Green policies in India?
September 9th, 2009
India can be a really laid back country! And for many politicos, the environment and conserving it, is something that is considered to be “soft agenda!” This technically means not very important…
When you really take a long hard look at international politics, you will notice that America has reached where it is at present due to its high consumption of fossil fuels. Clinton went down to India in 2000 to convince India to sign up with it in a form of emissions trading where it could continue to use as much of fossil fuel required while India cut back to compensate for the overuse. India does not really have a political party that focuses on the environment completely. When there was a hue and cry about trees, it was mainly due to direct threats to livelihood like what happened in the Chipko movement in Uttarkhand in 1974. Farmers hugged trees in fear of losing livelihood rather than in an effort to protect the environment. But in Western Europe and the US, the environment is something that can be actually considered an active threat to economic progress. America has for long considered climate change an essential problem that threatens its economic development. Cutting down emissions is impossible as it means cutting down on production and hence development. And emissions trading with India will cost America about 95% less than actually shutting down emissions producing companies that are running its economy!
In India, awareness in people at the grassroots level and the higher echelons about the importance of the environment is almost negligible. With rising poverty, a booming population explosion, internal and external terror problems, health issues and unemployment taking priority; no political party actually finds environmental issues an adequate plan to gain votes. Countries like South Korea. China, America, and UK are now earmarking varying amounts of their budgets to green growth. And at last count, India has devoted nothing to the same aspect of green development.
But Global warming affects all of us uniformly even if one country uses less or if the other uses more! Rising sea levels can literally flood coastal areas of India along with the increased incidence of droughts, floods and famines due to the climate change and continued emissions from countries like the United Sates. With the rapid boom in India’s production and economy in the recent years, it will very soon become necessary for Indian political parties to take an active interest in the problem. At present, the green drive to reduce emissions, recycle and conserve is being run by a mish-mash of active judiciary that curtailed pesticides leaching into groundwater, dynamic NGOs and an urban well-educated middle class. But that is not enough. Unless India finds a way to raise awareness at the grassroots level and include green policies in every aspects of its current development, it could very soon find itself losing its natural resources due to simple hard headed ignorance.
