Subject(s): Human ecology -- Social ecology -- Environmental degradation in India. -- Ecology in India -- Theory of ecological history - Habitats in human history : Modes of production and modes of resource use, four historical modes, gathering, pastoralism, settle cultivation, industrial model conflict between and within modes, intra modal conflict, recapitulation -- Towards a cultural ecology of pre- modern India : Forest and fire, geological history, prudent predators, neolethic revolution, river valley civilization, social organization, age of empire, conservation, caste and conservation, resource crunch, conservation from below, eclectic belief system, village and state -- Ecological change and social conflict in modern India : Conquest and control- colonialism as ecological watershed, early onslaught on forest, early environment debate, forest policy upto 1947, balance sheet of colonial forestry, fight for forest- extinction, shift cultivation, settled cultivators and state, case of jaunsar Bawar, decline of artisanal industry, social idiom of protest, mechanisms of protest -- Biomass for business : Gandhi and modernizers, forest and industrialization, balance sheet of industrial forestry, sequential exploitation- process whereby a whole flock of geese laying golden eggs in massacred, profligacy of scientific forestry -- Competing claims on commons : Hunters- gatherers, changing ecology of settles agriculture, calming a share of profit, wild life conservation- animal v/s humans, cultures in conflict