Opinion | Yogi’s Uttar Pradesh Is Not Just Saffron, But A Deep Shade Of Green Too

Muddy and polluted Ganga, unclean cities with millions milling around, dirt rising from broken roads, and a general absence of greenery—that had been the stereotype for Uttar Pradesh.

If William Dalrymple wrote In The Age of Kali, “The villages of the cow belt were sinking under their own weight… rivers of sewage, mountains of garbage, and a population exploding beyond control”, anglophile Pankaj Mishra held his nose about towns of UP in his Butter Chicken in Ludhiana: “Filthy, overcrowded, and decaying… where the air is thick with dust and the smell of open drains, and the sheer weight of numbers makes any progress impossible.”

For decades, reality in UP had given legitimacy to this colonial condescension. The state has long been seen as environmentally

challenged because of its staggering population of 230 million, pollution, and resource strain.

But under chief minister Yogi Adityanath, UP has embarked on a politically and economically fraught green transition of India’s most populous state. It has moved beyond the traditional “development vs environment” binary by weaving sustainability into governance and economic policy.

Take aggressive afforestation, for instance. It is being treated as a mass movement rather than a top-down exercise, with decentralised and big-scale implementation through Green Chaupals.

The stats are almost unbelievable. Over 242 crore saplings were planted in nine years (as of early 2026), with a reported survival rate of 75 per cent and a single-day record of 37 crore.

Such events usually happen for photo ops. But UP has shown results. Forest cover has increased by 9.23 per cent in six years, which is the second-highest rise, according to the Forest Survey of India.

The massive spike in green cover is not an emotional move; it has a solid economic logic to it. Environmental policy is being treated as industrial and economic policy focusing on energy security, jobs, and investment.

Take the Uttar Pradesh Solar Energy Policy 2022, for example, which targets 22,000 MW by 2027. It is not just about clean air. It is about energy security and attracting capital.

By positioning UP as a leader in solar and green hydrogen and putting a dedicated Rs 5,000 crore fund where the mouth is, the state is diversifying its economy beyond traditional agriculture. The development of Ayodhya as a solar city and the ambitious leap to power the Bundelkhand Expressway with solar energy signal a desire to modernise the state’s infrastructure by going green.

Similarly, the EV Manufacturing and Mobility Policy 2022 has pushed for results through incentivisation, making UP a top adopter of electric vehicles, not just through subsidies, but by mandating local manufacturing. This creates jobs while reducing emissions—a rare win-win.

Water security, the biggest factor in the state’s agrarian economy, is being tackled by the localised One District, One River initiative. Rather than getting lost in the vastness of the Ganga clean-up, the government has tasked every district with reviving a specific local water body. This forces local officials to abandon their ‘not-my-problem’ attitude and take ownership of their immediate ecology.

With the Treated Water Reuse Policy, which aims to recycle 100 per cent water for agriculture by 2035, the state is finally treating water as a finite, precious resource. Plus, UP has recognised 13 Ramsar sites, second only to Tamil Nadu. A Ramsar site is a designated wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention, an environmental treaty signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran.

While the Yogi government has made its intent clear at the policy level and through steps of the ground, many aspects of implementation pose a nagging challenge. Air quality in the Indo-Gangetic plain is a geographical nightmare, heightened by stubble-burning and industrial emissions.

Yogi bluntly compared Delhi to a ‘gas chamber’ this year. It was timed perhaps to underline his state’s $350 million UP Clean Air Management Programme (UP CAMP). It has helped nearly 3.9 million households shift to clean cooking solutions, drastically reducing indoor air pollution. UP made strides in modernising heavy industry too, with over 700 brick kilns transitioning to lower-emission technology.

Solid waste management has seen a revolution too. Bio-remediation projects now manage the sheer volume of waste generated by 230 million people through sustained, unrelenting focus.

UP’s quiet but intense green push has not been talked about much. But the state’s attempt to future-proof its development model could become a case study for overpopulated regions the world over.

Abhijit Majumder is the author of the book ‘India’s New Right’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.