With international talks on climate change starting next week in Copenhagen, India staked out its early position on Thursday by announcing that it would slow the growth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, while also leaving open the possibility of taking bolder steps if an “equitable” deal can be reached during the negotiations. The Indian initiative, presented in Parliament by the country’s top environmental official, means that India has...

The government appears to have taken a final call going into the climate change summit at Copenhagen that India’s traditional stand, that developing countries are not obliged to cut emissions, is unlikely to change. Yet there remains considerable wiggle room available to India’s negotiators. The temptation, however, to keep that wiggle room as large as possible, at the cost of atmospherics going in, must be avoided. The government for a...

This small and readable book is a layperson’s introduction to India’s economic catastrophe. Since many people believe in an ongoing economic miracle, such views are often dismissed as doomsday talk. But it is better to be aware of reality than to live in an illusion. The title is apt—Bhaduri offers us an unsettling vision of what awaits us if we continue along the current path. He alerts us to the...

It has been a bumpy ride, with developed countries failing to make definite commitments and India hinting at a shift of stance. THE last leg of the climate change talks held in Barcelona, Spain, on November 2-6 in the run-up to the all-important 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December did not result in any dramatic development...

The President of International Fund for Agricultural Development stresses that access to funds for developing countries will help them make ethical decisions in the quest for food security. Just days before the UN climate Change summit at Copenhagen, Kanayo Nwanze, President of IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development), stresses that access to funds for developing countries will help them make ethical decisions in the quest for food security. Nwanze was...