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BOOK REVIEW  
 

Radhika Krishnan  
 
Jairam Ramesh. 2017. Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature. New Delhi: Simon & 
Schuster; ISBN: 978-81-93355-24-4 
 

Jairam Ramesh, economist and Member 
of Parliament, has attempted to ‘paint a 
fresh portrait’ of Indira Gandhi. In 
penning A Life in Nature, Ramesh seeks 
to uncover the naturalist in the 
politician and, more ambitiously, to 
trace an entire country’s tense tryst with 
ecological conservation through the lens 
of Indira Gandhi’s life and experiences. 
Ramesh tells us, for instance, of a child 
slowly cultivating an interest in and a 
deep knowledge of insects, birds, and 
trees. He speaks of emerging social and 
political networks in independent India, 
as the young Mrs. Gandhi is introduced 
to familiar (and perhaps iconic) names 
in the country’s conservation history. In 

this rendering, the Teen Murti House in Delhi is portrayed as a site where 
relationships were forged—between Gandhi and her family and those who 
were to become her trusted aides—as she grappled with complex questions 
of development and the concomitant ecological repercussions. 

A crucial and fascinating part of A Life in Nature is Ramesh’s account of the 
tumultuous 1970s and the early 1980s. Embedded within Ramesh’s 
narrative are telling snippets collected from unpublished letters, memos, 

 
 Assistant Professor, Humanities, IIIT Gachibowli, Hyderabad, Telangana 500032, 
radhika.krishnan@iiit.ac.in 

Copyright © Krishnan 2018. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.25  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.25


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [110] 

notes put on official files, and recordings of meetings. This, in fact, is a 
ringside view of multilayered deliberations and political calculations that 
often took place behind the scenes. In the process, we revisit some of the 
crucial milestones in India’s chequered ecological history. The massive 
Sardar Sarovar hydel project, the beleaguered and embattled refinery project 
in Mathura, the iron ore mining project in Kudremukh, and the Silent 
Valley dam in Kerala, for instance, are posed to us as dilemmas confronting 
an individual with the unenviable task of balancing multiple regional, 
political, and economic interests. We see concerns for employment, 
infrastructure, and food security being deployed against ecological 
impacts—even as stubborn bureaucrats and political stakeholders are 
cajoled, threatened, and placated to set up policies and institutions to 
address ecological conservation. 

Reading into the past is arguably fraught with tensions. How, indeed, does 
one access, recover, and (re)discover meanings and intent in actions and 
words long gone by? To begin with, the predilection to undermine crucial 
context has to be circumvented. As one sets out to examine events and 
responses in the past, using the handy lens of contemporary ideological 
discourse is hardly free from considerable risks. To complicate matters even 
further, multiple interpretations abound, as one tries to enter into the world 
of well-known political figures. Ramesh does grapple with these 
methodological questions, as he delineates the pressing concerns of the 
1960s and 1970s: the crippling food crisis and the deteriorating economic 
conditions, the somewhat frustrating back-and-forth between various states 
and the Indian government on several matters, and the near-absence of 
institutional structures for addressing ecological concerns. Indira Gandhi’s 
multiple interventions are placed in precisely this context, as Ramesh 
simultaneously traces the painstaking building of some of our best known 
environmental institutions and policy frameworks. At a time when the 
project of institution-building is often seen as passé, we are reminded of 
what its non-existence can result in. 

This apart, the question for us is: does Ramesh help us to understand the 
dynamics between nature and power in independent India? As he admirably 
sifts through hitherto unknown and unaccessed sources, does he provide us 
with fresh insight into how trade-offs between ecology and equity are 
manoeuvred within the overarching paradigms of political power and 
economic ideologies? Ramesh succeeds in convincing us that for Indira 
Gandhi the conflict was between conservation and ‘reckless’ exploitation 
and not necessarily between ‘progress’ and ecological values. One is 
nevertheless left a trifle disappointed with his treatment of the broader 
questions. A Life in Nature could have benefitted from a nuanced analysis of 
how Gandhi dealt (if at all) with societal fractures around caste, ethnicity, 



[111] Radhika Krishnan 

and gender—and the implications thereof for the environmental question in 
India. Given that adivasi and other identity-based movements were fast 
gaining ground in India during this period, this absence indeed seems 
curious. 

One hoped in vain, moreover, for a glimpse of the behind-the-scenes 
political manoeuvring that might have accompanied the green revolution, 
and the somewhat ignominious sidelining of R.H. Richharia and his 
concerns, which surely had the potential of furthering our understanding of 
the fraught interplay between power, institutional autonomy, and 
transnational interests. In recounting (at great length) Gandhi’s well-known 
speech at the first UN Conference on the Human Environment at 
Stockholm in 1972, Ramesh reminds us of her legacy in shaping our 
environmental policy vis-à-vis the global North. However, beyond 
referencing allegations of the association of the US Central Intelligence 
Agency (CIA) with a certain government-supported conservation 
programme, the book largely refrains from addressing a crucial debate over 
possibly unsavoury international influences in environmental governance 
and policymaking. Again, Ramesh leaves us no more illuminated on what a 
shift in Indira Gandhi’s later years from a socialist rhetoric to a pro-
business attitude meant for the country’s ecological history. In this, one 
senses a missed opportunity for analysing the possible ecological 
ramifications of shifts in economic policy. That being said, Ramesh’s 
account reveals the vexed processes of balancing diverging interests and the 
need for building enduring institutions for environmental conservation, and 
is an eminently readable one for those interested in India’s ecological 
history. 

 


