The Supreme Court, Environmental Duty & The Burden of ‘Selective Dharma’

When the Supreme Court declares that corporations are bound by the polluter pays principle, it speaks with the authority of constitutional morality. When it asserts that companies cannot hide behind CSR brochures while poisoning rivers, grasslands, forests, and wildlife habitats, it is absolutely right. The principle is sound. The intent is noble. The language is lofty.

But here is the uncomfortable question no one in the courtroom seems willing to ask:

Is environmental responsibility a one-way street — meant only for corporations and citizens, but never for constitutional institutions themselves?

If corporations are liable for ecological harm, what about judicial harm? 

If polluters must pay, what about decision-makers whose rulings cause irreversible ecological and humanitarian consequences?

Article 51A(g): A ‘Convenient’ Moral Weapon — or a ‘Shared Constitutional Burden’?

Article 51A(g) of the Constitution imposes a fundamental duty on citizens to protect and improve the natural environment and to have compassion for all living creatures. In recent judgments, the Court has boldly extended this duty to corporations, declaring that companies are not mere profit-making entities but organs of society with ecological obligations.

So far, so good.

But then comes the glaring contradiction.

In the recent judgment ordering the relocation of stray dogs into shelter homes, the Court chose administrative convenience over ecological realism, and abstract “public order” over lived humanity. It treated stray dogs not as sentient beings embedded in urban ecosystems, but as logistical inconveniences to be removed, warehoused, and forgotten.

This raises a brutal, unavoidable question:

Do stray dogs not count as “living creatures” under Article 51A(g)?

Or does compassion end where judicial discomfort begins?

Ecosystem for Some, Exclusion for Others

In one breath, the Court lectures corporations on protecting endangered birds, grasslands, and habitats — rightly invoking the idea of a shared environment.
In another, it endorses a policy that treats millions of stray dogs as ecological outsiders, stripped of territory, social bonds, and survival logic.

This is not environmental protection.

This is ecological selectivity.

An ecosystem is not a museum display curated for judicial approval. It is messy, organic, inconvenient, and alive. Urban stray dogs are not intruders into the ecosystem—they are products of it, shaped by human consumption, waste, abandonment, and policy failure. To erase them administratively is not conservation; it is denial.

Polluter Pays — But Who Is the Polluter Here?

If a factory contaminates a river, the Court says: you pay.

If power lines kill birds, the Court says: you mitigate.

But when decades of poor municipal governance, unregulated breeding, garbage mismanagement, and human cruelty create the stray dog crisis — 
the solution suddenly becomes punishing the animal, not the system.

So let us ask plainly:

• Are dogs the polluters — or are humans?
• Is relocation accountability — or displacement masquerading as order?
• Why does “polluter pays” vanish when the polluter is the State itself?

If ecological harm caused by corporations attracts liability, then ecological harm caused by judicially endorsed policies must attract introspection.

Is the Supreme Court Outside the Ecosystem?

This is the most uncomfortable question of all.

Does the Supreme Court see itself as:

• A neutral umpire ‘outside’ the ecosystem?
• Or a constitutional stakeholder ‘within’ it?

Because if the Court is part of society — and it is —
if it shapes governance — and it does — 
if its judgments have real-world ecological consequences — and they do — 
then it cannot outsource moral responsibility while hoarding moral authority.

Environmental Dharma cannot be subcontracted.

The Real Hypocrisy

The hypocrisy is not in invoking Article 51A(g).

The hypocrisy lies in weaponizing it against others while exempting oneself from its spirit.

Corporations are told: You cannot be socially responsible while harming the environment.

Fair enough.

But should the same standard not apply to the Court itself?

Can the judiciary claim environmental guardianship while endorsing policies that fracture ecosystems, ignore animal welfare science, and sidestep compassion?

‘Passing the Buck’ Is Not Conservation

True environmental jurisprudence demands consistency.

True constitutional morality demands humility.

True ecological thinking demands that every stakeholder — corporate, citizen, executive, or judicial — accepts shared responsibility.

You cannot preach conservation from the bench while pushing ecological consequences off the bench.

If the polluter must pay, then the policymaker must answer.

If the ecosystem must be protected, then ‘all life’ within it must count.

And if Article 51A(g) means anything at all, it means this:

No institution, however exalted, is above ecological accountability.

The question, therefore, is no longer about corporate liability.

The real question is far sharper — and far more unsettling:

Is the Supreme Court willing to apply the same environmental conscience to ‘itself’ that it so forcefully demands from others?