Searching for a deal

It is increasingly clear that the world is beginning to focus on India as a major participant in negotiations on climate change. States are close to,for the first time,actually stepping out of their comfort zones and committing to fix a problem that is moral in nature and literally cataclysmic in scale. But the Indian state cannot sit back and expect that playing spoiler in the process will win India concessions,or win its negotiators plaudits,or indeed get the human race out of the mess it is in.

This is not to say that the firm commitment that has been articulated to economic growth and poverty reduction is mistaken; nor that the moral imperative to shoulder the burden of mitigating climate change lies largely with those who sit on capital,human and physical,that has been built up through the methods that have caused global temperatures to rise. What it does mean is that India,as a responsible global power,will have to accept that part of its responsibility is to make sacrifices,rhetorical and actual,to get a workable deal going because,in the end,even a deal that helps two sides needs both sides to give something to get something.

Not only have successive governments not prepared Indias people and industry for inevitable changes; but their own preparation for the actual creation of any international mitigation system has quite a distance to cover. When world leaders sit across the table from each other at the Copenhagen conference later this year,it is essential for India to bring something to that table. That should certainly include an accounting of what the costs to India of greening its economy would be,as well as how it intends to process the governance of the greening process; nobody is going to commit money or assistance without knowing those. India will need to show that the worlds efforts to head off disaster will not be met with stonewalling then. The rest of the world will not accept that as behaviour concomitant with the status to which India aspires. Nor will Indias people,once seized of the urgency,accept that from their government. Nor will posterity forgive.