Farewell Shyam!

Shyam Chainani passed away. He had cancer. The prayer meeting for him will be at Jaihind college on December 28th 2010 from 5:30 to 6:30pm.

To me he was a bold, upright, some times difficult, well informed and highly motivated man. I always enjoyed meeting him and discussing the Alumni Association or public interest issues. I will miss having him with us as he was a very different kind of person.

His friend Gautam Patel, an advocate who has appeared in numerous public interest litigations for Shyam, has payed a tribute. Both Shyam and Gautam are ex-Cathedralites.So am I.

TRANSITION

Farewell to the unflinching earth warrior

Gautam Patel

    Thirty years ago, long before they became fashionable, Shyam Chainani saw the importance of environmental concerns and the catastrophic effects of favouring unchecked development. There could, he reasoned, be no lasting development without environmental balances; and to be effective, environmental policy had to change.
    Other environmentalists were possibly more glamorous. They did field work. They caught the public eye. Chainani came at it from an angle. Protests and marches are, he argued, short-lived; it is impossible to constantly fuel the kind of energy such a movement needs.
    A more effective mechanism is to influence and alter the law by reason, persuasion and negotiation. When that failed, he went to court.
    Reason and the law were natural allies to his cause. He was the son of Justice H K
Chainani, the Bombay high court’s second Chief Justice after Independence.
    An engineer by training, with degrees from Cambridge and MIT, Chainani gave up a career and spent the rest of his life working for the environment.
    It was, from the beginning, lonely, unforgiving, thankless work. But he had a wide and constantly growing set of supporters, people who recognized something rare: unflinching fidelity to his cause, complete and total integrity and a rational, intelligent mind.
    For many years, he worked out of a small room at one of the Tata group’s buildings—they supported him quietly till he reached the mandatory retirement age. Later, they continued to support his trust, the Bombay Environmental Action Group.
    Many environmental activists (he hated the word applied to himself) pursue one particular objective. Chainani had a far broader vision, and the range of his engagements is astonishing: urban planning and development, hill stations, heritage conservation (on which much of his later work focused), coastal protection, eco-sensitive areas, forests, wildlife, air and noise pollution, power projects and industry, impact assessments and a precursor to the RTI—there are few who can claim to have done so much, so often and for so long for the environment. Running through it all was an unshakeable belief in law and justice.
    In the corridors of bureaucratic power, he had virtually unlimited access. He never kowtowed, but made it a point to treat civil servants with respect and dignity.
    In court, he was the best kind of litigant—carrying the courage of his convictions, never once questioning the integrity of the judicial system, accepting his wins and losses with equal grace. In thirty years of work, every attempt to question his personal integrity failed. Through it all, he kept detailed and copious notes and records, and those are his legacy. With his selflessness and dedication, perseverance and rationality, Chainani changed the face of environmental law in India. 

 Obituary.