Beyond Compliance: Corporate Responsibility, Fourth-Generation of Human Rights and India's Renewable Energy Transition

Abstract

India's pursuit of a low-carbon energy system through solar, wind, hydropower, biomass, green hydrogen, and battery storage is frequently presented as an unambiguous social good. This framing, while understandable given the urgency of climate mitigation, tends to obscure a harder question: whether the manner in which renewable infrastructure is sited, financed, built, and eventually retired is itself compatible with human dignity, ecological integrity, and fairness toward those who will inherit the consequences of today's decisions. This article argues that the answer depends less on the technology chosen than on how corporate responsibility is conceived and enforced across a project's life. Drawing on constitutional doctrine, environmental and company law, sustainability-disclosure requirements, and the emerging discourse on so-called fourth-generation human rights oriented toward climate security, ecological continuity, technological fairness, and obligations to future generations the paper contends that voluntary corporate social responsibility spending and post-hoc welfare gestures cannot substitute for continuous human-rights and environmental due diligence. Using doctrinal and policy analysis, the paper traces impacts across the project life cycle, from site selection through decommissioning, and proposes an eight-principle accountability model together with measurable indicators. It concludes that India's clean-energy transition will earn lasting legal and social legitimacy only when responsibility is designed into project governance itself, rather than appended to it as an afterthought