Preventing Greenwashing in India: Analyzing Legal Measures for Enforcing Corporate Environmental Compliance in India Measure

Sustainable Development has perhaps become the need of the hour. The business houses have emerged to be the greatest offenders and culprit behind the worsening environmental conditions and are often asked for become eco-friendly in their operations. Owing to this pressure of becoming eco-friendly, they indulge in malpractices in the form of making false and bogus environmental or green claims about their products, and business operations etc.. These bogus green claims include pretending to manufacture green products using technology which is non-hazardous in nature and the same is being advertised via various modes like T.V., Newspapers etc.. This is done with the objective of reading goodwill amongst the public and to satisfy the greed of earning revenue by increasing customer base. The said practice of making false green claims about the products as well as services rendered by the corporations is often called Greenwashing. This practice erodes public confidence and trust. This practice is slowly becoming a major issue in the Indian market as business houses often mislead the customers about green claims of their products and services just for minting money. They not only play with customers' trust but with their health and the environment in which they live just for the sake of earning revenue. This illicit business practice has become a great hurdle in ensuring sustainable development of the state. The present paper tries to analyze the effectiveness of contemporary Indian laws like the Environmental Protection Act, 1986, the Consumer Protect Act, 2019 and Companies Act, 2013 etc. for dealing with the issue of Greenwashing. The authors also sought to make certain recommendations for taking effective legal action towards such practice