Paradigm of Sustainable Development Programme in India

There has been a great deal of concern all the world over about sustainable development. However, unlike the developed industrialized countries with high standard of living, the sustainability debate in countries like India been consistently fraught with difficult operational issued because of the nature of its internal situations and external linkages. Widespread poverty is the endemic socio-economic problem of India. As a consequence, in the Indian context, the critical operational parameter for defining sustainability is the intra-generational aspect rather inter-generational issues. The paper reviews the conceptional and difinitional issues of ‘sustainability’ in the Indian context. Further, an attempt is made to examine the strategic implication in implementing sustainable development programmes in some important sectors of activities such as, land, water, energy and forests. While identifying some broad strategic parameters for implementation of the alternative approach towards sustainable development, the paper examines the issues of people’s participation, affordable technologies, promotion of all the sectoral activities and the role-play of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).