The official position that has been articulated on behalf of India at various international fora is built around the following four propositions:

n On a per capita basis, emissions from India that harm world climate — CO2 and the rest — are much, much less than those from the developed countries;

n India is affecting perceptible, indeed substantial improvements —- in area covered by forests [that is, in sequestering carbon], in energy efficiency [for instance, in energy-intensive industries like cement and steel], in improving the quality of air, etc.;

n Several of the measures and protocols that are being suggested will curb India’s growth rate, and, thereby, perpetuate India’s poverty;

n And it is poverty which is the greatest pollution, it is also the greatest polluter: hence, India shall continue to strive to eliminate poverty and maximize growth. As they are the principal doers of harm, the developed countries must do their bit first before compelling countries like India into curbing their growth.

Even as the fragments of data are correct, the position, if sustained, will inflict grave harm on India in the coming twenty years — both in exacerbating problems — problems that it will be extremely expensive and difficult to remedy later — and in foreclosing the enormous opportunities that remedial measures taken now hold for India. There are several reasons for this.

First, that others have problems, that others are exacerbating their problems and ours, is little consolation: the deterioration that has taken place in India’s environment during the last 30 years because of things happening within India inflicts grave harm on Indians, here and now. Rivers like the Yamuna became rivulets; by now they have become toxic drains. The alarming increase in arsenic in North Bengal, the ailments that befall Indians because of polluted ponds, or because of smoke and fumes within hutments, from the woeful condition of sanitation, from the air in metropolitan cities getting affected because of the sharp increase in vehicular traffic — these have nothing to do with what the developed countries are doing, and are not going to abate by anything that the latter may undertake to do.

... contd.