Beyond the Polluter’s Price: Corporate Environmental Liability, the National Green Tribunal and the Duties of Directors in India

Indian law has been more generous to the environment than its critics allow and less effective than its admirers claim. The doctrines of absolute liability, polluter pays and precaution are firmly settled, and the Tribunal has given them a statutory home. What remains is integration. Until company law ties the duties of those who decide to the liability of the firm they run, and until the price of harm is set by reference to damage and gain and not by index alone, the system will continue to produce compensation after the event instead of care before it. This study has limits that should be stated plainly. It is confined to reported decisions and statutes and does not examine orders of individual benches or State-level practice, where enforcement is likely to differ. It does not measure whether compensation orders are complied with, which is why the fifth proposal asks for data. A systematic review of Tribunal orders over a fixed period, coded for the heads of compensation awarded and the amounts actually recovered, is the natural next study, and it would test several of the propositions advanced here.

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