India’s population is growing. By the mid of this century, India will have surpassed China as the most populated country in the world. To feed the additional hundreds of millions of people, to provide jobs for youths and to ensure a decent standard of living the Indian economy needs to grow rapidly. Yet, to prevent that this economic growth results in even more overcrowding of cities, inad- equate infrastructure, polluted air and water, the push for economic growth needs to go in hand with the push for sustainable consumption and production (SCP) practices.
The problems of green finance in India are, in the overall context, the problems of SME finance in India. Despite India’s large and well-developed financial system and its consideration of SME financing as a policy issue, SMEs face severe challenges in accessing finance for any type of investments. This resembles the situation in almost every other Asian country.