Epilogue

The discussions within this book have analysed the interdependences among economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The social and environmental sustainability of development requires the process of growth to be socially non-disruptive and it should not involve any serious environmental risk of the collapse of its ecosystem. The former would require a just distribution of resources and social products among its people so that there is no serious poverty or inequality due to absolute or relative deprivation of resources or income for some of its people, and therefore no economic source of social tension. The empirical findings using advanced econometric and quantitative methods on the interrelationships among poverty, inequality, social tension, social discrimination, and religious polarization on the one hand and their fallouts in the form of crime, riots, and insurgencies across Indian states on the other have been quite informative, not always stereotypical, and insightful from the point of view of policy planning for social sustainability. The environmental sustainability condition would, on the other hand, require the reduction of the ecological footprint and improvement of environmental protection through conservation of resources and control of pollution, including CO...

Indicators of Social Sustainability

Chapter 2 focuses on the indicators of social sustainability basing alternatively on absolute or relative deprivation of people’s opportunities of consumption, or on the extent of attainment of human capability, enabling people to access a decent life. It has traced the relationship between deprivation—in both absolute and relative sense—and social tension conceived as social welfare loss according to some social welfare function, which underlies any indicator of development. After reviewing briefly the comparative state of inequality-adjusted level of development across developing countries, the chapter focussed on the analysis of the state of poverty, inequality, and measure of social tension (based on poverty gap or Gini coefficient) for the rural and urban sectors separately using the Indian state-level data to assess the state of social sustainability of the Indian economic system.

The Electrical Energy Scenario in India

Chapter 7 describes the power and energy scenario of India in terms of both the primary energy resource mix and the technology-wise gross generation mix of electrical energy as in 2015–16. It also describes in details the potential of all the renewable energy resources including storage hydro. So far as the carbon-free solar and wind power potentials are concerned, the chapter explains the basis of the estimates of the new power-capacity potentials, and also provides the power factor and the cumulative capacity built till 2012 utilizing the resources. These comparative figures indicate the huge potential of new capacity creation in future for each of such technology-based power. The chapter also discusses the natural resource requirement of these new renewables-based technologies on the one hand and gives comparative estimates of environmental cost and the true total resource cost for coal thermal power on the other.

Interdependence among Stages of Economic Development, Human Development, and the Natural Environment

Chapter 5 points to the interactive nature of the different aspects of development sustainability and investigates the interrelations among the different components of the overall development index using cross-country data with the help of simple econometric model of quadratic single equation type. The chapter further makes deeper analysis of the dynamic links among human development, the natural environment, and economic growth using simultaneous equation econometric models (mostly of two-stage least square type) with global cross-country data of the different time periods. The models and analysis of the chapter are based on the data of all the concerned variables presented in Chapter 4.

Human Development, Environmental Sustainability, and Index of Overall Development

Chapter 4 introduces the concept and measurement of multidimensional poverty and that of human development indicators as its obverse in terms of attainment of human capability. On the other hand, on the environmental sustainability front, the chapter discusses the measures of ecological footprint and its obverse the environmental performance index as possible alternative indicators. It has reviewed the concept of ecological footprint along with carbon footprint which are measures of stress caused by human demands on the services of ecosystems in terms of appropriation of productive land area. The environmental performance indicator on the other hand indicates the extent of performance of environmental conservation and protection as driven by human policy initiatives. Finally, the chapter provides an overall development indicator based on the indicators of three components of sustainability—economic, social, and environmental—as their geometric mean, along with the comparative estimates of per capita income.

Crime, Inequality, and Poverty

Chapter 3 enquires into the issues of the social sustainability aspect of development by analyzing the inter-relationships between crime and deprivation, and the resulting social tension in the Indian context. It estimates the relationship of violent crimes such as homicide and property-related crime—dacoity, burglary and robbery, riots and left-wing extremism—with economic inequality or poverty, or social tension induced by either of these, along with other developmental variables such as state of education, infrastructural development, urbanization, and so on. It has used panel data for both simple correlation analysis as well as multivariate regression analysis (generalised moments method) in its different dimensions of use and treatment. The analysis of riots also considered the role of share of minority population, share of SC/ST population, as well as religious polarization as important social explanatory variables.

Entropy Law, Social Sustainability, and Development Policy

Chapter 1 introduces the concept and intuitive explanation of entropy law and shows how it plays a unifying role in the sustainability of the processes of development—economic, social, and environmental. It points out that the speed of extraction of resources and their uses in the finite planetary ecosystem have become unsustainable today. This is due to the speed of extraction exceeding the capacity of resource regeneration as well as the absorption of waste generated from the extraction and usage of resources, resulting in a state of increasing disorder. The chapter further points out that the combining of social and environmental sustainability with the process of economic growth would require the development of a social investment perspective for the economy along the lines of welfare statism. Thus it outlines a short history of welfare statism since the days of the Swedish welfare state in the last century in order to understand the changing compulsions of sustainability over time.

Introduction

The role of entropy law and the finiteness of our planetary ecosystem in the economic processes of development are of fundamental importance in view of their wide-ranging impact on our society and economy. However, this had been neglected for long by most of the mainstream economists until Georgescu-Roesen’s seminal work ...

Transition from Fossil Fuel–Based Power to Renewable Energy

Chapter 8 points out what big-impact changes are required to meet the challenges of green energy development for transitioning from a fossil fuel–based to a new renewables–based power system in India. The chapter provides long run projections of demand for power, the requirement of power capacity growth with gradual substitution of coal thermal-based power with new renewables–based power, and of financial requirements for such capacity expansion. This is done using the test case of the onset of the Third Industrial Revolution in India. Apart from highlighting the supporting requirements of technological developments such as storage of power, flexible operation in thermal generation, and smart grid development for such changes. It shows the feasibility of financing the new renewables’ capacity through mobilization of resource rent from fossil fuel during the transition.

Energy, Sustainability, and Third Industrial Revolution

While the chapters of Part I have discussed at length the conceptual issues of the different dimensions of sustainability, Part II focuses on the same issues as arising in the context of the power and energy sector development in India. Chapter 6 describes the energy scenario of India including its carbon footprint in the background of macroeconomic setting of growth with cross-country comparison. It focuses on the issues of energy security, energy poverty and distribution, as well as carbon footprint and challenges of both socially and environmentally sustainable development of the power and energy sector of India. In this context it points out the difference in perspectives of the developed and the developing countries with respect to the relation between inclusive economic growth and climate control. It argues for possible complementarities in policies for the two in the perspective of the Third Industrial Revolution based on new renewables.