The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

-The Economic Times   Bureaucracy bashing is India's favourite national vocation. And for good reason. Our bureaucracy has its good share of crooks, criminals and cheats who need to be put away - with or without a Lokpal. The simple counter-question is, does the bureaucracy have a disproportionately larger share of crooks than in other professions in India, and the data clearly does not say a resounding yes.  In fact, there is perhaps...

-The Telegraph   The country’s top judge today advised the judiciary to work as independently of public sentiments as of politics, stressing that courts should deliver rulings according to the law and not the majority opinion. “Apart from independence from politics, the judiciary also needs independence from popular interest,” PTI quoted Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia as saying while presiding over the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Trust Lecture in Mumbai. “If an order...

The world food system today is far too complex for common sense to understand. It raises many questions: If safe, nutritious food is a fundamental right, why are one billion people living with hunger? Why do farmers and farm workers remain starved/half-starved? Why are people in food-exporting countries living with hunger? If the value of annual global exports in agriculture products is in billions, why are agricultural labourers and farmers...

-The Economic Times   The government's version of the Lokpal Bill gets most things right. The entire executive, represented by its senior layers, including the Prime Minister, comes under its purview. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which deals with all kinds of crime and not just corruption, is rightly kept outside the proposed Lokpal's administrative control but will investigate cases referred to it by the Lokpal. Nor is there any attempt to...