Environment & Forest Policy

India’s environmental jurisprudence has been torn between the competing demands of prioritising environmental protection and securing economic progress.  While there are several judgements that speak to the need for balancing development with environmental priorities, it is not necessarily an exercise that can be easily rationalised.  There is overwhelming evidence in the pollution flowing in every river and lake across the country, in the extensive degradation across the Western Ghats and the Himalayas – resulting in catastrophic impacts on human settlements, in the breakdown of our cities every time it rains or when there is an unrelenting heat wave, and in commons that are extensively encroached, diverted and polluted, that the state of India’s environment is precariously hinged.  The damaging consequences of such extensive degradation are irreversible and will seriously impede the country’s socio-economic progress.