INDIA: SHAPING THE GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY AGENDA? Evaluating the vision for Sustainable Development in 12th Five Year Plan of India

Abstract: The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how India’s national 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) incorporates Sustainable Development, with a special focus on the strength and the weakness of the vision on Sustainable Development. Simply, India is in need of a specific national Sustainable Development strategy. However, a vision on Sustainable Development is clearly integrated in the 12th Five Year Plan, an overall document for the development of India in five next years, which argues that each state, sector and ministries/departments must take sustainability into account. The theory of the thesis suggests at basic that this national Sustainable Development strategy or vision should attempt to balance economic, social and environmental aspects at all times with a wide-ranging participation and consensus. A qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the 12th Five Year Plan and this was done by Cherp et al (2004) National Sustainable Development Strategy framework, which the five above mentioned criteria’s could analyse Sustainable Development in a broad setting. The further criteria’s in Cherp et al (2004) framework to see how the 12th Five Year Plan incorporates SD are: ownership and commitment, comprehensive and coordination policy process and targeting, resourcing and monitoring. The analysis is expected to show that there is a balance or that the national vision is mainly based on economic factors. The analyse shows that the 12th Five Year Plan incorporates Sustainable Development mainly in terms of the economy and that there is not always a good balance between social, environmental and economic aspects in the various sections of the plan. Furthermore, there is a lack in participation and consensus and capacity to implement strategies.