-Scroll.in Going against conventional wisdom, the Indian middle class is not a source of liberalism. A profound contradiction lies at the heart of contemporary India’s political economy. On the one hand, it embraces economic liberalism. In September 2020, it legislated laws aimed at liberalising agriculture from state-guaranteed protections. The recent budget, passed in February, was high on promises of accelerating divestment of public sector undertakings. On the other hand, however, this enthusiasm...

-India.Mongabay.com * In its latest decision, the Indian government’s ministry of environment has come out with an order to help a certain category of mining projects avoid public hearing while seeking environment clearance. * This decision is mainly for projects which were granted environment clearance under environmental impact assessment notification 1994 after a public hearing was conducted. * But experts note that public hearings should be understood as a critical tool for good...

-Hindustan Times The official added that the reason it makes sense to have one law is because provisions of the existing air, water, and environment laws overlap India could soon have a single law governing air, water and environment-related activities, one of the senior-most officials in the environment ministry said on Tuesday. The Union environment ministry plans to table a new environmental management law that will subsume the Air Act 1981, Water...

-The Hindu On several significant items relating to the environment, allocations have remained stagnant or fallen In 1991, when the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh ushered in economic reforms that catapulted India into the global economy, I had asked him how he intended to balance rapid economic growth with Environmental Protection. He said that the experience of the West is that once there is enough money in the economy through growth, it...

Large dams that cause environmental degradation and large-scale displacement, among other things, have been opposed in India by civil society organisations (CSOs), such as Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), National Alliance of People's Movement (NAPM) and People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). A recently published study by the United Nations University's Canada-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health along with other partner organisations reveals that tens of thousands of existing large...