Prescient warnings of a people’s scientist

The death of Madhav Gadgil at 83 marks an immense loss to India’s environmental movement. The most fitting tribute to this people’s scientist would not be ceremonial praise, but the political will to act on his most insightful warning: the Western Ghats are being pushed towards ecological collapse. The 2011 report by the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, chaired by Gadgil, was far ahead of its time. It opposed the reckless and unscientific exploitation of one of the world’s oldest and most fragile mountain systems. Declaring the entire Ghats an Ecologically Sensitive Area was not idealism but ecological realism. Stretching over 1,600 kilometres and recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, this mountain range sustains peninsular India’s rivers, monsoons, biodiversity, and food security. To treat it as expendable real estate was, and remains, an act of collective self-harm.

Nearly 15 years later, Gadgil’s warnings read like a post-mortem written in advance. Hills have been flattened for real estate, quarries gnaw relentlessly at the slopes, land conversions have fragmented forests, and over-tourism has strained landscapes. Mining, unregulated homestays, widening roads, and concrete-heavy projects have turned rainfall from a natural blessing into a recurring disaster. Landslides in Kodagu, Wayanad, Idukki, and parts of Maharashtra are no longer aberrations; they are annual reminders of systemic policy failure. The report’s call to ban mining, polluting industries, and large dams in ecologically sensitive zones was not anti-development or anti-poor as portrayed by various political interests; it was a prescription for the long-term survival of the region. Gadgil also argued that conservation requires the involvement of gram panchayats, noting that local communities often prove better custodians than state governments prone to short-term economic pressures.

Political resistance, however, chose dilution. The subsequent Kasturirangan Committee reduced ecological protection to a fraction of what was recommended by Gadgil. Even this version remains largely unimplemented. Gadgil repeatedly warned that disasters in the Western Ghats were “man-made”; while climate change may intensify rainfall, it is human interference that transforms heavy rain into catastrophe. Ignoring this has cost lives, livelihoods, natural wealth, and public money. As Gadgil passes into history, the Western Ghats continue to die a slow, visible death. Honouring him demands more than obituaries. At the very least, the core principles of his report must be implemented. If the Gadgil Report is allowed to fade into archives, India will have lost not just a scientist, but a chance to save a mountain range that holds up the subcontinent.