1Presidential address delivered at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Indian Association of Social Science Institutions (IASSI), on 25 October, 2024. I wish to thank Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi, Prof. Alakh N. Sharma, Prof. Romar Correa and Prof. Sandhya S. Iyer for their suggestions and Dr. Aditi Madan for excellent research support. The usual caveat applies.
The world currently since the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 has been facing multiple interconnected and interacting crises simultaneously resulting in an existential crisis. By 2023, while the developed countries managed to restore their living standards, employment, economic growth and human development attainments to pre-pandemic levels, the developing countries have had a mixed record with the challenges of high unemployment, high debt burden and high vulnerability to climate change repercussions affecting them adversely. The present global situation is due to economic growth being given prime importance in the post Second World war period to the neglect of distributional and environmental concerns.
The paper argues that the current situation cannot be salvaged by following a ‘Business as Usual’ approach nor by reorienting the current paradigm towards equity and sustainability. The paper argues in favour of introducing a new development paradigm integrating the human development and Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE) approaches as it is embedded in the ethical values of equity and sustainability, is people-centric, recognizes diversity and takes due cognizance of the requirements of future generations. Examples of countries that have successfully incorporated equity and sustainability concerns into their just transition policies are highlighted for their relevance to the current context.
Development paradigm, Human development, Lifestyle for environment, Equity, Sustainability
