangers of genetic engineering in agriculture.
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What's a Bund? Innovative water conservation in India
Apr, 2012: In rural India, small stone dams, known as bunds, help conserve soil and water and enable families to grow two crops of rice and chickpeas each planting season instead of one. -
A Retired Teacher Seeds Organic Farming in India
Nov, 2011: Natabar Sarangi, nearly 80 years old, spends his retirement conserving native crops in India and teaching others to do the same.