Direction of Environmental Virtue an Epilogue: A Critical Analysis of 19th Century Case Laws

In this race the Indian legislature, fortunately, has not lagged far behind and has shown great concern for degradation of environment” and made specific legislative attempts to control different environmental pollution in particular. On the other hand, the second limb of the state, the executive, has been moving at a snail’s pace or what Justice Krishna Iyer says, the bureaucratic machinery, which difunctionally, has passion for files, not for the people.” Whereas, the judiciary is trying its best to balance the environment and development. In view of the degrading environment which poses a problem for the very survival of living things, the environmental law academics lately started paying attention to this underdeveloped field. Out of the three components of the state, the academics in India have generally confined their discussions to the approach of the legislature. The executive approach in environment has yet to attract serious attention of the law academics’ writings. However, the judicial approach finds some place in the law writings. The present paper makes an attempt to take further the discussion on Indian judicial approach in the field of environment. Such academic exercise is all the more necessary in the present time because Indian judiciary since 1980 is taking special cognizance of the pollution explosion and there is a substantial increase in the case law in environment. Is not the time ripe to take stock of the direction of environmental legality in India? The present paper makes a humble attempt in this direction. It confines discussion to the cases of 1987 decided by the Supreme Court of India and the High Courts. This specific year has been selected because the graph of case law in environment from the year 1950 to 1990 shows its highest peak in 1987.