Pradip Krishen is an environmentalist, naturalist, filmmaker, and author. He is the director of films Massey Sahib, In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon, which have won him national and international accolades. He’s also the author of Trees of Delhi and Jungle Trees of Central India.

Pradip sits on a committee constituted by the Supreme Court to formulate guidelines for cutting trees for development projects.

In this conversation with independent journalist Alpana Kishore, he talks about his role as a petitioner against the Central Vista project and then as an advisor to it. “If I can make a real difference in making sure they make a sensible plan for the bit they have invited me in for, I think it’s worth doing,” he explains the move. “It doesn’t change my opposition to the whole plan. I continue to be completely against it.”

Pradip and Alpana also discuss the Central Vista project’s ecological planning and its ramifications from an ecological and heritage point of view. In this context, Pradip points out that replanting uprooted trees at another place is compensatory afforestation. It’s “absolute rubbish,” he adds, “it's rubbish here, it’s rubbish everywhere.”

Watch.

Text by Utkarsh Tripathi.