Is it possible to have sustainable development in India ? Cite major environmental issues and suggest a few measures to achieve the sustainability. (Answer in 350 words)

- Is it possible to have sustainable development in India ? Cite major environmental issues and suggest a few measures to achieve the sustainability. (Answer in 350 words)
Introduction
Sustainable development is possible in India, but not on the present path, because the country's environmental damage is produced less by scarcity than by how the costs and benefits of growth are distributed.
Body
1. Whether it is possible: India's per capita emissions remain well below the world average, so the problem is to avoid a high-consumption path rather than to reverse one. The means exist: a constitutional duty under Articles 48A and 51A(g), the Environment Protection Act of 1986, the National Green Tribunal, and an energy transition that has moved faster than expected, with non-fossil sources crossing half of installed electricity capacity ahead of the 2030 target set in the Glasgow commitments. What makes it uncertain is not technology but enforcement and the political weight of those who profit from degradation.
2. The major problems in the way: Air pollution is the gravest, with Indian cities recurrent at the top of world rankings and premature deaths estimated in the region of a million a year. Groundwater, on which most irrigation and drinking water depend, is being drawn down faster than it recharges, severely in Punjab, Haryana and western India, while the Ganga and Yamuna carry untreated sewage. Close to a third of India's land is degraded. Forests hold at roughly a fifth of the area under continuous pressure from mining and infrastructure, with biodiversity loss alongside. Climate impacts are already here in heatwaves, erratic monsoons, Himalayan instability seen at Kedarnath, Chamoli and Joshimath, and coastal erosion. Solid and plastic waste outruns municipal capacity.
3. Measures towards sustainability: Hold the renewable target while building storage and grid, and plan a just transition for the coal districts of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh. Enforce the polluter pays and precautionary principles the Supreme Court read into Article 21 in the Vellore Citizens case, and make clearance and impact assessment substantive rather than formal. Reprice the free power and procurement incentives that mine groundwater in Punjab, and shift to millets, micro-irrigation and natural farming. Build public transport and decentralised waste segregation in cities. Implement the Forest Rights Act and PESA so that forest dwellers manage forests, the direction the Gadgil committee urged for the Western Ghats before it was diluted.
4. A concluding stand: Sustainable development in India is possible, and it will be achieved as redistribution or not at all, because every measure above turns on whose development is pursued and at whose cost.
Conclusion
The binding question is not whether India can afford sustainability but who is made to pay for its absence.