India's economic growth has come at the cost of worsening air and water pollution.
Rising pollution is pushing people to consider leaving cities in search of cleaner environments.
Government inaction threatens public health, workforce productivity and economic growth.
Suno gaur se duniya waalon, buri nazar na hum pe daalo, chahe jitna zor laga lo, sabse aage honge Hindustani.
When Shankar Mahadevan’s voice carried these words into the national consciousness in the late 1990s, they seemed to capture the sound of a country awakening to the possibilities of its own future. There was an almost boundless faith in what India could become. The 21st century, we were told, would belong to India. It was a promise that seemed to rise above the anxieties of the present.
India's economy was expanding, its technology industry was finding its place in the world, its entrepreneurs were building businesses that crossed borders and a young population held out the promise of a demographic dividend. For a country long accustomed to measuring its ambitions against its constraints, the future suddenly seemed luminous and within reach.
