ABSTRACT
North-east India is called nature’s gift to India. It is mountainous, thickly forested, nourished by abundant rainfall, massive rivers, has a diverse wildlife, inhabited by a number of forest dwellers called tribes who have through the ages cherished an environmentalist ethos. Yet environmental history in north-east India has yet to take off. The region has been experiencing environmental depletion which was a result of colonial policies, exploitation of its ecological and mineral resources, large-scale trans-border immigration and settlement of people, establishment of plantation industry through deforestation, dependence of dairy industry on grazing and so on. Yet people of the region did not realize the dangerous stage the state of its environment has reached. There was no environmental activism, state turned a deaf ear to the little protests that emerged and violating the traditional tribal ethics favouring environment certain individuals and cartels ruthlessly exploited and devastated the environment of the region. It took the Supreme Court verdict to halt the rampant destruction of whatever little was left of the woods and a National Green Tribunal intervention to halt the unscientific mining of coal which had not just polluted the air and water bodies of the Kopili Valley but spelt doom for the entire region.
