This article presents an empirical study of population growth and environmental change using cross-section district-level data from South, Central, and West India. Environmental change is measured using a satellite-based vegetation index. Unlike prior work, the analysis treats population growth and environmental change as jointly determined, distinguishes between rural and urban populations, and distinguishes between two components of population growth, natural growth and migration. Among key findings are that environmental decline spurs rural population growth and net rural in-migration, which prompt further environmental decline; environmental improvement spurs urban population growth and net urban in-migration; and environmental scarcity spurs environmental improvement.

Contributed articles presented at the Seminar on "Population Environment Nexus" organized by the POP-ENVIS Centre at IIPS, Mumbai on Oct. 21, 2005; with reference to India.

In 1997, when India celebrated 50 years of its Independence, TERI's study Growth with Resource Enhancement of Environment and Nature (GREEN) India 2047 assessed whether the country was moving on an environmentally sustainable path. The sequel to the study, Directions Innovations and Strategies for Harnessing Action (DISHA) for sustainable development, released in 2001, projected environmental and resource implications for the country by 2047 under two scenarios, that is, continuing in a business-as-usual mode and adopting a more sustainable development trajectory. The present study picks up the thread from 1997, examining environmental trends in the last decade, isolating underlying priority issues and identifying strategies that are needed to prevent or ameliorate environmental damage. The mandate of the present study, thus, is to go beyond reporting the state of India's environment. Through an evaluation of the major factors that are responsible for the present state and the characteristics of resulting impacts, the study provides an agenda for action.

This work compares the forecasts of the Second India study of the 1960s - which investigated how the nation would cope with the inevitable doubling of its population by the year 2000 - with the actual effects of India's population growth.

There is a long-standing debate on the relationship between economic development and environmental quality. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis posits an inverted U relationship between environmental pollution and economic development. In the last few years several studies have appeared dealing with the relationship between the scale of economic activity and the level of pollution. Several empirical studies have identified a bell-shaped curve linking pollution to per capita GDP. The relationship between economic development and environmental quality is checked for a developing country like India using annual (time series) data, from 1990 to 2015, retrieved from Indiastat website. By employing the methods of Johansen co-integration test and granger causality test, the paper aimed to investigate the interactions between the variables empirically and Multiple linear regression is used to identify the determinants of Environmental pollution in India. The long run equilibrium relation between the variables are checked using co-integration test, the result of Johansen cointegration reveals that no cointegration relation between the variables. The existence of a relationship between variables does not prove causality, hence the Granger causality reveals that the causation runs from growth to Pollution. The multiple linear regression result revels the expected relation as provided in the literature Hence, it can be concluded that Economic growth leads to more Pollution in India. Based on the analysis, Policy implications are provided, regarding healthy and pollution free environment.