Resilience and recovery: Strengthening environmental sustainability in India's post-pandemic economy

The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, spread rapidly and widely across the world in the year 2020 and what began as a massive challenge for health services in many of the impacted nations now also threatens to send the world's economy into an unprecedented recession. Latest World Bank reductions in its growth forecasts for India for 2020-21 confirm that lower growth projections now stand at 2.8%, compared to the rise of 5% forecast for 2019-20. Informal sector workers, and the members of lower income groups are worst hit, since their wages have simply vanished. The linkages between health, environment, and the economy have been reinforced. There are many evidences that linked a higher number of mortalities attributed to COVID-19 and the incidence of air pollution. Increasing deforestation has exposed the world to diseases carried by wildlife. However, global warming may melt the ice carrying undiscovered viruses in the permafrost. But perhaps the crisis has also revealed that the governments and people have enough capacity to take really tough, swift action at the face of an overarching threat. As India rebuilds its economy, it is worth reflecting on all these systemic actions needed to shift toward a more sustainable and resilient economy. This paper explores this complex interplay between resilience, recovery, and environmental sustainability within a post-pandemic context, applied to the case of India. The subject matter sharply accentuates the necessity of having resilient economies that can face such similar shocks during its process while highlighting the pressing need for sustainable recovery strategies. This paper surveys the case of India with the unique challenges and policy responses in order to gauge possible trajectories toward enhancing environmental sustainability in step with economic recovery.