Indian Environmentalism and the Question of the State: Problems and Prospects for Sustainable Development

Abstract

The author focuses on the problems inherent in environmentalist critiques of the Indian state, and the inability of their authors to provide a useful analytical approach for reforming state institutions engaged in environmental regulation and natural-resource management. After a review of the arguments made by leading spokespersons of Indian environmentalism, the author provides an alternative framework for understanding the different forms of state intervention in natural-resource management in colonial and postcolonial India. Three factors that have shaped dominant policy phases and strategies of state institutions engaged in resource management are highlighted: major shifts in the political and economic processes that create pressures for state intervention; competing demands on state institutions that shape the ways in which intervention occurs; and conflicts, disputes, and negotiations that redefine the exercise of state control and the forms of resource management. In focusing on the interplay of these three factors, the author illustrates the continuities and major shifts in resource-management strategies adopted by state institutions in India. The inherent weaknesses (and reactionary populism) of Indian environmental debates are discussed, together with the inability of those involved to articulate strategies for moving towards sustainable urban and regional development within the recent policy phase of deregulation and market expansion in India.