Green consciousness in India 41in low-income countries and emerging economies. World Bank figures for 2000
showed that nearly half the world’s population lived on under $2 per day and, for
them, notions of consumer choice or discretionary spending were risible (Peattie
and Charter 2003, p. 726). Green marketing in India is, therefore, directed mainly
at the middle classes, the fastest-growing segment of the population, estimates of
which range from 30 million to approximately 300 million people. India’s middle-
class consumption is roughly equivalent to Ireland’s total private consumption and
is forecast to triple in its share of India’s total consumption over the next 15 years
(Saxena 2010). However, the definition of “middle-class” as a category is highly
contested. It may be based on factors such as earning an annual income of more
than 70,000 Rupees; speaking English and having private education; appetite for
global culture and Western lifestyles; and/or being constituted in opposition to
imagined categories of the slum-dwelling or rural poor (Hawkins 2015, p. 6).
Traditionally, in a largely agricultural, late-industrializing country, environmental
concerns were the preserve of either the government or the philanthropic sector;
in India the latter includes an increasingly diverse array of actors—corporations,
NGOs, faith-based groups, entertainment celebrities, and so on. Indian traditions
of philanthropy often incorporated a cause-related marketing model, such as local
shops having a box available for customers to make charitable donations toward
community cow sheds, orphanages, or other causes (Hawkins 2015, p. 2).
Green marketing in this context often involved celebrity endorsement. Leading
Bombay film actor Shah Rukh Khan endorsed anti-poaching initiatives organized
by the U.S.–based international wildlife conservation NGO WildAid, in cooperation
with India’s state authorities and broadcast media (WildAid 2007). Another Bombay
cinema star, Aamir Khan, was involved in the campaign to save a wildlife corridor
at Aarey Milk Colony (Jadhav 2015). Booker Prize–winning author Arundhati Roy
lent her name and prestige to a number of environmental movements (Roy 1998).
Along with her writings and lectures in support of these causes, Roy consistently
donated money received as prizes, awards, or lecture fees to activist movements.
For example, the Booker Prize money and the royalties from her novel, The God of
Small Things, went to the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a protest movement against
the Sardar Sarovar dam being constructed on the River Narmada (Frontline 1999).
An example of a government initiative on the environment is the “Mission
Swachh Bharat” (Clean India) campaign that the Prime Minister of India,
Narendra Modi, launched on October 2, 2014. He hoped that “the mission should
become the agenda of the entire country in the form of a mass movement ...
with the aim of creating a clean India by 2019”. Besides promoting cleanliness
of public areas and the collection and processing/disposal/reuse/recycling of
municipal solid waste, this campaign tapped into one of the major concerns
for both the urban and rural poor: the elimination of the open defecation that
is endemic to India. One of the aims of the project is to build over 800 million
toilets along with modern sewage treatment systems (Government of India 2014).
Various celebrities including cricket icon Sachin Tendulkar, industrialist Anil
Ambani, and several Bombay film actors such as Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir
Khan, and Priyanka Chopra lent their support to this movement (Times of India