Unlocking sustainable development: Evaluating the impact of monetary and fiscal policies on ecological footprint in India

• The impact of fiscal and monetary policy on ecological footprint is conducted for India. • It controls for economic growth (square of it) and renewable energy consumption. • The role of fiscal policy is insignificant, while monetary policy effectively curbs the ecological footprint. • The inverted-U EKC hypothesis holds true. • Renewable energy consumption reduces the ecological footprint. India's rapid economic growth underscores the increased necessity of pursuing the paradigms of sustainable development. However, concerns over environmental sustainability have risen in tandem with the country's aspirational goals for economic progress. Therefore, a crucial aspect of managing this is to create a balance between economic prosperity and environmental quality, wherein comprehending how fiscal and monetary policies affect India's ecological footprint becomes an utmost priority. In this vein, this study evaluates the impact of fiscal and monetary policies on India's ecological footprint while controlling for economic growth, squared economic growth, and renewable energy consumption between 1990 and 2022. Given the complexity of these links and well-suitability for examining both short-term dynamics and long-term relationships, this study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model as its methodology for the empirical analysis. Thus, the findings indicate a significant long-term relationship between India's ecological footprint, fiscal policy, monetary policy, economic growth, squared economic growth, and renewable energy consumption while considering the ecological footprint as the dependent variable. Surprisingly, fiscal policy demonstrates insignificat negligible impacts on the ecological footprint in both the short and long run. Conversely, the result underscores that monetary policy effectively curbs the ecological footprint in both the short and long run. Furthermore, the study validates the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the long run. However, no evidence supports the EKC hypothesis in the short run. Besides, the outcome unveils that renewable energy consumption reduces the ecological footprint with no temporal differences. Hence, the policy implications derived from these findings emphasize the crucial role of monetary policy and integrating renewable energy strategies into policy frameworks for achieving sustainable development outcomes, in addition to the other policy interventions that prioritize ecological conservation alongside economic development, ensuring a balanced approach to solve environmental and economic challenges in India.