Ecological economics has always prided itself on being not a sub-discipline of economics—the adjectival form notwithstanding—but a much broader field of enquiry into our environmental predicament. Prof M.V. Nadkarni, who founded the first academic department of ecological economics in India, has always exemplified this breadth of enquiry. His books have ranged from a study of farmer movements to the political economy of forests and, more recently, Gandhian ethics.