Mahatma Gandhi's Environmentalism

Gandhi’s personal lifestyle choices are not what make him crucial to the future of our species. What matters more is to understand why Gandhi anticipated the environmental crisis more than half a century before the term “sustainable development” was coined.

- Rajni Bakshi

Anand Mahindra, head of Mahindra Group, one of the largest Indian multinational corporations, once told a story he heard about a village somewhere near Goa. This village was once famous for growing the most delicious watermelons. It also had a custom that allowed children to eat as many watermelons from any farm for free. All they had to do in exchange was to save the seeds of the most delicious watermelons and give the seeds to the grower of that watermelon. The farmer then planted only the seeds of the watermelons the children found to be the sweetest and most luscious. But some people in the village decided that since their watermelons were so delicious and could fetch a good price, why “waste” so many in free distribution to the children. As the practice of allowing children to enjoy free watermelons dwindled, the quality of watermelons began to decline. Soon the village was no longer growing the region’s best watermelons.

The focus on what is priceless is Mahatma Gandhi’s most urgent insight. Here, priceless does not refer to some “thing” which is so rare and expensive that it is beyond measure. It refers to that which is kept outside any form of market, and which cannot be turned into a commodity or submitted to the vagaries of supply and demand.

Over the last few decades, a great deal of effort has gone into putting a price on ecosystems—in the hope that translating ecosystem services into metrics that economics recognizes will help save them. At the same time, it is increasingly becoming clear that the cascading environmental crises cannot really be addressed by fitting the narrative into a framework that economists understand.

Consequently, Gandhi is crucial for a deeper search for answers.