Eco concerns don’t stall real development

Branding environmental activism as anti-development further weakens safeguards in an age of climate anxieties.

The Supreme Court of India, on May 11, 2026, hearing a plea regarding the Pipavav port in Gujarat, remarked, “Show us even a single project in this country where these so-called environmental activists have said that we welcome this project.”

The statement struck a nerve among many citizens, researchers, community leaders, and environmental and social justice stewards across the country. Such criticism is not new, but that it came from India’s highest court, dismissing their decades of work in a country that is witness to the world’s worst environmental crime, was shocking. Moreover, if one thinks about it, every city, town, and village in the country today has stories that disprove this accusation.

In Bengaluru, for instance, if it were not for local communities, waste workers, citizen groups, and environmental activists approaching courts repeatedly over the years, the IT/BT city would have drowned in its own waste. If even a small percentage of the city segregates waste today, it is because these ordinary people did what they should do under the Constitution.

Article 51A(g) of the Indian Constitution states that it is the fundamental duty of every citizen “to protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers and wildlife, and to have compassion for living creatures.” Moreover, the Supreme Court has linked this duty to the right to a clean environment under Article 21, asserting that environmental protection is essential to the right to life.

The film Waste and the City, made by Teepoi films, captures this, and it is certainly not about people opposing development. Around 2012, Bengaluru was facing a severe crisis, as local communities in Mavallipura, having borne the brunt of the landfill menace since the early 2000s, refused to accept any more of the city’s waste being illegally and unscientifically dumped in their village. Mountains of mixed garbage that were dumped resulted in unbearable stench, contaminated groundwater, gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses, cancers, and kidney failures. The destruction of agro-pastoral land had wrecked their lives and livelihoods. Garbage fires became common. Moreover, the city’s waste system was visibly collapsing.

It was environmental groups, researchers, and the affected villagers who brought these issues into courtrooms through public interest litigation. They questioned why a rapidly growing global city could not manage its waste responsibly. They challenged the indiscriminate dumping of mixed waste. The Karnataka High Court, which heard the case for over a decade, examined the problem, systematically issued interim orders, and eventually directed the city towards segregation at source and the adoption of decentralised waste management systems. The now-familiar “Two Bins and One Bag” framework emerged through these interventions and sustained citizen pressure.

Today, when households separate wet and dry waste, when apartments discuss composting, when dry waste collection centres operate across the city, or when conversations about circular economies emerge in policy spaces, or when bio-mining of legacy waste has begun in places such as the Mavallipura landfill, we are witnessing the outcomes of struggles led by people who now may be referred to as “anti-development.” Without those interventions, Bengaluru’s waste crisis would likely have spiralled further into a public health disaster. The framing of people who raise valid questions about environmental issues as enemies of development is deeply disturbing.

Local communities in India have often stepped in precisely where governance systems failed. They have brought up issues long before institutions acknowledged them. They have flagged critical information far earlier than any academic institution. Their lived experiences have often far outweighed scientific evidence, too. Were those who raised these concerns anti-development? Or were they among the few questioning insatiable consumption-based development and holding a mirror to the tech city?

This differentiation is important. Contemporary public discourse reduces development to highways, airports, ports, industrial corridors, and urbanisation. Any logical questioning of these is characterised as a blockade. It is important to break down the word “development” and ask if it means clean air, water, soil, good nutrition and health, access to education, healthcare, mobility, and democratic participation for all.

A dangerous ruse

The questions raised by people, in fact, are only based on the very environmental principles often highlighted by the Supreme Court. Especially those of the precautionary principle, the principle of intergenerational equity, the principle of natural justice, and others.

The stories of environmental litigation from across the country have frequently strengthened democracy itself. Many landmark judgments in use today emerged when citizens approached the courts after administrative systems collapsed. Courts have always been the last beacon of hope when everything else failed. This is especially important in a country like India, where communities at risk often bear the heaviest environmental burdens. Landfills, for instance, are rarely located within cities, beside elite, upper-class, upper-caste neighbourhoods.

The Bengaluru waste story is highly intertwined. It was not just about landfills; it was about the burden on peri-urban communities, segregation, recycling, public health, the condition of the sanitation workers, and more. People demanded processes that reduced the ecological damage and created a just and equitable society. Never the language of ‘anti-development.’

The climate crisis has already made life extremely difficult in the subcontinent. With the weakening of environmental laws and painting those who ask questions as obstacles, we are treading a dangerous path.

The Bengaluru story highlights the importance of people questioning. They refused to accept the endless dumping. Citizens came together, and they organised. Communities protested. Environmentalists researched. Lawyers argued. Waste workers mobilised. And courts intervened. That is not anti-development. That is how courts in a constitutional democracy are expected to function. Hearing citizens when institutions fail, and by protecting the rights of the most vulnerable.

(The writer is an independent researcher and educator)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)