Environmental Regulations in India

India has a good number of environmental regulations, but these are tangentially touching the core aspect of the issue. Here we have looked into all the environmental regulations in India by analysing the ways in which the environment should be regulated effectively. The command and control (CAC) policies have been critically examined vis-à-vis the market-based instruments. This has been done first by constructing a comprehensive definition of ecotaxes and thus examining the existing taxes in India which could be deemed as environmental taxes in the strict Pigouvian sense. Thereafter, in this study, polluting sectors and goods were identified for the potential levy of ecotaxes in all the three types of pollution, i.e. air, water and land. Finally, the status of the CAC policies and their compliance by the polluting industries were examined by studying the interrelationships between the legislative, executive and judiciary. Fifteen types of environmentally related taxes were identified in India of which only two could be deemed as direct environmental taxes: ‘vehicles tax (on old automobiles)’ levied in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa and Maharashtra and ‘vehicles entry tax’ in Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. The environmental legislations are overlapping, and the powers given to the pollution control boards (PCBs) are insufficient and thus these laws act as toothless tigers. Alert judiciary has played very significant role in protecting the environment in India; however, it is also plagued with delays in the judgements and is constrained with the lack of technical expertise in several environmental pleas because of which the judgements are not pragmatic.