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BOOK REVIEW  
 

Dunu Roy  
 
Centre for Science and Environment. 2017. Annual State of India’s 
Environment—SOE 2017. New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment; 
ISBN: 978-81-86906-02-6; INR 350 
 

The ‘State of India’s Environment Report’, 
published annually by the Centre for 
Science and Environment, is out for 2017. 
First produced in 1985, this report is 
eagerly awaited by environmentalists, 
policymakers, and citizens, as it contains a 
wealth of information that is of interest to 
many. This one has three essays, ten 
chapters, and forty-four articles: a 
formidable collection, by any reckoning. 
Does the CSE succeed in bringing all these 
together into one overarching vision? 

The section at the end, on ‘Data and 
Development’, is the most valuable part. It 
summarizes that most agencies 

implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) do not have the 
latest/relevant data; only 23 per cent of soil health cards have been issued; 
30 per cent of the land is degraded; there is a 12 per cent decline in 
environmental crimes; 36 per cent of forest clearances were for irrigation 
and 20 per cent for mining; cities are growing at the cost of wetlands; and 
there are only 2 buses per 1000 people. All this information should pose 
several questions, such as: why is the state of the environment such? And 
have the official data been checked against other sources? 

 
 Environmentalist, Hazards Centre, C4/111, SDA, New Delhi, 110016. 
qadeeroy@gmail.com 

Copyright © Roy 2018. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 
International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.24  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i1.24


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [106] 

To examine whether the report has done so, one could begin by asking, for 
instance: why has soil health not been determined? The chapter on rural 
development has five articles; these argue that information and 
communications technology (ICT) platforms will transform the agro-
economy by letting farmers negotiate better prices. The authors 
acknowledge that demonetization has hit farmers, who are also locked into 
informal debt traps, and growth has failed to create employment; but they 
offer that things could improve if land records were digitally linked; cash 
use was reduced in mandis (wholesale markets); and the public crop 
insurance scheme was made more attractive. 

Only one author asks, ‘Why are people poor? How do they get out of 
poverty?’ But the questions remain unanswered. There is no mention of 
farmer suicides, the overuse of fertilizers, pesticide poisoning, droughts, or 
floods, which many independent commentators have analysed vividly. 

In the related chapter on ‘Disaster and Conflict’, the lead author holds that 
the 1990s drought was of the poor India, but the 2016 drought was of the 
rich. Hence, one must catch every drop of water, store it, recharge 
groundwater, revise the drought code, and ‘work obsessively to secure 
water in all times’. Other authors show that while Rs 11.25 lakh crore was 
spent on flood control measures, flood-affected areas rose in the same 
period by over 160 per cent; and that river beds are rising because of 
sediment loads, while embankments are unable to contain rising water 
levels. Yet, they recommend; build dams with cushions to avoid flood 
runoffs, strengthen embankments to withstand floods every 10 years, 
improve flood forecasting, and strengthen rescue and rehabilitation. Only 
one author argues that there is a need for a fresh outlook at managing 
floods that includes sediment management. No further space is given to 
this author’s large body of work on precisely the same subject. 

One would imagine that the chapter on ‘Water and Sanitation’ would 
explore this theme further. But the maximum space is devoted to toilets. 
Arguably, 65,000 tonnes of feces are disposed in the open daily, but how is 
that related to the death of one out of five children due to pneumonia (and 
diarrhoea), or to the outrageous Thalerian proposition that the focus should 
be on ‘behavioural change’? The CSE’s survey of 168 slums in 
Bhubaneshwar is used to conclude that untreated wastewater can pollute 
water sources, particularly drinking water sources, but how does that lead to 
the argument that where ‘open defecation and surface disposal of faeces are 
common, these are the major causes of water contamination’? What is the 
link between wet wastewater from toilets and dry open defecation? The 
extensive campaign of sewerage workers, who will have to bear the brunt of 
waste disposal, apparently deserves no mention. 



[107] Dunu Roy 

The tendency in this chapter, to underline the (mis)behaviour of the poor 
and encourage government schemes, is carried over into other chapters. 
The chapter on ‘Air Pollution’ praises India’s adoption of Bharat Stage VI 
(BS-VI) emission standards in 2020, thus ‘leap-frogging’ the Kuznetsian 
inverted-Ucurve to catch up with developed countries. A CSE team that 
visited Gaya to monitor air quality in anganwadis (childcare centres) comes 
to the rapid conclusion that ‘rural homes across India should also be 
encouraged to move on to clean cooking fuels’. In the chapter on ‘Energy 
and Industry’, a study of 30 villages is used to reinforce the hypothesis that 
decentralized distribution generation would provide universal access to 
energy. Industrial pollution can be controlled by implementing continuous 
monitoring systems, and banks and financial institutions would be able to 
control non-performing assets if they only address environmental and social 
risks! The cumulative argument, that technology has the solutions to social 
problems, is pervasive throughout the report, even though the data cited in 
the report itself does not support the argument. 

So, is there an overarching vision of an alternative to what the first essay, by 
CSE Director General Sunita Narain, calls ‘unbridled consumerism-led 
growth (that) is not even working for the rich, forget the poor’? Narain 
proposes that there is an ‘opportunity to reconsider the future strategies’ 
based on local resources with local communities. On the other hand, the 
second essay, by Deputy Director General Chandra Bhushan, compares the 
international negotiations at Paris with those in Kigali and suggests that 
success can be achieved ‘when we shift the negotiations from big platforms 
(with politicians) to smaller sectoral negotiating platforms (with experts)’. 
And the third essay (by journalist Rakesh Kalshian) discusses the 
Anthropocene with the hope that its makeover will be democratic so that 
‘activists, thinkers and leaders craft challenges and invitations that bring 
some of us a little closer to a better possible world’. All in all, the imperative 
political questions that concern people and the environment are relegated to 
the background. 


