Introduction and Historical Context
India is on the forefront of industrial modernization, but progress is slowed due to the effects of climate change and is further com- plicated by regional and federal dynamics. India has the world’s fastest growing population, most of which is economically reliant on agriculture. Rapid development generates greater greenhouse gas emissions, and India’s large population size will inevitably make it a major contributor to negative climate change consequences. Therefore, India is motivated to enact policy and institutional development that will limit climate change. Indians are the most vulnerable to the changes that greenhouse gases will cause in the monsoon cycle and will have to balance that threat with the desire to pursue modernization.
Understanding the intersections of modernization, urbanization, and regionalism as they impact current climate change policy in India requires a historical, economic, and cultural context. India’s economic history is best understood through the lens of British colonial rule and the resultant lack of industrial progress. British colonial rule had particularly negative consequences on India because of the lack of British institutional investment and development.1 The subsequent lack of infrastructure had long-lasting economic effects over independent India, leading to historical dependency on foreign financial investments to stabilize the economy. The economic cycle of borrowing foreign money to slowly build infrastructure and then having to pay back investors led to excessively slow development. This largely unproductive cycle that resulted from imperial rule led to an enduring dependence on agricultural labor.
Agriculture has always been the main economic force in India, which has only recently moved towards commercialization. This economic reality has had a negative cultural effect by creating deep-seated loyalties based on agricultural patterns further complicated by regional communication differences. The restricted focus on regionalist concerns and agricultural reality slowed the process of urbanization because of regionally specific norms.2
Vulnerability and Contribution to Climate Change
India is vulnerable to climate change because of its geographical location and economic dependency on agriculture. The rising sea level is a problem widely attributed to climate change, as recent decades have shown a spiked increase of .8mm in global water levels, due to the thermal expansion of the ocean and increased water produced by melting glaciers.3 This increase in water level poses a serious threat to India, a primarily coastal country surrounded by water on two sides. Rising water levels will slowly submerge Indian coastal cities, but more important is the rising temperature level, which is causing the rising water level and will have a more immediate impact through its changes to the monsoon cycle.
The monsoon cycle is a highly specific rain pattern that occurs because of the interactions between heating and cooling cycles. An intertropical convergence of these cycles brings consistent rain from July to September.4 Recent years have seen an uptick of unusually heavy monsoon seasons, and this trend will continue because of the temperature changes affecting the intertropical convergence. Climate change is predicted to increase the amount of rain produced by the monsoon cycle while decreasing the length of the cycle. Therefore, the three-month rainy season will become significantly shorter. The impact on the cycle would be particularly devastating for the two-thirds of Indians who are reliant on agriculture. From the two-thirds of dependent Indians, over eighty percent use groundwater-based irrigation methods. Groundwater-based irrigation is a method of utilizing rudimentary technology—such as trenches—to store rainfall water for the dry season.5 This elementary farming method maintains an extremely delicate balance between the amount of rain that is collected and the amount of rain that will overwhelm the system. As the three-month rainy period becomes shorter, the irrigation systems will be overwhelmed, leaving Indian farmers without enough water to irrigate their crops. This disastrous impending scenario will leave the majority of Indians involved in agriculture lacking financial stability.
Modernization in India is taking the form of industrial development through manufacturing, which is further supported by government efforts in favor of urbanization. This modernization comes at a time when the Indian population is rapidly expanding and will soon become the largest on Earth. India has a history of agriculture but has been shifting towards a manufacturing economy. This form of industrial modernization will lessen the negative impact of the changing monsoon cycle because fewer individuals will be agriculturally reliant. However, the shift to modernization and urbanization will also dramatically increase India’s greenhouse gas emissions. This rapid increase in emissions would not only lead to the destruction of coastal India but also harm the international community as a whole. India’s policy decisions regarding its current vulnerability and potential contribution to climate change are further complicated by its current political situation.
Federalism and Regionalism in India
India has a history of extreme regionalism marked by cultural and linguistic diversity that is further accentuated by the lack of a unifying national market. India’s strong alignment with local sentiments rather than national concerns created resistance to the expansion of federal government. India cannot be viewed as “a single-nation state,” but rather as “a continent of many communities united by their shared experiences and powerfully motivated by regional considerations.”6 Despite the federal government’s limited historical relevance, major economic problems forced Indians to turn to the national government for assistance: “The problems which Indian Federalism stems from are the needs of her people to have a central government armed with sufficient powers needed to solve modern problems.”7 In response to a tumultuous division from imperial rule which limited economic progress, the national government has slowly been making economic and constitutional modifications to increase its power. In response to this shift towards a strong federal government, regionalist parties have emerged and have successfully prevented the federal government from instituting effective policy. The partisan divide between regions has created a tension within the powerful national government that has created an inability to agree on passing meaningful legislation. The root of the regionalist divide is the lack of a unifying national market. Economic measures have been taken to address the absence of a united market, including central planning and urbanization incentive programs.8
The constitutional modification with the Act of 1935 was the beginning of the shift towards a strong and central national governance, as it included a strict outline of national and state powers. The Act of 1935 went into immense detail, specifically outlining ninety-seven powers reserved for the federal level, sixty-six to the individual states, and forty-seven concurrent powers.9 This was an institutional, legislative shift towards a more centralized government. The highly nuanced Act of 1935 was designed to integrate the states into the federal system: “Provinces were endowed with a legal personality under the national scheme and that character of the national scheme was ultimately the federal system.”10 This change from strong and mostly autonomous provinces to a strong, federalist center has had a lasting economic and social impact.
The trend towards centralized government only grew with the implementation of central planning as an economic model in the 1950s. Central planning in India took the form of various development programs, mainly involving the increase of natural resource availability and the improvement of resource allocation methods.11 The focus on resource allocation led to a decrease in extreme poverty and an increase in commercialized farming. The next phase in this model of central planning was instituted in 2014 by the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, through the campaign slogan, “Make in India.” This campaign was oriented towards increasing manufacturing by foreign powers in India through specifically targeting major companies, especially technological and medical businesses, to move their production to India. The goals of “Make in India” were twofold: create an economic shift from agriculture to manufacturing and urbanize the Indian population with the goal of reducing rural poverty.
Modi’s platform inspired a global response from medical and technological industries to transplant their manufacturing businesses to India. This shift created a dramatic increase in Indian manufacturing activity, estimated at around 222 billion dollars in investment pledges.12 The increase in manufacturing opportunities created a need for an urban based workforce. The government’s manufacturing movement would incentivize workers to move their families in pursuit of better jobs and help form a stronger middle class. The government’s goals for the “Make in India” campaign were realized. In 2001, 11.4 percent of Indians lived in cities, but estimates as of 2018 place thirty-five percent of the Indian population in an urban environment.13 The percentage of urban Indians will only continue to grow as the population expands and manufacturing jobs increase.
This magnified dependency on the national government as a result of central planning has created a paradox in India. While Indians maintain fierce loyalties to their state and have historically been reliant on local governance to meet their unique needs, the evolving economic landscape has led to the creation of a new political reality. If the tensions between state and national government were to continue, the resulting inefficiency would inhibit modernization and limit cooperative and mutually beneficial climate change policies and institutional development.14
India’s Future Policy and Institutional Development
India aims to expand policy and institutional development. India is following the steps of developed countries through the transition from agriculture to manufacturing and aims to do so in a manner that will serve as a catalyst for growth while counteracting greenhouse gas emissions. The international community is applying pressure to India in hopes that the country will slow manufacturing development and thus prevent excessive greenhouse gas emissions. India’s environmental policy stance is in opposition to the international community due to what they claim is an unjust burden placed on developing countries. They argue that more developed countries have not only been the main historical contributors of greenhouse gases but also continue to emit at per capita rates that are much greater than India’s.
India and the international community are at a policy standstill. India is demanding developmental independence or compromise with developed nations, while the international community is demanding comprehensive greenhouse gas emission regulations. However, this international standoff has not stopped India from enacting policy in the form of the National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), which is principally oriented to protect the vulnerable agricultural population of India.15 The NAPCC is focused on creating awareness through the various sectors of Indian governance and society in an effort to cultivate an “inclusive and sustainable national developmental strategy that is sensitive to climate change.”16 This action plan transforms India into a potential leader in climate change reform, mitigation, and preparation.
One of the specific initiatives of the NAPCC is the National Solar Mission. The overall goal of the National Solar Mission is to increase solar energy capabilities to five times the current rate by 2022. The NAPCC in its entirety was broad and lacking in detail in terms of feasible objectives and methods. The National Solar Mission was originally divided into three levels, all unsatisfactory attempts at setting manageable goals and timelines. For example, the first level of the mission was the development of small solar plants across India, but it did not specify locations and phases of construction. India has been met with barriers to success, as the unclear goals and timelines of the various levels within the National Solar Mission led to an extended timeline for completion of the project. The inability of India to balance necessary efforts with manageable timelines has created a concerning lapse in its climate change policy.
Institutional implementations are extremely important to fostering policy, especially in terms of the severity of the situation. India’s climate change policy is lacking crucial detail, leaving concerns for the future of India in terms of quickly impending climate change. The climate change acts have not been wholly ineffectual, as there has been a successful implementation through a co-institutional method. The first major Indian co-institutional project with the Indian Forest Service has proved highly successful in terms of achievable goals, methods, and results. The Indian Forest Service was recently empowered through an increase in tax dollar allocation specifically meant to create forests and national parks through strategic tree planting. The increased support of the Indian Forest Service has cultivated a realistic effort with the two goals of utilizing the ability of trees to reduce greenhouse emissions and translating this effort into sustainable jobs for the rural Indian communities. The target goal is to add .8 million hectares of forest per year with the goal of offsetting eleven percent of India’s annual greenhouse gas emissions.17
Conclusions
India is in a unique position, as it is on the cusp of rapid development. Greenhouse gas emissions will undoubtedly increase along with development and pose serious threats to India and the international community. The majority of Indians are agriculturally reliant on groundwater-based irrigation methods which depend on the water produced by the monsoon cycle. Climate change will likely decrease the length of the monsoon cycle but increase the amount of rain produced. This type of volatile change in annual rainfall is not compatible with groundwater-based irrigation methods and will leave the agriculturally reliant population of India without a source of financial support.18
This situation is further complicated by the increasing dependency of the states on the national government because successful economic development relies on a unified national market through central planning. The central government of India has employed a strategic economic development campaign through platforms such as “Make in India” to urbanize India and increase the number of manufacturing jobs. India’s population is transferring loyalty from the regions to the center.
This shift, founded on centered locations of economic power and aided by constitutional modifications that distinctly identify national and state powers, created the modern Indian federalism problem. The fast-paced change from regionalism to national government has created tensions between the rural and urban population, as the government actively tries to decrease agricultural dependence. In the process of decreasing agricultural jobs in favor of manufacturing jobs, the government has neglected rural Indians. The divide in Indian politics has created partisan politics, thus preventing the passage of effective climate change policies. Unsuccessful bipartisan policy has resulted in a severe lack of institutional infrastructure, leaving Indians in a perilous position.
India must develop policy that can both serve as a catalyst for further growth and protect national interests without the interference of the global community. India’s environmental policies, as enacted thus far, have not achieved the goals and time frames set, specifically the NAPCCA National Solar Mission with its indefinitely extended deadline. However, the partnership and empowerment of two governmental departments, the Indian National Forest Service as a recipient of greater tax revenue from the National Government, has proven highly successful. This co-institutional cooperation serves as an example of a successful model of Indian policy regarding climate change.19 This manageable success by the Indian National Forest Service has been achieved through specific projects, such as tree planting. The task of tree planting has expanded to include the building of national parks in order to create environmental stability, counter efforts against climate change, and support sustainable job development.
India’s future climate change policy and institutional development must help provide financial stability to agriculturally dependent farmers and address the absence of achievable climate change goals. In current policy, India must accommodate the rural, agriculture-based factions and help them transition to commercial agriculture, environmental conservation work, or urban manufacturing. This transition to a sustainable model of economic growth will not only aid the farmers' economic prospects but also quell divisive regionalist politics, which are preventing widespread cooperation. The lack of bipartisan legislative action has resulted in a lack of achievable goals maintained by corresponding institutional infrastructure. The failure of the National Solar Mission but the success in empowering the National Forest Service indicates the power of co-institutional cooperation. Co-institutional cooperation that accommodates India’s history of regionalism is critical to the success of future climate change policy.
