In a world obsessed with speed, skyscrapers and steel, Sunita Narain chose the mud, the scent of rain on parched Earth, the cry of a dying river and the whisper of a forest gasping for breath. She chose the unglamorous fight: one not televised, not celebrated with medals or hashtags but fought in courtrooms, villages, laboratories and her heart. Where others saw ‘policy’, she saw people. where others read ‘pollution’, she heard a child coughing in a Delhi slum or a farmer’s well running dry. Her journey was never just about the environment; it was about survival. And for her, survival wasn’t statistic, it was personal.
Born in 1961 in New Delhi, India, Sunita Narain was the eldest of four sisters. Her father, Raj Narain, a freedom fighter, passed away when she was just eight, leaving her mother, Usha Narain, to raise the children and manage a handicrafts business. The income from the business provided the family with a comfortable lifestyle. In 1979, Sunita joined the student anti-logging activist group Kalpavriksh, which gave her a new direction in life. She realized that “the crux weren’t the trees, but the rights of people over those trees”. She completed her graduation by correspondence from the University of Delhi between 1980 and 1983.
Sunita began working with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in 1982, collaborating with founder Anil Agarwal. She became the Deputy Director in 1993 and was appointed Director in 2000. Under her leadership, CSE exposed the high levels of pesticides present in American brands of soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi. In 2012, she authored the 7th State of India’s Environment Report, “Excreta Matters”, an analysis of urban India’s water supply and pollution.
Her leadership at the Centre for Science and Environment turned it into more than an institution, it became a conscience. From challenging Coca-Cola’s water exploitation in rural India to exposing pesticide residues in soft drinks, she dared to look billion-dollar giants in the eye and blinked not once. She was not trying to be a hero, she simply refused to be a bystander. The most stirring chapters of her life were written in silence, in nights spent pouring over reports, in bruising meetings with bureaucrats, in the quiet grief of watching environmental degradation eat into India’s soul; and yet, she persisted with grace, with grit and with a belief that if one woman could stand still like a mountain, perhaps the storm would pass.
Sunita Narain is not a tale of triumph, but of tenacity; not of glory, but of grounding. She is the still flame in a world swept by consumerist winds. Her story is not just about saving trees or water; it is about saving dignity, about standing up for a world where children can still swim in a river without swallowing poison. Her vision was never confined to clean air or green cities. It was, and remains, a deeper, more urgent hope the development and nature can co-exist without bloodshed and that justice is not just a courtroom word, but something that flows with every drop of clean water and breathes with every gust of unpolluted air.
Sunita Narain did not seek to be remembered. She sought to be heard, and in every breath of clean air we steal today, her silence roars.