ABSTRACT
The primacy of development or environment has been on the minds of India’s policymakers for a long time. The sentiments were eloquently expressed in a question raised by India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi at the UN World Environmental Conference in Stockholm in 1972: “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?” (CSE, 2013). The two-sidedness of this statement is at the roots of all environmental debates, movements, actions and progress in India. The poverty and the needs relate to different kinds of environmental issues. The poor, who depend on the environment for their livelihoods, are the victims of environmental degradation. They have been the prime movers of the environmental policies. The rising nouveau riche, whose needs are delivered though the unregulated markets and their greed finding means for fulfillment through the nexus of market and state actors, have caused impediments to wise use of the environment and natural resources. India’s environment and natural resource policies are evolving through the struggle of these two divergent forces.
