India must invest big money in climate mitigation and resilience: Did budget makers miss the memo?
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Climate change has moved gradually onto India’s economic agenda. Economic Surveys now devote full chapters to climate risk, budget speeches frame growth as green and India has formally estimated its climate finance needs at about $2.5 trillion by 2030.
Yet, Union budgets for the past 10 years show a stubborn gap between recognition and resourcing. Every budget season brings renewed climate promises, but allocation and implementation remains grossly inadequate. Even a generous count of solar subsidies, electric vehicle schemes, irrigation programmes and so on reveals that climate-related federal spending has reached perhaps 1.5% of GDP.
The government’s own estimate says it needs three times that amount. The annual budget of the ministry of environment, forests and climate change, which hovers around ₹3,000 crore, is barely a footnote in total central expenditure of ₹48 trillion. The government spends 70 times more on defence and 170 times more on debt servicing.
The climate has high salience in speeches but a low claim on actual spending. More telling is how public money is spent. Budgetary funds favour mitigation, which includes renewables, electrification and efficiency, while adaptation remains marginal, fragmented and largely invisible.
The ministry of new and renewable energy saw its budget jump from ₹7,563 crore to ₹19,100 crore in two years. Electric vehicles and solar installations have been driven by subsidies. Preparing for climate impacts already underway remains orphaned.
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