The poor record of public and private sector industries across sectors to submit the mandatory environmental information on an annual basis reveals the shortcomings of the existing environmental regulatory process. This article attempts to evaluate the current status of firm level environmental information available with the regulators and suggests some measures to streamline, standardise, and strengthen the current regulatory system to enable better compliance by firms.

This article focuses on air and water pollution in India's cities, provides empirical evidence to demonstrate the seriousness of the challenges, discusses the relevant policies of national and local governments that are used to address the challenges, and presents relevant political economy issues related to introducing pollution taxes or other policies aimed at building green cities.