State Pays Lip Service to Sustainable Development

In March-April this year the students of the Hyderabad Central University rose in protest against the state’s decision to auction the Kancha Gachibowli land in Hyderabad for the development of an IT park adjacent to the university. One of the slogans that was often heard on the campus was “oxygen not auction”. These two words offer us a window to the nature of discontent between the public and the state over the imperative of what constitutes “sustainable development” and what does not.

The Supreme Court on 16 April 2025, stayed any further intervention in the Kancha Gachibowli area directing the Telangana Wildlife Warden to take immediate steps to protect the wildlife affected by the destruction of 100 acres of the Kancha Gachibowli area, telling the state government that it could not have “high rises in the company of the deer.” It also asked for removal of the bulldozers that were brought in to clear the area.Ironically, the Supreme Court’s observation and the call of the students, while echoing each other’s sentiments, have to contend with the industrial symbol of the bulldozer at their gates.

The term “sustainable development” emerged as a solution to the clash between ecology and economy in the now famous 1992 Rio Declaration. It encapsulates three core aspects. It seeks to coordinate economic growth with social inclusion and environmental protection. The overriding ethical premise being that we should not take more than what we can give back to the Earth. But it presents us with a contradiction in terms. Resources are limited. Economic impulse to expand, exploit or exclude, limitless.Across India, in its cities and in its countryside, the push for development by the government, one that foregrounds economic determinism over social and environmental concerns, is being challenged by countless people’s protests. The contradiction inherent in the “sustainable development” paradigm is playing out for all to see and experience.

The mechanistic and materialist impulse of this kind of development is not lost on anyone. The data research agency, Land Conflict Watch, which tracks such disputes, highlights more than 900 ongoing battles, in real time, over issues of sustainable development in the country impacting some 10.5 million people if not more. To take some of the headline urban protests into account, the conflict over Metro car shed in Aarey Colony in Mumbai was on boil for 10 years before the then CM of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray decided to shift the shed out Aarey forest to Kanjurmarg in central Mumbai in October, 2020.Similarly, the attempts to protect Turahilli forest in Bengaluru has met with multiplicity of problems including fending off land mafia, preventing garbage dumping or rejecting government initiative to turn the area into a tree park.

In Delhi, the fight to protect the Aravali Ridge and the battle to save Yamuna from encroachments are ongoing efforts that don’t exactly have a rosy outcome. Mining and construction activities continue to deplete the Ridge. Whereas the 2010 Commonwealth Games Village and the Akshardham Temple built on the Yamuna riverbed though ecologically disastrous for the river ecology, is a done deed.

Annual waterlogging of these buildings as well as adjacent areas is viewed as municipal management failure rather than bad city planning. The issue of social equity is not even mentioned. Pastoral communities that used Aravali eco-system for grazing animals, or the farmers that utilized Yamuna’s River bank for growing seasonal vegetables have been pushed out of the margins to seek sustenance in other places or change occupation.

In the urban context there are several patterns that are discernible.  For one, the state, has emerged as the largest land acquisitor and real estate realtor. This economic model is complimented and augmented by the 2013 Land Acquisition Act which repurposes “public good” with “public purpose” giving primacy to public infrastructure, industrialisation and urbanisation. While the Act has some inbuilt safeguards, such as requirement of prior consent, the execution of projects proceeds most often without any guardrails, unless or until protests such as the one in Hyderabad disrupts the status quo.Another change that enables government but incapacitates social equity, is the Van (Sanrakshan Evam Samvardhan) Rules, 2023 which replaced the Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022.

The rules that are part of the Forest Conservation Act, effectively, removed Gram Sabhas (village assemblies) from the decision-making process of land use (diluting 2007 Forest Rights Act); centralised the decision-making process by instituting urban pro-industry committees; regularised past violations (under 2007 FRA) deepening social injustice; and brought in “linear project” clause which allows for seamless land acquisition in a particular area.

In the case of Hyderabad’s Kanchi Gachibowli area, which essentially constitutes former grazing commons (the name ‘kanchi’ means shepherd, ‘gachi’ indicates natural water catchment areas) the government’s argument is that it is registered as a “waste land” in the revenue records, a term invented by the British Colonial administration, for non-revenue generating lands.What made the government decide on this piece of land for establishment of IT park is its proximity to Gachibowli financial district. In the government's eyes it fulfils the “linear project” clause.

Meanwhile, the University of Hyderabad students, concerned citizens and the conservationists filed petitions in the Telangana High Court claiming the land fell in the category of “forest” under the Forest Conservation Act. The Supreme Court bench of justices, BR Gavai and AG Masih, on their part invoked the provisions of 2023 Van (SES) Rules.

This brings us to the second pattern made visible in the “sustainable development” model. Namely, multiplicity of policies and legal hurdles that it creates for concerned citizens. Re-imagining the city as a shared space where nature and people coexist becomes impossible when the public is required to engage in costly legal battles.

Meanwhile, the government’s fast tracking of development, especially in the context of urbanisation and related infrastructure, has given birth to an inter-related web of hardship and disasters.

We all want our lives to be better, we desire and require various modes of connectivity (buses, trams, metro, vehicles) , better urban infrastructure (roads, shopping areas, hospitals, schools, sport facilities etc) and services (delivery systems, mobile towers etc). Construction and use of these contribute to air pollution, island heat effect, water woes and waterlogging, impacting the health and purse of the public. 

This is the third pattern that confounds our daily life. Which ironically, everyone, including politicians and industrialists, agree is non-sustainable. But no action other than mitigating adverse impact is suggested. In all this what is palpably striking is the absence of public involvement in the decision-making processes for the city. The fourth pattern to post-modern development in India. 

To take the example of Delhi, India’s capital city, the Delhi Urban Arts Commission, which has in the past played an advisory role in the city’s planning, has been virtually rendered impotent. Its role was not only about maintaining an aesthetic aspect of the city but also to advise and suggest plans for its seamless integration and smooth functioning.

To give an instance, creating shopping complexes in each area of the city, prevents unnecessary journeys to another part of the city. Building of Malls in the 1990s put this idea on its head. The rise of monotonous brutalist conglomerations of high-rise residential areas and office/shopping spaces in the National Capital Region (Gurugram, Noida and Greater Noida) has meant that the population is constantly, on a daily/hourly basis, navigating their lives between the three clusters. And one is not mentioning the aesthetics of the city that increasingly resembles shipping containers in a SEZ rather than a cultural edifice such as Rome or Shahjahanabad (now sentimentally called “old Delhi”).

Meanwhile, social equity and environmental concerns have been undervalued or remain unaddressed. While industry can lobby with the government, and the government takes recourse to laws, the society, especially the children and the elderly, dispossessed and economically marginalised communities struggle to be heard.

The air grows more and more polluted, and the water table of the cities is sinking. Lack of town planning in the face of real estate explosion, is leading to island heat effect, slum cities, vehicular congestion, and acute lack of green lung space. This is the new hydra-headed environmental Ravan we have to deal with.

In this context, and with reference to recent events in Hyderabad, the Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s statement in the Telangana State Assembly that there were no tigers or deer in the Kancha Gachibowli land but that “some cunning foxes were trying to obstruct development” a remark that was aimed at the opposition, is also symbolic of the times we live in.