Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi Foundation's Samvaad Positions Sustainable Development As India's Next Constitutional Frontier

The second-edition of Samvaad, a flagship annual event of the Foundation, underscored that India's environmental crisis is inseparable from class, constitutionalism, and state accountability – demanding nothing short of systemic transformation.

When Governance Fails, the Constitution Is Forced to Stretch

At Samvaad 2.0, held at the India International Centre, the Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi Foundation brought together Justice Abhay S. Oka (Former Judge, Supreme Court of India), Justice Najmi Waziri (Former Judge, Delhi High Court), and Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar for a trialogue on a deceptively simple theme: Sustainable Development and the Idea of India Therein.

Moderating the event, Ms. Shahrukh Alam, Advocate, Supreme Court of India, set the tone by of the trialogue immediately by framing environmental justice as a deeply political and socio-economic issue, challenging the notion of it being an “elite idea.” Ms. Alam asserted that without addressing underlying social issues, “Environmentalism without class struggle is gardening.” She tied the debate on climate justice to fundamental questions of land rights, displacement, and “Who gets what, and says who,” noting the right to 'Dwelling Well' – a life of dignity beyond mere survival. 

The discussion revealed a stark truth:

India's environmental crisis is a governance crisis – and judicial intervention, however imperfect, has often become a constitutional compulsion.

Environmental Protection Is Already Constitutional – The Failure Lies in Implementation

Justice Abhay Oka opened with a reminder that often gets lost in the administrative fog: environmental protection is embedded in Article 21 jurisprudence. For more than three decades, courts have recognised clean air, water, and a healthy environment as integral to the right to life.

Yet, as Justice Oka pointed out, the gap between constitutional text and institutional will remains vast: “The Constitution has sufficient provisions. The problem is they remain on paper because no one implements them.”

Justice Oka framed it bluntly: “When you protect the environment, you protect fundamental rights. Courts have sometimes had to be harsh – that is the need of the hour.”

His point was not judicial triumphalism. It was institutional reality.

His remarks underscored a pattern seen across India: the most vulnerable communities, bear the heaviest burdens of environmental degradation. Rehabilitation sites are routinely in polluted zones, slum relocations disrupt livelihoods, and unregulated construction corrodes urban habitability. It is these very communities who rarely find representation in administrative decision-making.

To portray slums as the source of pollution, Justice Oka warned, is a narrative that conveniently shifts responsibility: “Illegal shanties are not the cause of environmental degradation. When demolition becomes necessary, rehabilitation must be meaningful and not in highly polluted areas that endanger lives.”

Demolition disproportionately disrupts livelihoods, schooling, health access, and social networks. He warned: “Rehabilitation cannot mean moving people into highly polluted zones. That is not sustainable development.”

The message was clear: Sustainability that dislocates the vulnerable is not sustainability – it is displacement by another name.

He cautioned against viewing judicial intervention as overreach. In reality, he argued, judicial action fills the void left by administrative inaction.

The Judiciary's Dilemma: Necessary Intervention, Structural Limits

Justice Najmi Waziri's interventions reflected decades of judicial engagement with Delhi's ecological crises. He captured the frustration of a judge confronting a non-responsive state: “There is constant resistance when courts direct the executive to act. It is the tyranny of the indolent.”

The concern is not occasional non-compliance; it is systemic lethargy.

Justice Waziri offered examples from Delhi's evolving landscape: unplanned real estate growth, failing drainage systems, rampant air pollution, and demolition drives that ignore the rights of the displaced. He highlighted the human cost of environmental misgovernance: “When slum residents are relocated, they lose their community, their schools, their livelihoods. Sustainability must keep people at the centre.”

He also said, Delhi's waste hills, recurrent flooding, chronic pollution, and unplanned vertical expansion are not environmental accidents, they are failures of administrative will. In such a landscape, judicial directions become both a remedy and a symptom.

His observation that environmental issues rarely find place in political manifestos was telling: “Environmental concerns are debated in courts because they are absent in political discourse.”

This disconnect ensures that environmental commitments remain episodic, judicially driven, and weakly institutionalised.

Environmentalism Is Not just for the Elite – It Is Class Struggle

Yet, as Senior Advocate K. Parameshwar reminded the audience, even judicial remedies are bounded: “Every environmental matter is a fight over distribution of resources. Courts, by nature, give binary outcomes. Environmental justice needs a spectrum of solutions.”

The panel decisively rejected the shallow critique that environmental protection is elitist.

Parameshwar was unequivocal: “Environment is not opposed to livelihood. Environment is livelihood. Environmental cases are class struggles.”

He argued that environmental statutes, though well-intentioned, often produce class-skewed outcomes, the burden of compliance has historically fallen on those least able to absorb it. The CNG transition for auto drivers being a telling example. The core issue, he said, is structural: courts are forced into binary decisions in matters that demand nuanced, multi-layered solutions.

This was not a critique of the judiciary, but of a governance architecture that places disproportionate expectation on it.

He pointed to the limitations of PIL-led environmental governance: “These cases are personality-driven. They rise and fall depending on the judges and amici who handle them.”

Parameshwar's institutional critique was equally sharp. The Forest Rights Act, he observed, came “50 years too late” and yet remains under-implemented. By excluding communities from decisions about forests, the system weakens both environmental and livelihood outcomes. Sustainability is not a technical term – it is a distributional one.

A Debate on Duties: Between Constitutional Morality and State Power

The panel's trialogue on fundamental duties offered a rare constitutional introspection. Parameshwar emphasised their origins in the Emergency era, cautioning that duties must not become tools for the state to discipline citizens.

Justice Oka offered a constitutionalist counterpoint: “If it is my duty to abide by the Constitution, it is equally my duty to protect your freedom of speech. Duties, when read correctly, strengthen rights.”

Both perspectives converged on a shared conclusion: Sustainability cannot be achieved without active citizenship.

A Broader Constitutional Question: What Exactly Is Sustainable Development in India?

Across the trialogue, the speakers returned repeatedly to one central tension: Can India reconcile its economic ambitions with its constitutional commitment to justice?

The conversation suggested that sustainable development must be understood not as a technical framework but as a constitutional balancing act – between growth and equity, development and dignity, ambition and ecological integrity.

This is not a new debate. But Samvaad 2.0 made clear that India's future depends on whether this balance becomes institutional rather than incidental.

A Constitutional Moment: Participation, Decentralisation, and Structural Reform

The discussion repeatedly returned to one question: What must India reimagine to make sustainable development real, not rhetorical?

Three constitutional imperatives emerged:

1. Put Participation at the Centre

Justice Oka said; “Every person affected by development must have a right to be heard.”

India's environmental conflicts – forests, urban land, infrastructure – are intensified because decision-making is insulated from those who bear the consequences.

2. Decentralise Resource Governance

Parameshwar made a provocative structural proposal; “Bring public resources – water, forests, transport, district hospitals – back under High Court jurisdiction.”

Tribunals, he argued, have diluted judicial oversight over critical environmental assets.

3. Reclaim Constitutional Fraternity and Collective Duty

The panel debated the meaning of fundamental duties, with Parameshwar reminding the audience of their Emergency-era origins, while Justice Oka countered with a rights-based reading; “If it is my duty to abide by the Constitution, it is equally my duty to protect your freedom of speech. Duties, read correctly, strengthen rights.”

The shared conclusion:

Environmental protection cannot be outsourced to courts – it requires citizens, governments, and institutions to treat sustainability as a constitutional ethic, not a policy afterthought.

A Foundation Rooted in Purpose, Memory, and Constitutional Service

The evening opened with remarks by Ms. Anushree Tripathi, Trustee, who invoked Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi's belief that: “Service must be purposeful, and purpose must be humane.”

She highlighted the Foundation's ongoing tree plantation and rewilding initiatives across Bihar and parts of the country, undertaken as acts of community stewardship and intergenerational responsibility. Each sapling, she noted, is a quiet assertion that environmental justice begins with local action.She reflected on the Foundation's broader commitment to constitutional dialogue and access to justice.

The evening concluded with a vote of thanks by Ms. Aditi Tripathi, Trustee, who captured the essence of the discussion succinctly: environmental justice cannot be separated from human dignity.

The Foundation was inaugurated on 27 November 2022, at New Delhi. The functioning of the Foundation is overseen by Justice Tripathi's wife, Mrs. Alka Tripathi, as Founder and Trustee along with his daughters and son-in-law, Anushree Tripathi, Aditi Tripathi; Aakriti Tripathi, and Rahul Narayanan.

The Foundation, now in its fourth year, has become a platform where legal discourse is not confined to doctrine, but grounded in empathy, memory, and democratic obligation.

The Constitutional Frontier Ahead

“Sustainable Development” is often presented as a policy horizon.
Samvaad 2.0 reframed it as something deeper:

India's next constitutional frontier – where environmental justice becomes indistinguishable from human dignity, distributive justice, and democratic participation.

If the first edition of Samvaad (2024) asked what justice demands, Samvaad 2.0 asked what India must become to meet those demands.

And by placing the most vulnerable at the centre of that inquiry, the Justice Ajay Kumar Tripathi Foundation ensured that the conversation was not only legal but profoundly moral.

The Road Ahead

As India positions itself to become a Viksit Bharat by 2047, its constitutional landscape is confronting an unavoidable truth: sustainable development is no longer a policy aspiration, it is a constitutional imperative.

At Samvaad 2.0, the discussion moved beyond pollution and climate metrics, becoming a constitutional examination of power, justice, and the Idea of India.

The debate at Samvaad suggests a path forward:

· Make environmental protection politically relevant, not just judicially managed.

· Strengthen participatory governance in development and forest decisions.

· Recognize that environmental burdens fall disproportionately on the poor.

· Anchor sustainable development within constitutional morality and equity.

The trialogue concluded with a unanimous recognition : sustainability will define the Idea of India in the decades to come – not as a slogan, but as a constitutional promise.