Bhattadev University and the Mahabahu Climate Forum in Manas National Park

Bhattadev University and the Mahabahu Climate Forum’s  in Manas National Park

KAUSTABH BARUAH

There are journeys that conclude the moment a traveler returns home. Then there are journeys that truly begin only after the return. For the students of Bhattadev University who participated in the Climate Justice 101 Internship Programme ( 18th June- 10th July, 2026), the dense forests and sweeping grasslands of Manas National Park may represent the latter.

Initially, the initiative mirrored the standard architecture of an academic internship. It featured structured lectures, theoretical presentations, rigid field schedules, and the promise of certification.

The curriculum covered the essential pillars of modern environmentalism, including global energy transitions, sustainable development paradigms, climate science, and environmental governance.

However, in the transit between the conventional university classrooms and the living ecosystems of Manas, the programme evolved into a much larger experiment in reimagining the fundamental nature of education itself.

As the climate crisis shifts from a distant scientific projection to an immediate, lived reality, academic institutions globally face an urgent imperative. They must determine how to educate young people in an era defined by ecological instability. The traditional pedagogical models are proving insufficient. Climate change cannot be comprehensively understood through isolated textbook chapters. Sustainability cannot be mastered solely through sterile boardroom presentations. Most importantly, the environmental leaders of the next decade cannot be cultivated without direct, sensory engagement with the landscapes and local communities whose futures they will ultimately be tasked to protect.

Climate Justice 101 Internship Programme by Mahabahu Climate Forum Begins at Bhattadev University

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In Assam, a state acutely vulnerable to the cascading effects of global warming, a highly ambitious intervention attempted to bridge this exact gap. Organised by the Mahabahu Climate Forum under the leadership of  Rituraj Phukan, secretary and convenor of the Mahabahu Climate Forum, in strategic collaboration with Bhattadev University under the coordination of Dr Debajyoti Dutta of the University, the Climate Justice 101 Internship Programme mobilized over one hundred students for a rigorous sixty-hour learning module. The structural premise was simple but radical: climate education must transcend passive awareness and transition into experiential learning.

The Context of Crisis and the Role of the University

To understand the necessity of this programme, one must first examine the climate context of Assam.

The region sits at the intersection of complex hydrological and ecological systems that are currently under severe stress. Changing monsoon patterns, the accelerated melting of Himalayan glaciers, rising river temperatures, and the resulting intensification of flood and erosion cycles are aggressively reshaping the geography and economy of the Brahmaputra basin. These are not abstract environmental shifts. They translate directly into loss of livelihoods, mass displacement, and profound threats to both endemic biodiversity and human security.

Within this volatile context, the role of the university is being heavily scrutinized. Higher education institutions can no longer function merely as degree-granting bodies. They are required to serve as incubators for environmental citizenship. The Green Campus vision, a concept increasingly adopted by forward-thinking institutions like Bhattadev University, demands more than the installation of solar panels or waste segregation units. A true Green Campus ethos requires a curriculum that actively dismantles the walls between academic theory and ecological reality.

Team Leader Rituraj Phukan in Manas National Park 

The Climate Justice 101 programme reflected this integrated vision. The early stages of the curriculum focused on building a foundational understanding of energy systems, climate mechanisms, and civic responsibility. Students interacted with climate communicators, academic researchers, and policy administrators who pushed them to scrutinize the systemic drivers of environmental degradation. But the defining pedagogical shift occurred when the syllabus moved outdoors.

Entering the Living Landscape

The two-day field immersion (20th and 21st June, 2026) inside Manas National Park functioned as the vital core of the internship. Situated at the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas and sharing a contiguous ecological boundary with Bhutan, Manas is an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot, a UNESCO World Heritage site, and a Biosphere Reserve. Yet, the objective of bringing students into this territory was not to facilitate a wildlife tourism excursion. The students were brought to Manas to learn the disciplined science of observation.

Divided across the Bansbari and Bhuyanpara ranges, the participants stepped into a radically different learning environment. The infrastructure of the traditional classroom was replaced by alluvial grasslands, tropical semi-evergreen forests, dynamic river systems, and a complex soundscape of bird calls and rustling foliage. This immediate sensory immersion challenged their preconceived assumptions about nature.

Students quickly realized that ecosystems resist simplification and cannot be understood from a distance. The grasslands of Manas, often overlooked by the untrained eye in favor of dense forest canopies, revealed themselves as highly specialized and critically important ecological niches.

Species that previously existed only as data points on a projector screen suddenly materialized as integral components of a living, breathing landscape. The theoretical concepts of habitat management instantly transformed into visible, physical practices.

At Kuribeel and Rupohi, the students analyzed the ecological mechanics of grassland ecosystems. They learned about succession, the necessity of controlled burns, and the delicate balance required to maintain habitats that support mega herbivores and specialized avifauna.

At Pohu Field, the practice of biodiversity observation introduced them to field ecology. They were taught that biological science begins with sustained attention. They learned to observe, record, compare, and question. Through this methodology, the students discovered that ecological comprehension is built slowly, through patience and rigorous data collection. Conservation, they realized, is never a singular, dramatic event. It is the accumulation of thousands of micro-decisions executed consistently over decades.

The Human Infrastructure of Conservation

The secondary, and perhaps more profound, stream of learning emerged from the human element of the landscape. The journey through Manas illuminated a critical reality frequently omitted from global climate discourse: landscapes do not survive by accident. They survive because specific people make the daily choice to protect them. Behind every mapped route, every ecological interpretation, and every habitat intervention stood individuals whose professional and personal commitments sustain one of India’s most vital conservation zones.

The willingness of the forest administration to integrate these students into their operational environment elevated the field visit from a simple exposure trip to an advanced masterclass in environmental governance. This intricate balance of habitat management became visible through the institutional commitment anchored by leaders like Dr. C. Ramesh, former Field Director of Manas Tiger Reserve, and Deputy Director T. Sheshidhar Reddy. Their facilitation reflected a progressive understanding that long-term conservation objectives rely heavily on opening protected landscapes to educational scrutiny.

Inside the dense networks of the Bhuyanpara and Bansbari ranges, the students were guided by the localized expertise of range leaders Mrinal Daimary and Pranjal Talukdar; and invaluable help by the forest official Gautam Das. Alongside them, the meticulous ecological interpretation provided by official  Khanjan Nath tand his team ransformed the raw wilderness into an open-air laboratory. These practitioners explained the granular, daily decisions required to maintain the ecosystem, allowing students to grasp not merely what they were looking at, but exactly why it mattered to the broader climate resilience of the region.

Some of the most critical lessons materialized through quiet conversations on the trail or moments spent standing silently in the tall grass, listening to the subtle indicators of the ecosystem. The students learned that protecting a forest requires an intimate, localized literacy that no textbook can fully impart.

Indigenous Knowledge and Community Integration

The educational framework expanded further as the students engaged with individuals whose dedication to the landscape operates outside standard institutional mandates. Wildlife conservationist Tomal Gogoi provided the students with a stark look at the extreme patience demanded by species-specific conservation. His work focusing on Bengal Florican habitat restoration proved that species survival is inextricably linked to sustained human dedication and specialized knowledge.

Similarly, the students encountered a deeply rooted conservation ethic through Rangjalu Basumatary, an Indigenous conservationist, naturalist, and documentary filmmaker. His localized methodologies across Bhuyanpara and Kokilabari illustrated that effective ecological stewardship is not always characterized by dramatic interventions. Often, it takes the form of generational observation, quiet persistence, community trust-building, and daily care for the land. His presence demonstrated that traditional ecological knowledge and Indigenous practices are central, not peripheral, to modern climate resilience strategies.

These grassroots approaches are supported by a broader institutional vision that champions youth engagement in environmental governance. The encouragement provided by T. C. Ranjith, Divisional Forest Officer of North Kamrup Forest Division, highlighted how contemporary environmental leadership is actively prioritizing the integration of the next generation into conservation frameworks.

Finally, the critical role of community participation was crystallized through the work of grassroots environmentalist Mahendra Basumatary and the Manas Maozigendri Ecotourism Society.

Through their model, the students learned a definitive truth about modern conservation: a forest protected entirely by fences and policies is vulnerable, but a forest protected by an empowered, economically secure local community is resilient. They saw firsthand that conservation succeeds most durably when local populations are transitioned from potential adversaries or passive spectators into active, vested participants.

The Framework of Climate Justice

These intensive interactions with forest officials, conservationists, and community leaders provided the necessary context for the core theme of the internship: climate justice.

Climate change is fundamentally characterized by inequity. The physical and economic burdens of a warming planet are not distributed evenly. Historically, the communities contributing the least to anthropogenic environmental damage are the ones forced to carry the heaviest consequences. In Assam, this translates to marginalized communities facing the brunt of catastrophic floods, extreme heat, the depletion of local biodiversity, and the collapse of traditional agricultural livelihoods.

Climate justice operates as a framework that demands society recognize these deep inequalities and respond with strategies grounded in fairness, local participation, and systemic accountability. Inside Manas, the students witnessed this concept in active operation. They saw that the preservation of ecosystems is not distinct from the preservation of human rights and community futures. Protecting the watershed of Manas is directly tied to the agricultural security of the villages downstream. Maintaining the biodiversity of the park is linked to the cultural and economic survival of the Indigenous populations living on its fringes.

The students learned that true climate justice does not mean simply lowering carbon emissions in urban centers. It means ensuring that conservation models respect local knowledge, secure community livelihoods, and build resilience at the grassroots level.

A New Paradigm for Environmental Citizenship

This is precisely where the deepest significance of the Climate Justice 101 Internship Programme resides. The objective of the Mahabahu Climate Forum and Bhattadev University was never to manufacture fully formed climate experts within a sixty-hour timeframe. That would be an impossible metric. Instead, the programme targeted a much more vital outcome: the cultivation of an active, informed climate citizenship.

The initiative aimed to develop young individuals who prioritize observation over assumption. It sought to mold students who ask difficult, structural questions rather than accepting superficial answers.

It designed an environment that trains youth to analyze complex socio-ecological systems, to respect scientific evidence, to value the insights of local communities, and to firmly reject the notion that environmental action is solely the responsibility of government agencies or international NGOs.

Educational experiments like this serve as a powerful reminder that academic institutions still possess the capacity to shape the future, provided they are willing to step outside their conventional pedagogical boundaries. The forests of Manas National Park did not hand the students a neat list of solutions to the global climate crisis. Instead, the landscape offered them something far more potent: perspective. And a shift in perspective inevitably leads to a shift in action.

Years from now, the participants of this cohort may not recall the specific details of every assignment they drafted or the exact data points of every presentation they attended. However, they will retain the memory of standing deep within the Bansbari grasslands, absorbing the realization that climate justice is not merely an academic chapter in a university syllabus. It is a comprehensive lens through which to view the world and evaluate human action.

That shift in worldview is the true certification they carry forward from the programme. It is not a piece of paper, but an enduring responsibility. The reality of the climate crisis dictates that a stable, equitable future will not simply be inherited by the next generation. It must be learned, imagined, aggressively protected, and meticulously built. And in the shifting landscapes of Assam, that vital work has already begun, one student at a time.

22nd June, 2026

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