ABSTRACT
Sustainable development (SD) has become the latest growth industry in the environment and development field. SD must pay attention to economic justice and equity before economic growth. It is in this context that the development experience of the state of Kerala in India is examined here to provide an alternative interpretation of SD. While economic growth programmes were being vigorously promoted the world over, the global agenda for development began to shift from its emphasis on economic development alone to environment and development in the 1960s and 1970s with the recognition of serious environmental problems and concerns about the depletion of terrestrial resources. Potential environmental problems such as global warming, proliferation of industrial and nuclear wastes and tropical deforestation, threaten the stability of the biosphere and global climate. The development policies pursued by the state of Kerala so far show that there are hopeful signs for the state to enter into a self-sustaining developmental trajectory.
