Posts
Integrating
Sustainability into Indian Planning
People’s movements, civil society organizations,
academic thinktanks, and progressive political leaders will have to lead the way,
both by resisting today’s destructive processes and by building on existing alternatives
India’s
attempts at integrating environmental sustainability into economic planning have so far been piecemeal and
hesitant. They have done little to stem the rapid slide into ecological
devastation and consequent livelihood, cultural, and economic disruption. At
the root of this lies the stubborn adherence to a model of economic growth that
is fundamentally unsustainable and inequitable, even more so in its
‘globalised’ form in the last two decades.
The
12th Plan process could have been an opportunity to change course, specially
given its explicit commitment to sustainability, inclusiveness and equity.
Indeed there are some glimpses of a different approach, e.g. making economic activities
more responsible in their use of resources and in the wastes they produce,
promoting urban water harvesting and public transport, providing organic inputs
to agriculture use, encouraging recycling, making tourism more environmentally
responsible and community-based, moving towards low-carbon strategies, and protecting
the ‘commons’ (lands and waters that are used by the public), giving
communities more secure rights to use and manage these. Yet the Plan falls far short of significant reorientation, mostly staying within the
confines of assuming that more growth will help achieve these goals. It does
not use any available framework of ‘sustainable development’, including
the targets that India agreed to at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Johannesberg). It does not contain indicators to gauge whether India is
moving towards sustainability, e.g. improvement in per capita availability of
natural forests, reduction in the levels of various kinds of pollution,
improved access to nutritious food and clean water, or enhanced availability of
public transport. Environmental considerations do not yet permeate each
economic sector.
