Gautam Mukhopadhaya, former Indian Ambassador to Syria, Afghanistan, and Myanmar, draws on his experience in conflict zones and the North East to propose a nature-based vision for agriculture in Manipur’s Sadar Hills. He advocates a balanced farming model that blends smallholder strength with ecological and economic resilience. This four-part series, adapted from an address in Kangpokpi, retains local relevance while offering broader insights for the region. Part 1 contrasts extractive, exploitative economies with regenerative, community-based systems that restore ecological health and sustainability.
Re-Imagining Agriculture – The Foundational Concepts
BY Gautam Mukhopadhaya
Originally conceived as a strategy for the Sadar Hills in Manipur, this section lays the groundwork for a sustainable agricultural future across the hill regions of the Northeast. It underscores the vital interdependence between farming and the natural environment, contrasting harmful extractive economies with regenerative systems that restore and sustain. At its core, it advocates for an agricultural model that recognizes nature not merely as a backdrop, but as essential capital—foundational to both life and long-term agricultural prosperity.
Agriculture is not merely a major sector of the economy; it is vital to survival, and inextricably dependent on nature and local ecology. What we cultivate is directly shaped by our natural environment. In the North East, over 75% of the economy relies, in one way or another, on our land, water, sun and forests. These are the region’s most precious natural resources, far surpassing any mineral wealth. Moreover, farming implicitly ties nature to the community and vice versa through natural and farming cycles, planting, weeding, harvesting and festivities. Therefore, the core of any effective development strategy for hill areas must be a resolute commitment to keeping its hills as ‘green’ as possible.
A fundamental distinction must be made between an ‘extractive’ economy and a ‘productive’ economy. An extractive economy plunders natural resources bequeathed over millennia for immediate consumption and gratification offering nothing in return. Such an economy is inherently destructive. Examples from the Sadar Hills area include the denuding of forests for timber or poppy cultivation, indiscriminate and predatory mining for stone, minerals and hydrocarbons, or the establishment of alien, monoculture plantations. These operations are often orchestrated by external vested interests though the outcome would be equally detrimental if executed by local actors. Typically, constitutional and legal protections for tribal lands are undermined with the community’s consent or complicity, often due to a lack of awareness regarding constitutional protections or the profound environmental costs of such activities, but frequently, in spite of it. Historically, traditional institutions like chieftainship acted as guardians of communal forests, rivers, and lands. While some still uphold this duty, these vital institutions appear to have been corroded by the pervasive pressures and influences of government, money, and politics.
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This destructive cycle is often enabled by a moral confusion between ‘need’ and ‘greed’ and the economic justification of survival ‘today’ over concerns about a sustainable future. It is critical to distinguish these. The genuine ‘need’ of a small-scale user or artisanal miner to survive from day to day may be justifiable, but it differs starkly from the ‘need’ of a contractor or rent-seeker. All too often, the legitimate needs of the impoverished worker are exploited to rationalize the latter’s greed. Yet, even most vulnerable individuals, the landless and jobless, make choices between quick earnings and more sustainable alternatives if they can be created. Not every action can be justified as ‘need’: predatory economic activities must be rigorously self-regulated in the interest of a sustainable future. Nature must be treated as a ‘commons’.
(Agriculture in Sadar Hills)
Furthermore, the argument that extractive industries are unavoidable and integral to modern economic development is self-serving. Sustainable and mindful approaches exist. We need to evolve our understanding of economics from mere consumption to ‘natureconomics’, where nature itself is inherently valued.
Typically, when land is purchased, its market value rarely accounts for its natural assets: the trees, water bodies, the earth, and the intricate web of life within. For instance, if a plot contains a hundred trees, their inherent value, let alone the ‘ecosystem services’ they provide—such as the vital oxygen they generate, and the activities of birds, bees, butterflies, the earth and fungi that catalyze life—are largely ignored. In our current economic paradigm, nature or life often holds no intrinsic monetary value. In fact, a common first act after acquiring land is to clear trees for farming or housing, selling the dead timber for profit, suggesting that dead trees hold more perceived ‘value’ than living ones.
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Can we then think of nature as a living bank instead of inert matter? Our mountains, plains, trees, forests, water bodies, rivers, lakes, ponds, wetlands, underground aquifers, and the entirety of plant and animal life and biodiversity, with every tiny organism thriving in interdependence, constitute our greatest capital. The more we deplete this capital, the poorer we become.
Conversely, the more we nourish it, the greater the ‘returns on investment’ we receive. Consider medicinal plants and foraged mushrooms; neglecting our forests means forfeiting these blessings.
Sadly, our hills are now being increasingly denuded for agriculture and other extractive uses. Floods, mudslides and disasters are waiting to happen as they do with predictable regularity. Irresponsible construction of roads and public infrastructure, and private ostentation, are equally to blame.
The same applies to our rivers. While water is essential for life, we often focus on extracting stones and sand for ‘livelihood’ and construction, overlooking the need for clean water crucial for drinking and agriculture, the fish we could catch, or the healing qualities of nature. Even the stones of a river offer protection against soil erosion and floods. The state of our rivers in many parts of the Northeast as in the rest of the country are alarming. Destroying our rivers is, in essence, an act of self-destruction.
