On this Earth Day, as India endures record-breaking heatwaves and the unpredictable fury of extreme floods, we must confront the primary driver of our ecological collapse: unchecked corporate power. The climate crisis is not an abstract “future threat”; it is a man-made catastrophe unfolding in the parched ridges of the Aravallis and the submerged neighborhoods of our midlands. While the global elite speak of “green growth,” our reality is a violent restructuring of geography. A predatory state-corporate nexus is dismantling the very ecosystems—our forests, wetlands, and mountains—that serve as our only shield against a warming planet.

The lifeline of our nation—our rivers and water bodies—is under a state of siege. The pristine waters born in the Western Ghats and the Himalayas are being hijacked and poisoned before they even reach the plains. High-altitude mining and “extractive” infrastructure projects in the Western Ghats are not only triggering landslides but are also choking the headwaters of our great rivers with silt and industrial runoff. Across India, corporations treat our rivers as free sewers, dumping toxic industrial effluents with impunity, while city-driven domestic waste is shamelessly funneled into rural waterways. This systematic pollution has turned our drinking water into a carrier of disease, ruining the health of millions and forcing villages to pay for a resource that was once a common birthright.

The frontlines of this struggle stretch along our 7,500km coastline. From Kerala, Karnataka and Gujarat to bengal, traditional fishing communities are fighting a desperate battle for the sea. The “Blue Economy” has become a mask for corporate plunder, as black sand mining and the looming threat of deep-sea mining strip coastal people of their ancestral rights to the sea and its shores. By treating the coast as a mineral warehouse, the nexus is destroying the natural mangroves and dunes that protect us from intensifying cyclones and rising tides. This is a blatant violation of community sovereignty, where the rights of those who have lived in harmony with the sea for millennia are traded for short-term corporate dividends.

This assault is a direct attack on the constitutional and democratic safeguards meant to protect the marginalized. Crucially, we are witnessing a nationwide assault on Indigenous sovereignty. In every state, Adivasi rights are being flagrantly violated to facilitate land-grabbing. The recent, harrowing incidents in Sijimali underscore this crisis, where the state-corporate machinery has used force to suppress Adivasi resistance against bauxite mining. The spirit of the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and PESA is being hollowed out to serve mega-industrial corridors. When environmental impact assessments are treated as mere formalities and political parties are funded by the very entities they are supposed to regulate, democracy itself is in peril. 

The concentration of power in the hands of a few has ensured that the “market” thrives while the people perish in heatwaves, lose their lands to “land-pooling,” and see their sacred groves turned into hollowed-out pits. This destruction is fueled by international finance corporations and global banks that pour billions into high-risk extractive projects while intentionally bypassing social and environmental safeguards. By providing “blind-eye” loans to predatory firms without any mechanism for community accountability, these institutions become silent architects of the displacement and ecocide unfolding on our soil.

Ultimately, history has shown that only organized People’s Power can turn the tide. We cannot rely on a compromised bureaucracy or profit-motive politics to save our planet. We must demand the strict recognition of community rights over our forests, coasts, and water. 

This Earth Day, Friends of the Earth India stands in unwavering solidarity with the fishers of the coast, the Adivasis of the heartlands, and the climate defenders of the mountains. Our resistance is the only force capable of reclaiming our commons and ensuring a future where justice, dignity, and the Earth prevail over corporate greed.

In Solidarity,

Friends of the Earth India