My acquaintance with Professor Madhav Gadgil dates back to 2006. Before that I had, of course, heard of his name, his pioneering work and his contributions to the study of sacred groves.
He was already a legend in Indian ecology and I was star-struck when I first met him during my work for the Maharashtra Gene Bank project, initiated by the Rajiv Gandhi Science and Technology Commission of the Government of Maharashtra. I was working as a research scientist with the Agharkar Research Institute after my PhD.
Until then, my academic training had confined me within the well-defined boundaries of plant taxonomy. My earlier research had been satisfying, but this new appointment opened a window to a much wider ecological and social landscape.
Over the next three years, I had the privilege of travelling across Maharashtra with Professor Gadgil — exploring forests, interacting with local communities and understanding their deep ecological knowledge. I met countless people — fisherfolk, forest dwellers, tribal communities, social activists, teachers, volunteers and NGO workers — each working closely with nature. Many of these encounters grew into lifelong bonds.
During these journeys, which connected us to almost every district of Maharashtra, I would constantly ask him questions, and he, with great generosity, quenched my curiosity. It was through him that I discovered and read authors like JBS Haldane, Edward O Wilson and Jared Diamond, Matt Ridley and developed a fascination for evolutionary biology — a field that had remained largely hidden from us in formal curricula.
After the Maharashtra Gene Bank project concluded, I joined as a scientist at the Agharkar Research Institute, but my association with Gadgil continued. Together, we wrote a research paper on Goa’s mining landscapes. Through that work, I was introduced to his remarkable grasp of mathematics — we applied the species–area relationship to estimate species richness in different areas. I was fascinated by the mathematical depth behind the paper, which was later published in Current Science.
We also co-authored an article interpreting the natural and geographical imagery in the fourth canto of Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa.
My learning curve continued to rise as we often visited Vetal Hill, a forested patch in Pune city, where we would talk for hours about life, ecology and research. I would ask him endless questions — why he chose a particular research problem, how he designed his methods and how he interpreted his results. He would often tell me how to look at an issue — not merely as a scientist observing from a distance, but as someone trying to understand the social and ecological currents shaping it.
He patiently explained the background of every idea, the reasoning behind each initiative and how he had gone about implementing it. Through these conversations, I came to realise the magnitude of his contribution in placing people’s participation at the very heart of India’s environmental policy.
He played a pivotal role in shaping the Biological Diversity Act of 2002, under which he introduced the transformative concept of the People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR). This idea empowered citizens to officially record the biological wealth and traditional knowledge of their surroundings, granting communities legal rights over the use and benefit-sharing of their resources.
He also provided both technical and intellectual support for the effective implementation of the Forest Rights Act, advocating for the recognition of land and resource rights of tribal and traditional forest dwellers. I had the good fortune of visiting Medha-Lekha village with him — the place that became the foundation for the forest rights movement.
He would often emphasise that true conservation cannot be achieved through government restrictions alone — it must come through the empowerment of Gram Sabhas and the decentralisation of resource management.
Equally important to him was the question of social equity. While most environmentalists focused solely on the protection of nature, Gadgil was deeply concerned about the rights of marginalised communities and the fair distribution of natural resources. Together with historian Ramachandra Guha, he co-authored two landmark books — This Fissured Land and Ecology and Equity. These works not only trace India’s environmental history but also offer profound reflections on how development can proceed without compromising ecological balance or social justice. I was a great admirer of these books and am proud to possess a copy signed by both Gadgil and Guha.
I also had the privilege of interviewing him several times for All India Radio and other media platforms. But perhaps the most meaningful opportunity of all was serving as editor for his Marathi autobiography Sahyachala ani mi: Ek Premkahani. This book is not merely his life story — it is, in many ways, a chronicle of India’s environmental journey over the past seven to eight decades. While working on it, I gained a deeper understanding of many environmental ideas and concepts, which he patiently explained to me in detail.
During the monsoon of 2013, we visited the lateritic plateaus of Kas and Mhasai. I was engrossed in identifying species and noting their characters, while he urged me to look beyond names — to ask why certain plants thrived there and how they adapted to such harsh, nutrient-poor habitats. As we walked across the rocky plateau dotted with ephemeral herbs, he mentioned his classic 1972 paper with Otto Solbrig in The American Naturalist on r- and K-selection in wildflowers.
It explained how some species follow a “live fast, reproduce fast” strategy (r-selected), thriving in disturbed habitats, while others invest in stability and survival (K-selected). That conversation transformed how I began to see those tiny plateau plants — not as isolated species in a herbarium sheet, but as dynamic participants in the grand play of adaptation and survival.
Professor Gadgil had an extraordinary fondness for bamboos. Inspired by Dr Tetali, we named a hitherto undescribed bamboo species Pseudoxytenanthera madhavii in his honour. (There are now more than a dozen plant and animal species named after him.)
He was also deeply fond of poetry and Marathi literature. Many of the Marathi terms he coined while writing about biology have become invaluable to those of us who strive to communicate science in the Marathi language. My numerous discussions with him about literature enriched me immensely. He even gifted me several books from his personal collection, signed by eminent biologists such as EO Wilson, Diamond, and John Maynard Smith — treasures I shall always cherish.
With the passing of Professor Madhav Gadgil, an era in Indian environmental thought has come to an end. His life was the very opposite of the stereotypical lab scientist — he lived among local communities, tribal groups and villagers, understanding their perspectives and struggles. Through this lifelong engagement, he articulated a model of nature-based, people-centered science that remains profoundly relevant today, especially in the face of the ongoing ecological crisis.
His passing is a deep personal loss for me. The regret is not merely that he is no more — it is that there is no one in close sight who can truly take his place.
Mandar Datar is a scientist at the Agharkar Research Institute in Pune, specialising in plant taxonomy and the biodiversity of the Western Ghats. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.