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After the completion of EIA report the law requires that the public must be informed and consulted on a proposed development after the completion of EIA report.

Decision making process involve consultation between the project proponent and the impact assessment authority.

Monitoring should be done during both construction and operation phases of a project. This is not only to ensure that the commitments made are complied with but also to observe whether the predictions made in the EIA reports were correct or not.

Scheme of Labelling of Environment Friendly Products (ECO-MARKS). This scheme aims at Labelling of Environment Friendly Products. The scheme operates on a national basis and provides accreditation and labelling for household and other consumer products, which meet certain environmental criteria along with quality requirements of the Indian Standards for that product. Any product, which is made, used or disposed of in a way that significantly reduces the harm it would otherwise cause the environment, is considered as Environment Friendly Product.

This scheme was introduced with the following objectives :

* To provide an incentive for manufacturers and importers to reduce adverse environmental impact of products.

* To reward genuine initiatives by companies to reduce adverse environmental impact of their products.

* To assist consumers to become environmentally responsible in their daily lives by providing information to take account of environmental factors in their purchase decisions.

* To encourage citizens to purchase products which have less harmful environmental impActs.

* Ultimately to improve the quality of the environment and to encourage the sustainable management of resources.

* Early Environmental Legislations.

* Environmental Legislations in the 70s.

* Environmental Legislations in the mid 80s.

* Environmental Policies in the 90s.

Early Environmental Legislation

India employs a range of regulatory instruments to preserve and protect its natural resources. It was the first country to insert an amendment into its Constitution allowing the State to protect and improve the environment for safeguarding public health, forests and wild life. A Survey of the early environmental legislations indicate the nature and levels of Governmental awareness towards environmental issues. The Shore Nuisance (Bombay and Kolaba) Act of 1853, was one of the earliest laws concerning water pollution, authorized the collector of land revenue in Bombay to order removal of any nuisance below the high - water mark in Bombay harbors. In 1857, an attempt was made to regulate the pollution produced by the oriental Gas Company by imposing fines on the Company and giving a right of compensation to anyone whose water was ‘fouled’ by the company’s discharges.

The country has had a long history of environmentalism with the passage and codification of Acts such as the Indian Penal Code of 1860, The Indian Easements Act of 1882, The Fisheries Act of 1897, The Bengal Smoke Nuisance Act of 1905, The Indian Motor Vehicle Act, The Factories Act, The Indian Forest Act, The Mines and Minerals (Regulation and Development) Act, The Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, The Forest (Conservation) Act, The Merchant Shipping Act.

The Indian Penal Code, passed in 1860, penalizes person(s) responsible for causing defilement of water of a public spring or reservoir with imprisonment or fines. In addition, the code also penalized negligent Acts with poisonous substances that endangered life or caused injury .

The Indian Easements Act of 1882 protected riparian owners against ‘unreasonable’ pollution by upstream users. The Indian Fisheries Act of 1897 penalized the killing of fish by poisoning water and by using explosives. The Indian Forest Act was a product of British rule in 1927. The legislation granted the Government uncontested rights over natural resources, with State Governments authorized to grant licenses to lumber contrActors and oversee protection of the forests.

Legislative provisions regulating the discharge of oil into port waters and prohibiting the poisoning of water in forests were also enacted prior to independence. Two early post-independence laws touched on water pollution. Section 12 of the Factories Act of 1948 required all factories to make effective arrangements for waste disposal and empowered State Governments to frame rules implementing this directive. As a result, a number of States passed versions of the Factory Act, including Uttar Pradesh in 1950, Tamil Nadu in 1950, West Bengal in 1958, Maharashtra in 1963 and Mysore in 1969. Each tailored the Act to suit its particular situation. In Uttar Pradesh, disposal of effluents had to have the approval of the State’s Effluents Board. In Tamil Nadu, the ruling entity with similar responsibilities was the Director of Fisheries. In Maharashtra, local authorities were granted with jurisdiction in such matters. Second, river Boards, established under the River Boards Act of 1956 for the regulation and development of inter-State rivers and river valleys, were empowered to prevent water pollution. In both these laws, prevention of water pollution was only incidental to the principal objective of the enactment.

During the 1950s and early 1960s marked the Constitution permitting the State to control water-related issues, several States had taken steps on water protection. Laws passed included The Orissa River Pollution Act of 1953, The Punjab State Tube well Act of 1954, West Bengal Notification No. 7 Regulation - Control of Water Pollution Act of 1957, Jammu and Kashmir State Canal and Drainage Act of 1963 and The Maharashtra Water Pollution Prevention Act of 1969.

Environmental Legislations in the 70s

The watershed event in the environmental movement was the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment in June 1972. The conference made it apparent to all attendees that each nation needed to adopt comprehensive legislation addressing health and safety issues for people, flora and fauna. The United Nations, organizers of the conference, requested each participant to provide a country report. The findings by the Indian conferees shocked even the most pro-development advocates in India. Stockholm served as the genesis for the series of environmental measures that India passed in the years to come. It has also been suggested that international events such as Stockholm provided the cover Indian officials needed to implement national environment policy without the vitriolic backlash normally expected from industry.

The year 1972 was a landmark in the history of environmental management in India. Prior to 1972, environmental issues such as sewage disposal, sanitation and public health were dealt with independently by the different Ministries without any co-ordination or realization of the interdependence of the issues. In February 1972, a National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination (NCEPC) was set up in the Department of Science and technology, which was established as National Committee on Environmental Planning (NCEP) in April 1981, based on the recommendations of the Tiwari Committee.

The NCEPC functioned as an apex advisory body in all matters relating to environmental protection and improvement. However due to bureaucratic problems, that NCEPC faced in coordination with the Department of Science and Technology, it was replaced by a National Committee on Environmental Planning (NCEP) with almost the same functions.

The Tiwari Committee in the 80s which was set up for recommending legislative measures and administrative machinery to strengthen the existing arrangements towards environmental protection, recommended establishing the Department of Environment (DOE) for dealing with various aspects of environment and ecology. The Department of Environment, created in 1980, performed an oversight role for the Central Government. DOE did environmental appraisals of development projects, monitored air and water quality, established an environmental information system, promoted research, and coordinated Activities between federal, State and local Governments. However DOE was criticized, by environmental groups who recognized that with its small political and financial base the agency was weak and symbolic in nature. Environmentalists also recognized that DOE would essentially serve as an advisory body with few enforcement powers.

The Government of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi recognized these deficiencies as well, and shortly after his administration began in 1985 created the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). MoEF was more comprehensive and institutionalized, and had a Union Minister and Minister of State, two political positions answering directly to the Prime Minister. The agency was comprised of 18 divisions, and two independent units, the Ganga Project Directorate and the National Mission on Wastelands Development. It continued the same functions that DOE originally had, such as monitoring and enforcement, conducting environmental assessments and surveys, but also did promotional work about the environment.

The MoEF’s implementation of a monitoring system was also aggressive. In 1977, India had 18 monitoring stations for water. By 1992, there were 480 water stations, including 51 from the Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS). In 1984, the country had 28 air monitoring stations in seven cities and by 1994, the National Ambient Air Quality Monitoring Program had 290 stations in 99 cities.

The 80s witnessed the continuing decline in the quality of the environment, together with the Bhopal gas tragedy that had killed more than 2500 people. This spurred the Central Government to adopt stronger environmental policies, to enact fresh legislation and to create, reorganize and expand administrative agencies. In 1981, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act was passed, and in 1986 as fallout of the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Parliament passed the Environment Protection Act (1986), this was an “umbrella” legislation designed to provide a framework for Central Government coordination of the Activities of various Central and State authorities established under previous laws, such as the Water Act and Air Act. It was also an “enabling” law, which articulated the essential legislative policy on bureaucrats , to frame necessary rules and regulations. The Act served to back a vast body of subordinate environmental legislation in India. During the intervening years, address specific issues Act such as, The Atomic Energy Act and The Wild Life Protection Act, were passed. The Atomic Energy Act governs the regulation of nuclear energy and radioactive substances. Under this Act the Central Government is required to prevent radiation hazards, guarantee public safety, safety of workers handling radioactive substances, and ensure the disposal of radioactive wastes. The Wild Life Protection Act Provided a statutory framework for protecting wild animals, plants and their habitats. The Act adopts a two -pronged conservation strategy: protecting specific endangered species regardless of location, and protecting all species in designated areas called sanctuaries and national parks.

In December 1988 the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest constituted a Committee to recommend a framework and an Action plan for the conservation of resources. Based on the recommendations of the Committee, the Government of India adopted a National Conservation Strategy and Policy Statement on Environment and Development (NCS). The preamble to the NCS adopts the policy of ‘Sustainable development’ and declares the Government’s commitment to re-orient policies and Action ‘in unison with the environmental perspective’.

The 90s heralded trade liberalization and Globalization. Since 1991 India has adopted new economic policies to spur development. In an effort to integrate the Indian economy with global trade, the Government has reduced industrial regulation, lowered international trade and investment barriers and encouraged export-oriented enterprise.

In December 1993, the MoEF completed its Environmental Action Plan to integrate environmental considerations into developmental strategies, which, among other priorities, included industrial pollution reduction.

The MoEF also decided to shift from concentration to load-based standards. This would add to a polluter’s costs and remove incentives to dilute effluents by adding water, and strengthen incentives for adoption of cleaner technologies. It also issued water consumption standards, which were an additional charge for excessive water use. Targeting small-scale industries has been an important task since these facilities greatly added to the pollution load. The Ministry provides technical assistance and limited grants to promote the setting up of Central effluent treatment plants. It has also created industrial zones to encourage clusters of similar industries in order to help reduce the cost of providing utilities and environmental services

An important criterion in welfare economics is the notion of Pareto optimality. According to Pareto an economic State is efficient if it is not possible to improve the welfare of atleast one individual without making others worse off. The fundamental theorem of welfare economics based on the Pareto criterion States that, under certain conditions, a deCentralised economic system motivated by self interest and guided by price signals would be compatible with a coherent disposition of economic resources that could be regarded as superior to a large class of possible alternative economic systems1. If Pareto (economic) efficiency is the sole criterion and the conditions are valid then the appropriate pricing rule is the long-run marginal cost pricing rule. When these conditions are violated, different kinds of ‘market failures’ occur. Important sources of market failures are economies of scale in production, externalities in production and consumption, presence of public goods, asymmetric information among economic agents, and uncertainty2. Also, goals other than economic efficiency such as intergenerational and intragenerational equity and balanced regional development do influence public policies even in capitalist economies.

There are many problems in designing and implementing the Pigouvian tax. Baumol and Oates (1987) identify problems such as existence of non-convexity in the production set in the presence of detrimental externalities, the possibility of multiple maxima and enormous information requirements in the valuation of environmental damages. Therefore they suggest a second-best approach to pollution prevention and control. The second-best approach is that, given the environmental standards, the society’s problem is to achieve the standards at least cost. Here, the criterion is cost minimization or cost effectiveness. Even in this approach there is a choice among policy instruments ranging from command and control (CAC) type of instruments to economic or market based instruments. Until the early seventies most countries, including developed countries, relied heavily on CAC type of instruments. Since the seventies many developed countries have been using market based instruments (MBIs). There is also a perceptible difference even in the choice among MBIs. The United States seems to prefer tradable emission permits presumably because of its faith in the allocative efficiency of markets while many countries in Europe seem to prefer fiscal approach to solve the pollution problem presumably because of their commitment to the concept of a welfare State. Two international conferences on Environment and development - one at Stockholm in 1972 and another at Rio de Janerio in 1992 - have influenced environmental policies in most countries, including India. Many countries and international agencies have accepted the polluter pays principle, the precautionary principle and the concept of intergenerational equity as guidelines for designing environmental policies.

India adopted the socialist pattern of society in 1954 as a framework for social and economic policies. This framework articulates that public policy decisions must enable the society to maximise social gain and not private profit. This framework also envisages a catalytic role for the State in the social and economic transformation of the country. The Constitution of India provides a number of Directive Principles of State Policy. Indian Five year Plans have also stressed goals such as rapid economic growth, employment generation, poverty alleviation and balanced regional development. Since June 1991 there has been a tilt in economic policy towards economic liberalisation and globalisation. The importance of sustainable development is also being stressed as an objective of public policy.

This paper deals with the evolution of laws, institutions and polices relating to environmental protection in India. It considers the following questions : (a) whether the laws are evolved indigenously or influenced by external fActors?, (b) how have the mixed economy model and the stage of development influenced the design of policies for internalisation of the externalities?, (c) how is liability allocated? (d) how are the laws enforced?, and (e) what is the scope for using non-market non-Government institutions for achieving environmental sustainability?.

Section 2 deals with the evolution of environmental laws and policies. We consider four policy periods: (i) pre-independence period to 1947, (ii) from independence to the Stockholm Conference, 1947 - 1972, (iii) from the Stockholm Conference to Bhopal disaster, 1972-1984, and (iv) Bhopal Tragedy to 1998. In the first two periods, there were no major legislations relating to environmental protection. The Stockholm Conference on Environment and Development exerted great influence on environmental policymaking leading to an amendment of the Constitution, passage of important legislations such as the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 and creation of institutions such as

Central and State Pollution Control Boards for implementing the provisions of the Acts. The Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 triggered the passage of comprehensive environment legislation in 1986 and Public Liability Insurance Act in 1991. The new economic policy initiated in 1991 favours decentralisation, debureaucratisation and globalisation. Constitutional amendments were made in 1994 to facilitate devolution of powers and resources to local bodies. The Policy Statement on Pollution Abatement issued in 1992 advocates the need for combining regulatory instruments with market-based instruments and various supportive measures to deal with environmental protection. Section 3 is devoted to implementation of the laws, rules and policies relating to environmental protection. Problems in the determination and enforcement of sourcespecific standards are considered. It describes the Active role of the courts not only in enforcing the laws and rules but also in giving directions to the Central and State Governments on creation of new authorities and policy matters. Section 4 deals with some issues in the transition from a State-allocative closed economy policy regime toward a market-oriented open economy policy regime. Section 5 contains some concluding remarks.

The ancient Indian religious literature, for example, Vedas, Upanishads, Smiritis and Dharmas preached a worshipful attitude towards earth, sky, air, water, plants, trees, and animals and enshrined a respect for nature and environmental harmony and conservation. It regarded sun, air, fire, water, earth and forest as God and Goddesses. Many animals, birds, trees and plants were associated with the names of God and Goddesses.

The Indian Penal Code 1860, enacted during the British rule, contains one chapter (Chapter XIV) on offences affecting public health, safety, convenience, decency and morals. Section 268 covers public nuisance. Sections 269 and 272 deal with adulteration of food or drink for sale and adulteration of drugs respectively. Section 277 lays down that, whoever, voluntarily corrupts or fouls the water of any public spring or reservoir, so as to render it less fit for the purpose for which it is ordinarily used shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3 months, or with a fine which may extend to Rs.500, or with both. Section 278 lays down that whoever voluntarily vitiates the atmosphere so as to make it noxious to the health of persons in dwelling or carrying on business in the neighbourhood or passing along a public way shall be punished with fine which may extent to Rs.500. Sections 284,285 and 286 deal with negligent conduct with respect to poisonous substances, combustible matter and explosive substances. Sections 428 and 429 cover mischief to animals.

The Shore Nuisance (Bombay-Kalova) Act, 1893 was enacted to check wastes and marine water pollution. The Oriental Gas Company Act, 1857 and the Bengal Smoke Nuisance Act, 1905 were enacted to prevent or reduce atmospheric pollution in and around Calcutta. The Bombay Smoke Nuisance Act, 1912 was passed to check smoke nuisance in Bombay area. For preservation of forests, the Cattle Tresspas Act 1871 and Indian Forest Act 1927 were passed. The Indian Easement Act of 1882 guaranteed property rights of riparian owners against “unreasonable” pollution by upstream users.

Municipal and Public Health Acts on the pattern of Local Authorities Act of United Kingdom conferred powers on the local bodies for controlling water pollution caused by industrial effluents and for necessary Action against the erring industries. These Acts prohibit the discharge of any pollutant or trade effluent from factories into municipal drains, except in accordance with the relevant byelaws. These Acts prohibit the discharge of sewage into any watercourse until it had been treated so as not to contaminate the water4. These laws are applicable to large industrial cities and municipal towns. Until 1947, the environmental problem was not serious because of the low rate of population growth and lack of industrialisation, except in and around a few big cities.