‘Interest groups in the Environmental Regulation in India – population, patterns, and strategies?’

Studies of interest groups within all realms of politics and international relations have historically been heavily weighted toward Western democracies, overlooking systems beyond Europe and Western states. Despite being one of the world’s largest countries and democracies, India remains relatively elusive in this field of research. As environmental questions gain ever more traction within domestic and international activities and across all levels of society, gaining a greater understanding of interest representation and lobbying on these questions becomes imperative. Alas, although, interest groups are recognised elsewhere as an important voice on socio-political matters, our knowledge of interest groups system in India, groups’ numbers and activities, is quite limited. Whilst there are a number of articles examining individual environmental cases (e.g., controversial coal projects), their narrative approach to studying advocacy limits the reliability of the results. Specifically, a failure to put interest groups’ activity as the point of focus reduces the potential for broader international comparisons. This paper addresses this problem by consolidating population data on interest groups in India in order to better understand the actors, the dynamics of groups’ activities and the interactions between interest groups and the state. To do so, we define and map environmental interest groups across three neighbouring states within India (Chhattisgarh, Odisha & West Bengal). We subsequently establish a formal statistical framework to analyse the activities and relations of these groups and provide a foundation for future research of environmental advocacy in India.