Bittu Sehgal was born in 1947 in Simla and grew up in Calcutta where he graduated. In 1970 he moved to Bombay to make a career as an advertising executive. Very soo he set out on his own, starting with a small screen printing business. A natural affinity for nature, born of frequent treks and camping trips to the Indian wilderness for over a decade, saw him start Sanctuary and Cub magazines in the early 1980’s.

In pursuit of hos objectives to communicate the rationale for conservation to as wide an audience as possible, he has also used the medium of film, having produced over 30 conservation-oriented documentaries which have been aired over Doordarshan. A journalist writer, he has been closely with several national campaigns including the Narmada Bachao Andolan. At the heart of Sahgal’s purpose lies the belief that the conservation of wildlife and wild habitat is the only realistic, long term option for the Indian people if they are to improve the quality of their hardpressed lives.

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He was a resident editor at The Indian Express and The Times of India. He was the chairperson of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India and was the founder-president of the International Federation of Environmental Journalists in Dresden, Germany, in 1993.

In 1985, D’Monte wrote Temples or Tombs: Industry versus Environment, a pioneering book that showed how rapid economic development was taking a toll on the environment. In 2002, he wrote Ripping the Fabric: The Decline of Mumbai and its Mills, which looked at how liberalisation had hurt the city’s cotton textile workers and considered how the land on which shuttered factories had stood could be reused to benefit the commercial capital.

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 Mahesh N. Buch was an Indian civil servant and urban planner, considered by many as the architect of modern Bhopal. The Government of India honored him, in 2011, with Padma Bhushan the third highest civilian award, for his services to the nation. Buch has been believed to be a straight-talking, no nonsense bureaucrat. He was credited with the initial efforts in the modernization of Bhopal. The organization he founded, the National Centre for Human Settlements and Environment, focuses on the sustainable development of settlements in a holistic manner.

This annual lecture focused on the book “Environment Consciousness and Urban Planning” by MN Buch. This book and its significance was highlighted to Parisar by Mr. Vasant Rao who translated the book in Marathi for he wanted its lessons to have a wider reach and audience.

The annual lecture recognized at that time, when the cities were still growing that it was in the massive expansion of urban centres that the greatest danger to the environment lies. It attempts to understand the environmental impact on urbanization by understanding the relationship between land and man. It puts forth the lacuna that exists in the data when it comes to utilization of rural land. While the land categorised as forests, pastures, culturable wasteland and unculturable wasteland was available, there was no data for the land diverted for urban or non-village use like mining, large irrigation projects, industrial use, etc.

“Whilst land under rural use is under cyclical utilisation, that diverted to non-rural use is permanently changed in character, either by scarification through mining, submergence by dams or through diversion to a built environment. It is next to impossible to restore such land to its original use, which means that diverted land is lost forever for such purposes as afforestation, agriculture, etc."

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After over two decades of work in Electrochemistry, Prof. Reddy felt that most of the work in advanced institutions of education, science and technology was largely irrelevant to the vast majority of the Indian Poor living in villages, and turned his attention to the application of science and technology in the interests of the poor. He has made pioneering contribution to the field of Global Energy problems of developing countries, village ecosystems, science policy for developing countries and alternative technologies.

He focuses on development and talks about energy as a powerful instrument of development. He questions the paradigm in which energy consumption is a necessary condition for economic growth; where energy becomes an end in itself.

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