Climate refugees are victims of environmental disruptions: Sanjay Chaturvedi

CHANDIGARH: Constitutional citizenship is built around the territory, but ecological citizenship encourages transcending territory, said Prof Sanjay Chaturvedi while delivering the keynote address at the Chandigarh Social Science Congress (CHASSCONG) here on Thursday. He delivered the keynote address on 'denizens of anthropocene: climate refugees' where he elaborate on the various theoretical perspectives associated with citizens in the state-centric and realistic dialogues. He described the 'climate refugees' as the forced migrants and as victims of environmental disruptions and state-centered cartography.
Moreover, Chaturvedi recommended collective behavioural changes in human beings for a sustainable future. CHASSCONG-2018, which is based on the theme of "discourse of citizenship on contemporary India" started at Panjab University on Thursday.

Earlier, Professor Akshaya Kumar, co-coordinator, CHASSCONG-2018 while introducing the congress, stressed on the nature of a responsible citizen, someone who is ready to ask questions and challenge the status quo. He referred to the possibility of constituting an autonomous republic of the self, a re-alliance between the self and the alienated 'other'.

PU vice-chancellor Prof Arun Kumar Grover, in his address, emphasised on building links between academia, alumni and collaring them together to form a productive union of minds. He also exhorted the scholars to focus on research and findings that can become effective inputs for the policy makers.

The first plenary session turned into a dialogic presentation by Prof Leon Morenas (School of Planning and Architecture re and also a fellow as IIAS, Shimla) and Ankur Sarin (IIM, Ahemdabad) who opened up the discussion on big data as a valuable resource and responsibility of academia, respectively.

Prof Morenas talked about how corporation capitalized on the collected data of the consumer-citizens in the Indian context. The political and judicial decisions are seen at cross-purpose with a larger capital driven market economy where people have become the 'new commodity'.

Teasing out the complexities of implementation of biometric and Aadhaar, he included discussions on what was the role of institutions in empowering citizens. Prof Sarin gave a clarion call to the academics to become interventionist in discourses of citizenship. He emphasized how the curriculum was distancing people from social realities and in this fracture, scholars could not become passive bystanders. He concluded that in everyday life, academics need to reconcile this fracture and ought to give up perpetuating such structures which are not sustainable for a collective co-existence.