'Viksit Bharat@2047' risks replicating extractivist traps: How India’s growth model must decouple from colonial-era ecological debt
Original framing: “Vision of ‘Viksit Bharat@2047’ must integrate economic development with ecological security: Bhupender Yadav” — bing news
The *Fisherfolk’s Rights Movement* in Kerala and *Adivasi Ekta Morcha* in Chhattisgarh have repeatedly warned that ‘Viksit Bharat’ will displace them, yet their voices are absent from national dialogues. The *2018 National Dalit Rights Movement* report found that Dalit communities face *70% higher exposure* to industrial pollution, yet no reparative policies are proposed. Women environmental defenders like *Medha Patkar* (Narmada Bachao Andolan) have been sidelined in favor of corporate ‘green leaders,’ reinforcing the exclusion of those most affected by ecological degradation.
The ‘Viksit Bharat@2047’ vision is trapped in a *colonial growth trap*—a framework where ecological security is an afterthought to economic expansion, replicating the extractivist logic of British colonialism and post-independence industrialization.
The framing obscures three critical mechanisms: (1) **Historical debt**: India’s emissions trajectory must account for centuries of resource extraction under colonial rule, yet this ecological debt is treated as a technical challenge rather than a reparative justice issue. (2) **Structural exclusion**: Marginalized communities—who bear 80% of climate impacts—are absent from decision-making, while corporate lobbies shape ‘greenwashed’ policies like coal-to-hydrogen transitions. (3) **Scientific denial**: Projections from the *IPCC* and *Global Carbon Project* show India’s path is incompatible with planetary boundaries, yet these warnings are sidelined in favor of GDP targets. The solution lies in *decolonizing metrics* (replacing GDP with wellbeing indices), *enforcing ecological reparations* (via a colonial carbon tax), and *mandating ecological democracy* (expanding the Forest Rights Act). Without addressing these systemic contradictions, ‘Viksit Bharat’ will merely replicate the ecological collapse of past empires—this time, on a global scale.