Cultivating Compliance: The Legal Architecture of Sustainable Pesticide Management in India

Abstract

India operates one of the world’s largest pesticide markets, yet its principal governing statute, the Insecticides Act, 1968, was enacted before the long-term toxicity, ecological persistence, and occupational hazards of agrochemicals were understood. This article asks whether India’s legal framework can deliver sustainable pesticide management across the full life cycle of a pesticide, measured against three normative demands drawn from the precautionary principle, the polluter-pays principle, and the right to a clean environment under Article 21 of the Constitution: anticipatory regulation, life-cycle stewardship, and accountability. Situating the problem in the chemical intensification of the Green Revolution, the article examines the fragmented statutory architecture and the constitutional distribution of competence between the Union and the States, the constitutional and precautionary jurisprudence that culminated in the endosulfan litigation, and the largely invisible public-health burden of acute poisoning and pesticide self-harm. It tests Indian law against the country’s obligations under the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions and the FAO Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management, diagnoses the problem of regulatory capture revealed by the record of bans and reviews, and draws comparative lessons from the European Union’s hazard-based, substitution-oriented model, the periodic registration review mandated under the United States’ FIFRA, and the cautionary example of recent deregulation in Brazil. Using the Kasaragod endosulfan case study and the Anupam Verma review saga, the article argues that India’s central failure is one of institutional design rather than of regulatory norms: permanent registration, a dilatory and capture-prone review process, weak federal devolution, and a near-total absence of poisoning surveillance and enforceable liability. It concludes by assessing the Pesticides Management Bill, 2025, and advancing a reform agenda built on renewable registration, integrated pest management and agroecology, a national poisoning-surveillance system, enforceable liability financed on a polluter-pays basis, the phase-out of highly hazardous pesticides, cooperative federalism, and transparency.