From Policy to Practice Enviornmental Laws in India

In India, the development of environmental jurisprudence is bound to be a complex path as it began with an aspiration of policy goal setting and now looks toward a strict, but difficult implementation phase. India's first step in the direction of environmental stewardship was the 42nd Amendment to its Constitution, which was spurred by the 1972 Stockholm Conference, and explicitly integrated the protection of the natural environment into its constitutional framework, in particular Article 48A and 51A (g). This policy paved the way for the development of comprehensive statutory frameworks such as the Water Act (1974), the Air Act (1981) and the overarching Environment (Protection) Act (1986). But there has always been a gap between statutory policy and its implementation, and this has depended more on the judiciary than the executive. The Supreme Court of India's interpretation of the right to a wholesome environment in Article 21 of the Constitution, through its public interest litigation (PIL) doctrine, extended the scope of the right to a wholesome environment to a much wider extent than the original law intended, and also introduced two very powerful legal principles, namely, the Polluter Pays and Precautionary Principles . The latter, in fact, attempted to reconcile the law with the actual ground situation by establishing the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2010. This complex system of legislation leaves a clear gap between policy and practice in the enforcement of environmental regulations. The structural enforcement gaps, the fragmentation in the bureaucracy and the under-resourcing of State Pollution Control Boards are known to be significant deterrents to environmental compliance, while the socio-economic pressure to speed up industrialisation often outweigh environmental requirements, leading to the formal compliance with environmental clearances. This takes a critical look at the 'policy to practice continuum' in Indian environmental law. It contends that India has an extremely forward-looking normative template, but it' not enough: to achieve Sustainable Ecological Governance, a paradigm shift from judicially oriented remediation towards strong, institutionalized administrative compliance and decentralized public participation is needed.