Notes on Patriarchy

Aditi Patil’s new book looks at how India’s gender and caste inequalities have led to an environmental crisis

- Manvi Pant

When political economy analyst Aditi Patil and her friend and fellow ecological researcher Manya Singh set out to do conservation research across North India, they discovered the real reasons behind India’s environment crisis: bureaucratic corruption, gender divides, social exclusion of aboriginal communities and persistent policy intervention gaps. An honest dig at how our country operates at the grassroots level, Aditi’s new book Patriarchy and the Pangolin: A Field Guide to Indian Men and Other Species (Hachette India, `399) aims to hold up a mirror to contemporary India. In between overarching facts and figures, the author presents bittersweet anecdotes carefully knitted with wit and satire.

Aditi, who has worked on diverse conservation projects with WWF India, Columbia University, and the Gujarat Forest Department, tells us about her invigorating journey as a researcher and her foray into mainstream writing.

What made you choose wildlife conservation as a career?

This wasn’t my first job. I finished school when India was going through an IT boom so I studied to become a computer engineer and joined Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Hyderabad. While I enjoyed both the city and the work, I would keep visiting animal rescue centres on weekends. Thankfully, I found flatmates who shared my idiosyncrasies and there were more animals than people for around two years in our shared Jubilee Hills apartment. I gradually realised that this couldn’t go on forever so I quit TCS and enrolled into a post-graduate diploma in management in development studies. It was an interdisciplinary course that allowed me to think in several directions, most importantly, how we define “development” and who gets to define it. Interesting internships during this journey led me to choose wildlife conservation as a career.