Student Spotlight - Sachaet Pandey-Geeta Mantraraj

1. What drew you to the work you do on the environmental history in India? 

I was drawn, if not thrown into the work that I do on environmental history by the texture of the times in which we live, and by the experience of an education that, I felt, had prepared me but inadequately for life in these times. I took History, Political Science, and Archaeology for my BA in Mumbai, and, in retrospect, probably internalized a set of arguments about the importance of the historical mode of inquiry. Growing up and studying in a city that was beleaguered by seasonal floods preceded by water shortages, but one that also enjoyed perhaps the best energy security in India, I turned to history in an attempt to understand, and to help others understand the predicament of my home and of the world that it is a part of. 

2. How has your research shaped your understanding of the current environmental crisis?

Just as my understanding of the current environmental crisis has shaped my research! Which is to say, fundamentally. I began to read environmental history during a phase of its development that was marked by a growing consensus that, in addition to climate change, a wide range of anthropogenic environmental changes needed to become matters of concern. My research investigates some changes like these, most spectacularly, an earthquake in 1967 occasioned by the Koyna hydroelectric dam in Western India, which was the largest reservoir-triggered earthquake of all time, and whose occurrence also proved decisive for geologists attempting to establish the validity of this phenomenon. I try to problematize some of the ideas and processes that are crystallized in the history of this dam, and by doing so, I hope to broaden and deepen our understanding of the concepts and histories that are implicated in the current crisis. By looking at the histories of a range of such changes, numerous forms of thinking, institutions, and practices that are imbricated with the former come into view, enabling people to think critically about the kinds of relationships that they may want to have with them. 

3. What questions did you begin with as you were starting your dissertation research and where has the process taken you? What changes have you made and why? 

When I was starting off, I was just interested in trying to figure out what was going on in and around my home city. In my first year seminar paper, I wrote about the dams in the mountains surrounding Mumbai that supplied it not with water, but with electricity. I tried to explain how this hydroelectricity had replaced coal for a significant amount of time in the early 20th century, and speculated about the reasons for hydroelectricity’s own decline in the city’s energy budget. The paper was well-received, and the subject matter provoked several questions for me, so I continued to try to figure out what exactly was going on. During this phase, I was animated mostly by “what” or “how” questions, and while the more interpretive “why” question was on my mind, I occupied myself largely with creating a representative picture of relevant occurrences for my own understanding. Over time, as I dug up archival material that helped me develop this representation, I began to think more about “why” these histories had taken place, and have diverted a lot of attention towards developing an explanatory framework into which I can place my representation of the past. Commentators on my written work would initially push me to think more about this “why” set of questions, but because I was grappling with primarily unresearched historical sediment, I was hesitant to offer any strong interpretations. Now that I have sifted through a lot of this sediment, I feel more confident to explain why it exists, and to say something about the significance of its existence. 

4. You’ve earned several travel grants to conduct research. To where have you traveled and what kind of research have you undertaken? What is one particularly interesting/compelling/surprising finding? 

I’ve spent most of my time in archives located in Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, and London, where I looked at a wide range of records. The hydroelectric grid that developed in Western India over the course of the 20th century has had an interesting ownership and management structure, which has meant that it has left different archival traces in  different places. It was composed of dams and electrical equipment owned and managed by one of India’s largest corporations, the Tatas, until 1956, when the emerging state of Maharashtra in Western India integrated the system into a larger regional grid and added its largest (and sole earthquake-causing) dam. Capital, expertise, and support from across the world was drawn into the region during this period. They initially cozied up to the British Government of India for support especially with land acquisition and building expertise, but by the late 1920s the Tatas were a family-run company with aging, childless patriarchs. In 1929, they sold a 50% stake in their company to a subsidiary of the American General Electric company, causing the UK Board of Trade and sections of the Indian investing public much concern, as what was an imperial enterprise and simultaneously an indigenous Indian one passed into the hands of a foreign power, but how could GE resist what was described at the time as the safest investment in the world! 

5. You recently published an article with Elizabeth Chatterjee on the 1967 Koyna earthquake. Can you describe the earthquake, its intersection with the Anthropocene, and your findings? 

The Koyna Earthquake of 1967 was an incredible event. In fact, for some time after the quake, its mechanisms quite literally strained credibility. Until this earthquake, geologists across the world had been unable to reach a consensus about the potential for earthquakes to be triggered by reservoirs. Such events had only been observed in landscapes that were already considered to be seismically active, for example, around the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, but since geologists weren’t able to agree about whether dams were merely parts of these unstable regions or if they were contributing to this instability themselves, most debates proved inconclusive. The Koyna event, which occurred in a region assumed to be seismically stable, roused several geologists from their dogmatic slumber, and occasioned something like a paradigm shift in earthquake science as a proof of the phenomenon of reservoir-triggered seismicity. The earthquake itself was the largest to have ever been triggered by a reservoir, and left hundreds of humans and animals dead in its wake, destroying several buildings in the region, and sending shockwaves across the planet. Apart from the emergence of some small cracks, the dam authorities were proud to report that the megastructure itself was largely unscathed, which is perhaps an interesting prompt to think about the dynamics of the Anthropocene. The dam causes small micro-quakes all the time, even today, but since the dam and the grid are so important to the region, signaled by the conferral of the title “Maharashtra’s Lifeline/Fateline” to the Koyna Dam, attention is focused on problems like reducing the intensity of these quakes and making them harmless, as opposed to the more radical solution of removing the dam. The dam has also turned into a privileged site for scientific research into the mechanisms of reservoir-triggered seismicity, and for seismicity more generally, owing to the shallowness and repetitive nature of this activity here, and so in a peculiar way, it has ended up furthering our knowledge of the planet in which we live. Finally, I also think that the mechanisms through which earthquakes are triggered, as revealed by the Koyna dam, can be read as interesting metaphors for the human predicament in the Anthropocene. Geologists studying this relationship have argued that although reservoirs can trigger earthquakes, they cannot cause them in the complete absence of some stress in the underlying rock-formations. This means that there is no simple, one to one relationship between large manmade reservoirs and earthquakes, and explains why some of the largest dams in the world do not occasion seismic activity. This relationship leaves us with a poignant representation of human potency, showing us that we can neither cause earthquakes de novo, in the process disclosing a longer-duree history of the shifting Earth, but also reminding us that we would gravely mistaken if we assumed that our actions and technologies were insignificant to this planetary history. 

6. Finally, to change the focus a bit, what non-research related activities do you enjoy in your downtime? 

Like many Chicago residents, my downtime activities are linked with the weather. I like wandering around the Urbs in Horto’s many gardens and lakefront trails when I can as much as I like doing the same in the city’s excellent art museums when the mercury drops. Throughout the year, I enjoy having rambling conversations with my friends that perpetually blur the lines between sense and nonsense, and I like to run and lift weights. I love spending time with animals, but I unfortunately haven’t befriended as many as I’d like in Chicago. I used to love going to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when the brilliant Riccardo Muti was conducting, and I can’t wait to witness the start of the new music director’s tenure this autumn!