It is often too late by the time the government reacts.

We have managed to make the celebration of diversity our mode of resistance.

It is often too late by the time the government reacts.

I have a deep connection with Mahatma Gandhi, partly because my mother was a very, very staunch Gandhian and brought us up that way. When I was six years old, and all the girls were getting nylon dresses, I was very keen to get a nylon frock for my birthday. My mother said, “I can get it for you, but would you rather—through how you live and what you wear and what you eat—ensure that food goes into the hands of the weaver or ensure that profits go into the bank of an industrialist?” That became such a checkstone for everything in life.

My father had been a forester and I had grown up on those hills. I had seen forests and streams disappear. I jumped into Chipko movement and started to work with the peasant women. I learned from them about what forests mean for a rural woman in India in terms of firewood and fodder and medicinal plants and rich knowledge.

Genetic engineering has never been about saving the world, it's about controlling the world.

The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself.