Environmental policy of India

In most countries, it is the executive and the legislative branches of the government that plan, implement and address environmental issues; the Indian experience is different.

The Court has laid down new principles to protect the environment, re-interpreted environmental laws, created new institutions and structures, and conferred additional powers on the existing ones through a series of directions and judgments.

[3] The reasons for the increasing interjection of India's Supreme Court in governance arenas are, experts claim, complex.

A key factor has been the failure of government agencies and the state owned enterprises in discharging their Constitutional and Statutory duties.

[5][6][7] Judicial activism in India has, in several key cases, found state-directed economic development ineffective and a failure, then interpreted laws and issued directives that encourage greater competition and free market to reduce environmental pollution.

In other cases, the interpretations and directives have preserved industry protection, labour practices and highly polluting state-owned companies detrimental to environmental quality of India.