Greening and browning of vegetation of terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate change and its variability, global change, as well as ground anthropogenic drivers, has been widespread across the globe. India is the most populous country with two global biodiversity hotspots, complex monsoonal and other climate systems interacting with diverse biomes.  It is undergoing high rates of land-use change due to development pressures. It also offers a diversity of social-ecological systems with potentially variable responses to climate dynamics and global warming. We investigate the role of climate dynamics in the greening and browning of vegetation, as well as other local and regional drivers. Such interplay between complex local and regional factors on vegetation has implications for both semi-wild and agro-biodiversity, and human well-being linked to ecosystem services. Here, we evaluate how global and local drivers influence the greening and browning trends over the past four decades for the Indian region using GIMMS (1982-2022) and MODIS (2000-2023) data. We used a multi-dimensional vegetation index measured as the mahalanobis distance which captures complex vegetation dynamics and is a better measure of vegetation greening/browning. We find widespread greening (51.3%, 1.65 million sq.km) across India, predominantly in arid and semi-arid regions driven by increase in monsoonal rainfall and change in winter temperatures. Browning of vegetation (13.5%, 0.43 million sq.km) was restricted to some regions, especially Gangetic plains. Interestingly, Gangetic plains showed reversal of trends in vegetation from browning to greening over the past two decades. Rest of the regions (nearly 1.12 million sq.km) showed no major change in vegetation responses despite changes in climate and other factors. Protected areas showed differential rates of greening and browning compared to nearby areas across various biogeozones. An analyses of hotspots of greening revealed the role of factors such as spread of invasive species, woody encroachment in floodplain grasslands, tree plantations and changes in cropping patterns. Importantly, we find that urban areas showed greening within the city centre possibly subsidised by increase in water supply, but outskirts and peri-urban areas showed drastic browning trends due to replacement of vegetated areas by built up land-use. Although greening trends in vegetation provide positive contribution to climate change mitigation, they can have trade-offs with other ecosystem services. Overall, a holistic understanding of such greening and browning trends and its drivers, is vital for climate adaptation, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and sustenance of ecosystem services.