Problems and Prospects of Environment Policy: Indian Perspective

India is committed to making a tangible contribution to the global efforts to reduce trade-off between the existing pattern of growth and the quality of environment. Our constitution imparts seminal importance to a clean environment. A number of acts has been enacted and policies have been formulated in response to these constitutional mandates. Institutional structures have been put in place. Budgetary allocation has registered a marked increase. Civil society’s involvement in protecting the quality of environment has also grown exponentially over the years. Courts have pronounced some landmark judgements as a result of public interest litigations. Green movements have also become more organized and broad based. All these developments have indeed raised the level of awareness about the gravity of the situation and yielded positive results. Be that as it may, the present state of environmental health in our country is far from satisfactory. The existing legal-cum-policy framework has proved to be exceedingly inadequate and, in many cases, ineffective. Against this background, the National Environmental Policy-2006 (NEP) assumes historical significance. It attempts to highlight the challenges posed by the degradation of the quality of environment at all levels and proposes policy frameworks and guidelines. Regardless of its novel and encouraging features, the NEP has several weaknesses. Despite these, it can still yield dividends, provided effective and appropriate implementation mechanisms are accorded timely and desired attention. Its litmus test lies in its implementation. This obviously calls for informed debates on the various aspect of the NEP. The present book attempts to delineate the agenda for this debate. It is expected to prove a useful addition to the received literature on environment and environment policies an serve as benign guide to the effective implementation of NEP.