This book lays out the different and complex dimensions of urbanisation in India. It brings together contributors with expertise in fields as varied as demography, geography, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, architecture, planning and land use, environmental sciences, creative writing, filmmaking and grassroots activism to reflect on and examine India’s urban experience. It discusses various dimensions of city life—how to define the urban; the conditions generating work, living and (in)security; the nature of contemporary cities; the dilemmas of creating and executing urban policy, planning and governance; and the issues concerning ecology and environment. The volume also articulates and evaluates the way Indian urbanism promotes and organises aspirations and utopias of the people, whilst simultaneously endorsing disparities, depravities and conflicts.
The volume includes interventions that shape contemporary debates. Comprehensive, accessible and topical, it will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban sociology, development studies, public policy, economics, political studies, gender studies, city studies, planning and governance. It will also interest practitioners, think tanks and NGOs working on urban issues.
This book lays out the different and complex dimensions of urbanisation in India. It brings together contributors with expertise in fields as varied as demography, geography, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, architecture, planning and land use, environmental sciences, creative writing, filmmaking and grassroots activism to reflect on and examine India’s urban experience. It discusses various dimensions of city life—how to define the urban; the conditions generating work, living and (in)security; the nature of contemporary cities; the dilemmas of creating and executing urban policy, planning and governance; and the issues concerning ecology and environment. The volume also articulates and evaluates the way Indian urbanism promotes and organises aspirations and utopias of the people, whilst simultaneously endorsing disparities, depravities and conflicts.
The volume includes interventions that shape contemporary debates. Comprehensive, accessible and topical, it will be useful to scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban sociology, development studies, public policy, economics, political studies, gender studies, city studies, planning and governance. It will also interest practitioners, think tanks and NGOs working on urban issues.
In discussions about cities of the future, or perhaps, the future of cities, it is worth noting that one of the largest shifts to urban centers in world history is projected to occur in India in the next few decades. It is estimated that the middle class in Indian cities will more than triple from 31 million in 2013 to 114 million in 2025. Demographically, India is expected to add at least 10 million people to the job market each year for the next two decades. And Indian cities are estimated to be responsible for 75 percent of the country’s GDP in the next 15 years, with plans for a hundred new smart cities in the pipeline. Transitions of such scale place unprecedented pressures on energy resources: there is little doubt that the urban context promises to be a central determinant of the future of Indian energy, and by extension, of the future of India’s development. Unravelling this future, however, is not straightforward. India is starting from a low base of development and faces enormous unmet energy needs, poor energy access, and increasing pressure from interrelated environmental concerns. How then, can it urbanize in a manner where energy needs are met, the local and global environment is preserved, and the economy and energy security are not put at risk?
Environmental health across indicators in India is rapidly declining, and the state’s failure to regulate sources of, and causes for, environmental degradation has never been more apparent. The reasons for this failure are numerous and complex: conflicting interests in limited resources; inadequate regulatory capacity to design and enforce the law effectively; lack of interagency coordination; and environmental issues not being politically salient enough to trump competing policy interests and priorities. As the country grapples with an increasing array of environmental problems, it is an important moment in time to reflect on the nature and quality of the environmental regulation that is in place.
This chapter analyses the design, implementation, and enforcement of two environmental laws passed by the Parliament – the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 – with a view to understanding the factors that contribute to the failure of pollution regulation in India. Section I analyses the regulatory landscape of pollution control in India, and examines the role of the main statutory environmental regulators, the Pollution Control Boards, in implementing and enforcing the Water Act and the Air Act. Section II explores the administrative and judicial tools available for the enforcement of pollution regulation. Section III outlines critical issues affecting the efficacy of pollution regulation in India. Finally the chapter proposes the way forward through incremental changes in the regulatory landscape which could lead to significant gains.
As election polls in India are often marred in controversy, this chapter discusses the typology of election-related surveys, reviews the status of opinion polls from a historical perspective, and addresses some of the criticisms leveled against election surveys. It discusses the strengths and limitations of opinion polls – when and why do they go wrong? In the popular imagination, the only utility of opinion polls is to be able to make exact seat forecast and thus there are several misconceptions. The chapter deals with the following six questions in detail. First, do polls really influence voting preferences, especially when they sometimes make conflicting predictions? Second, why do polls err in making an accurate estimation of election results? Third, how fair is it to expect on-dot polling predictions? Fourth, can we devise an academically explainable formula for converting vote share into seats? Fifth, how do we educate voters and political parties to meaningfully interpret survey findings. Sixth, what positive things do they offer despite their failures to predict the outcome?
The chapter argues that elections are merely a window and opinion polls are one of the many tools used to peer through that window to study the political and social fabric of our society with the ultimate goal of understanding its democratic health.
This chapter is an abridged version of the August 2016 issue of Seminar Magazine, which can be read here.
About the Chapter
Rajamani explores the conceptual underpinnings of the precautionary principle, tracing its definition, interpretation and legal status in international law, before turning to Indian law. She argues that the application of the principle in the Vellore judgement is at odds with the Supreme Court’s own definition of the principle. The chapter discusses this lack of clarity in the Court’s engagement with the principle, and the blurring of lines between two distinct legal principles – precaution and prevention. Rajamani concludes that the invocation of the indigenous version of the precautionary principle may be instrumentally useful in arriving at environmentally favourable judicial outcomes, but it does not bode well for the development of a clear line of jurisprudence.
About the Book
For more than three decades now, the Indian courts have delivered far-reaching judgments on a range of significant environmental matters. In their effort to adjudicate complex disputes with serious environmental repercussions, involving the interplay of multiple social, economic and political factors, the courts have developed a framework of environmental rights and legal principles, which now forms an integral part of Indian environmental jurisprudence. The judiciary invokes this framework creatively to identify constitutional, statutory and common law obligations of public and private actors to protect the environment, and to enforce the performance of related duties. There is, however, limited in-depth study of these crucial rights and principles in existing legal literature.
Indian Environmental Law: Key Concepts and Principles fills this gap through its critical analysis of the evolution of this environmental legal framework in India. It studies the origins of environmental rights, substantive and procedural, and the four most significant legal principles— principle of sustainable development, polluter pays principle, precautionary principle and the public trust doctrine—and elaborates how Indian courts have defined, interpreted and applied them across a range of contexts.
As environmental litigation and legal adjudication struggle to respond to worsening environmental quality in the country, conceptual clarity about the content, application and limitations of environmental rights and legal principles is crucial for the improvement of environmental governance. This book explores the judicial reasoning and underlying assumptions in landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the National Green Tribunal, and aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the framework of rights and principles.
About the Chapter
Ghosh traces the growth and application of the public trust doctrine, and explains why it is difficult to identify how the doctrine could lend predictability to decision-making regarding public trust properties. She explains the contours of the doctrine as inferred from Indian judicial pronouncements – the source of the doctrine, properties that are held in public trust, and principles that are applied by courts while implementing the doctrine. Rather than insisting on its redundancy, she argues that it is desirable to make the doctrine more relevant, and proposes ways in which it may afford greater protection to natural resources held in trust.
About the Book
For more than three decades now, the Indian courts have delivered far-reaching judgments on a range of significant environmental matters. In their effort to adjudicate complex disputes with serious environmental repercussions, involving the interplay of multiple social, economic and political factors, the courts have developed a framework of environmental rights and legal principles, which now forms an integral part of Indian environmental jurisprudence. The judiciary invokes this framework creatively to identify constitutional, statutory and common law obligations of public and private actors to protect the environment, and to enforce the performance of related duties. There is, however, limited in-depth study of these crucial rights and principles in existing legal literature.
Indian Environmental Law: Key Concepts and Principles fills this gap through its critical analysis of the evolution of this environmental legal framework in India. It studies the origins of environmental rights, substantive and procedural, and the four most significant legal principles— principle of sustainable development, polluter pays principle, precautionary principle and the public trust doctrine—and elaborates how Indian courts have defined, interpreted and applied them across a range of contexts.
As environmental litigation and legal adjudication struggle to respond to worsening environmental quality in the country, conceptual clarity about the content, application and limitations of environmental rights and legal principles is crucial for the improvement of environmental governance. This book explores the judicial reasoning and underlying assumptions in landmark judgments of the Supreme Court, the High Courts and the National Green Tribunal, and aims to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the framework of rights and principles.
Ghosh examines three procedural environmental rights – the right to information, the right to public participation, and the right to access to justice – in detail, and identifies loopholes and limitations in the adjudication of each right. In particular, the chapter refers to relevant provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, the EIA Notification 2006, the Right to Information Act 2005, the Forest Rights Act 2006, and the National Green Tribunal Act 2010. Ghosh concludes that despite statutory expression of procedural environmental rights, there is no room for complacency as these three rights are routinely curtailed and denied.
What perspective did the BJP government bring to the link between environment, energy and climate change on the one hand and development on the other, and what consequent actions has it taken? In this essay, the authors assess the government’s actions in areas of environment, energy and climate change with a view to interpreting its track record. Focusing less on environmental outcomes and more on the changes in direction introduced by the government, Dubash and Ghosh explore four themes. First, they examine the government’s focus on the ‘cost of doing business’ and ask whether reducing this cost has come at an environmental price. Second, they analyse cases in which an environment and energy agenda was driven by political imperatives, such as around energy access or Ganga rejuvenation. Third, they explore whether and how the government has addressed the emergent big picture environment and energy questions that will shape India’s future, beyond immediate regulatory changes. Finally, they examine its diplomacy in the areas of climate change and energy, and reflect on what the accumulated record implies in terms of India’s environmental governance.
India’s coastline that is spread over thirteen states and Union Territories (UTs) is a space that epitomises policy contradictions. It is to be managed both as a region of immense biodiversity importance as well as zone for high economic investments through industrial and infrastructure projects. This ‘balance of priorities’ is to be arrived at by special regulatory bodies called the Coastal Zone Management Authorities(CZMAs) set up at the central and state government levels.
This paper critically analyses the effectiveness of the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) notification, 2011 to achieve these priorities through the functioning of CZMAs. The paper illustrates the challenges of regulating high impact development projects in ecologically important coastal zones through two cases, a proposed port in Uttara Kannada, Karnataka and the Adani Port and SEZ in Kutch, Gujarat.The paper concludes that while the CZMAs have granted regulatory approvals to such projects, the management and conservation functions of the law have remained stuck in bureaucratic hurdles.
