In his recent essay on whether India can pursue an environmentally responsible path to economic growth, historian and environmentalist Ramachandra Guha makes a clear and cogent argument on how excluding environmental concerns is bad for the country. Nonetheless, I fear that the essay does not go far enough to address the problems he highlights.

I agree with him thoroughly that “the disregard for environmental sustainability of Indian politicians is ecumenical; it operates across parties”. Having been in sessions with a number of policymakers – most of them fairly well-informed about the environment and climate issues – over the last decade, my experience has been that all such meetings end with the politician saying something along the lines of: “You know, I agree with you people, but my constituency wants jobs and economic progress, and does not have time for this.”

Guha is also right to point out that the poor and marginalised pay the highest price for pollution and environmental degradation, while the rich insulate themselves using water filters, air filters and air conditioning. But it is also the poor and marginalised that are, for obvious reasons, those who most demand economic progress and infrastructure.

Framed in this way – that environmental concern can only mitigate disasters by “bad development” – his essay ends up portraying environmentalists as limiting growth (seen purely as economic activity and infrastructure).

Fundamental misunderstanding

When the Parliamentary Standing Committee on water released its report in 2021, it contained the mind-boggling fact that the parliamentarians, from across political parties, had not even invited the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to comment, much less any external environmentalists.

The failure of India’s political class and economists to understand environmental issues is, in fact, even deeper than Guha presents it to be. It is not just about ignoring issues of social justice and inclusion; it is a comprehensive failure to understand the basis of Indian economic growth.

Our ideas of what constitutes development and how to get there are poor copies of European and East Asian paradigms – a BMW in the driveway; shoddy copies of Chinese high-speed trains, and an aspiration to emulate Singapore, whose entire population could be swallowed by West Delhi.

This will not, and has not, brought us the jobs and economic security we so desperately need. Instead, we have created a tiny class of the prosperous that exploit the vast majority of the country who have few options except to flee to other countries, only to be exploited there.

An imagination of our political economy divorced from our geographical reality – our environment – is a fool’s mission that we have pursued to the point of numerous crises in the economy, employment, health, and sanitation.

Offering a better deal

It was not always so, and two major historical campaigns show us that we can pursue economic growth in a way that creates gainful employment, offers security, and boosts the productivity of the country. I am talking of the Green Revolution and the White Revolution, which respectively laid the basis of Indian food security in grain, and later, milk production.

Importantly, both were premised on offering a better deal to farmers and those that raised cattle. They turned India from a state begging for food aid to stave off famines to one of the biggest exporters in the world. What is often forgotten is that much of India’s space programme was also premised on these campaigns, to receive better data on weather patterns and manage our crop cycles.

But Guha also reminds us that there may have been severe costs to the Green Revolution, such as the overexploitation of groundwater. This is true. In a world of finite resources, there will be costs, some of which only reveal themselves much later.

It is past time that we overhaul policies in the agriculture sector. But in which direction?

The three recent farm laws, passed without any serious consultation with farmers, led to severe pushback. This was because, unlike the policies that powered the Green Revolution, there was no vision of prosperity and security for farmers beyond pious assertions by the government and its economists that they would “drive growth”.

A similar ill-founded approach governs our vision of the forests and the communities that live in them. These communities both derive economic sustenance from the forests and help in their successful management, but we do not grant them rights, and instead think driving a road through such fragile ecologies is economically wise.

Greatest resources

For the security and prosperity of India, its two greatest resources are its people and geography. This obvious fact has been so blurred by deluded economic thinking borrowed from other situations that we do not even see it in the blinding light of GDP numbers. The vast majority of Indians will not move from the areas they live in, and without ensuring the security and prosperity of those ecological regions, we are inevitably driving much of our population to live in ruins.

An alternative vision of growth is possible – one that marries increased prosperity at the local level with greater financial security. India has, demonstrably, done it before, and in so doing inspired Green Revolutions and prosperity in other countries. And only when the ecology – the very geography – of India is intrinsic to our vision of growth, when it nurtures us and provides us with jobs and plenty, will the environment become central to our politics.

That is a big task, and one requiring immense political imagination and courage. But this is a country that tore itself free from bondage after nearly two centuries of being an imperial vassal state. It then showed the world that a poor, exploited, largely illiterate country could still make democracy function and provide prosperity for its people. I presume some of that spirit is still alive.

This article was originally published on Scroll and has been lightly edited with permission.