An Inconvenient Truth - former US Vice-President Al Gore’s documentary on climate change that took him to the Nobel Prize last year, has impressed Chief Minister Narendra Modi so much that he made top state bureaucracy watch it at his official residence this Monday.

The occasion was a dinner hosted by Modi during the two-day brainstorming session on effective implementation of the 2008-09 Annual Budget. Present during the screening were all secretaries, district collectors, municipal commissioners and district development officers.

“The film is an impressive attempt to explain the dangerous changes (in the environment). It was well appreciated. The CM was with us all through,” said a bureaucrat. “It was a nice experience for most of us. Many of us had not seen the film,” said another secretary rank official.

The screening was followed by two presentations the next day during the discussions on climate change. While Gujarat Urban Development Company (GUDC) head K Srinivasan spoke on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Women and Child Development Secretary Rajiv Gupta made a presentation on climate change and its impact on Gujarat.

Modi’s media advisors had shown the film to him a couple of months ago and since then the CM does not miss any opportunity to speak about the ill effects of climate change. His seriousness on this issue has started percolating down to the Gujarat officialdom with many bureaucrats focusing on how to incorporate climate change principles in their projects.