The Copenhagen summit on global warming and climate change has commenced. Instead of a leadership role, we will now be playing a followers’ role. We fell behind the emerging consensus curve. We held on for too long to outmoded positions of merely harping on per capita emission and common-differentiated obligation while disregarding many other significant factors. The recent decision of China, announcing a 40 per cent cut in its energy...

The convulsions that have gripped the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) — India’s flagship city development programme — with only three years to go for the termination of its assigned lifespan of seven years, is symptomatic of the country’s predilection to put politics above all other issues, including the vital ones. The Mission, aimed at pulling India’s 63 cities out of their dilapidation, which is somewhat reminiscent of...

CITIES MAKE one simple promise to newcomers: Sacrifice yourself to me and your children shall prosper. This promise drew Ahmed Raza, a small-time wrestler from an Uttar Pradesh village and millions like him to the capital of newly-independent India. Raza kept his part of the bargain, yet half a century later, his daughter was pushed out of the city her father helped build, the only home she has known. “I...

High levels of toxic chemicals are still found in Bhopal's Drinking Water, a new report published ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, said. Residents in the areas surveyed have high rates of birth defects, rapidly rising cancer rates, neurological damage, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness, it said. The report also questions the reliability of the tests carried out in at the AES Laboratories in New Delhi. The...

The Anderson saga is one more reminder that the powerful can always count on official help.  In the fall of 2002, Greenpeace campaigner Casey Harell paid a surprise visit to the New York State private estate of Warren Anderson, and found him living a “life of luxury”. Nothing odd about the discovery except that in the eyes of the law Mr. Anderson was untraceable, and had been so since 1992...