An Analytical Study of Green Business Practices in India With Specific Reference to Selected Indian Companies.

Sustainable business, or a green business, is an enterprise that has minimal negative impact on the global or local environment, community, society, or economy—a business that strives to meet the triple bottom line. The notion of “green business” emerged at the end of the 20th century in the wake of the ever-increasing public concern about the sustainability of economic development. The latter, in turn, was roused up by the growing awareness of environmental issues such as the accelerating depletion of natural resources and the deterioration of environmental quality. While the origins of the modern “green movements” can be traced down to the middle of the 1960s, it took almost 20 years for business to adapt to the “greening” trends and adopt them into its ideology and practice, coining the term “green business” for that purpose. However, even today, the substance of the green business concept is rather ambiguous as demonstrated by the variety of its definitions that could be found in different sources. Green business practices are still far from being universally embraced and applied by business entities around the world, with perceptible differences of business penetration by the “green” ideas in various countries. This is due to several reasons, one of them being the fact that the “greening of business” is still largely perceived as an extra burden (in terms of cost increase or revenue loss), and the other reason being related to the national specifics in terms of cultural, political, and economic differences. The paper highlights the relevance of green business practices in current scenario and analyzes how these practices are implemented by selected reputed companies in India and what impact it has on their performance and efficiency.