Tehelka: As Greenpeace completes 10 years in India, it chalks up its successes and faces some flak. Kunal Majumder looks at both sides of the story.
WHEN GREENPEACE India listed 33 successful campaigns to celebrate its first decade in the country, the Copenhagen meet on climate change held two years ago was missing from that list. That’s because Minister of State for Rural Development Agatha Sangma was refused permission by the Prime Minister’s Office to be present on one of Greenpeace’s six ships, Arctic Sunrise, for an alternative summit. Reason? There is no precedent for Indian ministers to attend events of ‘foreign’ NGOs.
Thus the government struck where it hurt the most. Since its inception in 2001, Greenpeace India has been struggling to get rid of the ‘foreigner’ tag — it prefers the word ‘international’. It doubled efforts to ‘Indianise’ itself — releasing press notes in Hindi, with a Hindi logo. So where does it stand now?
Changing the climate of apathy
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