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General

India and Sustainable Development

Dr Arvind Kumar
Jul 2010

Contemporary growth theories make it discernible that environmental sustainability is potentially incompatible with uninterrupted economic growth in the wake of limited resources. Inability to achieve environmental sustainability can even obstruct achievment of long-term economic growth. Given the trade-offs between environment and development, the issue is not to achieve the maximum economic growth or total maintenance of environment, but is one of arriving at optimality both in economic progress and environmental protection, and the concept of sustainable development may be the guiding force.

Sustainable development is defined by the Brundtland Report as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1 This definition requires that future generations should at least get as much resources as we have, to meet their needs, but the question is how to judge whether a generation is leaving behind adequate resources for their successors. That is, it lacks tractability as it embeds many complex economic ideas, especially when one is interested in measuring whether an economy is on a sustainable growth path.2

A working definition of sustainable development is provided by Partha dasgupta: “Economic development is sustainable if, relative to its population, a society’s productive base does not shrink.”3 Productive base can be defined in terms of stock of capital assets and institutions. Capital assets include manufactured capital, human capital and knowledge, and also natural capital. Sustainability, thus, can be equated to non-declining value of the productive base. To get an idea of whether India’s development has been sustainable over a period of time, estimates of the changes that took place over the period in its productive base, relative to its population are required. It is this definition which is adopted for the purpose of this essay.

Viewed in a broad spectrum growth in Indian economy has been registering an average rate of 7/8 percent per year in recent years and per capita income is increasing at the rate of about 7 percent. Hectic endeavours to keep up the momentum of economic growth had kept environmental considerations as secondary objectives in policy making. It has been a tough trade-off decision between economic growth and environmental protection. Broadly speaking, damage caused by pollution in India is estimated to cost $14 billion annually; amounting to close to 4.5% to 6% of GDP. This apathy towards environmental protection has been threatening the sustainability of growth trajectory.

Cost of Neglect

Neglect of environmental issues has made India incur huge losses in terms of money and depletion of resources. Land degradation has been a serious problem in India. It takes place through the natural and man-made processes of wind erosion, water erosion, and water-logging. It is estimated that about 57 per cent of the total land is under some form of degradation. Under a business as usual scenario, it is estimated that India loses about 40 million tones of major soil nutrients annually

Untreated water from urban settlements and industrial activities, and run-off from agricultural land carrying chemicals are primarily responsible for the deterioration of water quality and the contamination of lakes, rivers, and groundwater aquifers, and causing enormous damages to the economy. The water quality of surface and ground water has deteriorated significantly over the last two decades. The water quality of most of the rivers in India is not even fit for bathing, recreation and other social uses that Indians have been using for thousands of years.

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