PERI - India’s Green Deal: Greening Our Way Out of the Pandemic

India’s Green Deal: Greening Our Way Out of the Pandemic

A Framework for Advancing India’s Green Deal

May 18, 2022 |

Working Paper

The global economy is in a deep crisis at three levels -- the COVID-19 pandemic, economic slowdown, and climate change. PERI researcher Shouvik Chakraborty and Rohit Azad show that the crisis has created an opportunity to change the course of development, a model where people, and not profits, form the core. They outline an Indian Green Deal that will create new jobs and fundamentally alter the economy’s carbon footprint. This program is funded in an egalitarian manner, which puts the burden of adjustment on those whose lifestyles are primarily responsible for India’s environmental and economic crises.

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Abstract

The global economy is in a deep crisis at three levels, -- the COVID-19 pandemic, economic slowdown, and climate change. We present a roadmap for the future, showing that the crisis has provided us with an opportunity to change the course of development, a model where people, and not profits, form the core. Based on the employment generating capacity and the carbon footprint of the various sectors of the Indian economy, we propose the Indian Green Deal (IGD) that will help create new jobs and fundamentally alter the economy’s carbon footprint. This programme needs to be funded in an egalitarian manner, which brings down the unprecedented levels of inequality in the Indian economy and puts the burden of adjustment on those whose lifestyles are primarily responsible for India’s environmental and economic crisis.