Dear readers

India needs to pursue ‘green growth’ without compromising on the developmental challenges. But that is not easy at all. as a resource constrained nation reducing India’s energy intensity and optimising existing resources seems utopian. Urbanisation–unplanned and unchartered, water polluted beyond redemption, food adulteration unmonitored and unchallenged, we take chalta hai to another level. Does quality means anything to anybody anymore. What if one was to ask a teacher or a professor–do you plagiarise? Do your students do a cut paste job? and what are the penalties? Well, you see everyone has a shop to run so even learning is adulterated.

Environment is the last but one act of the circus of India–significant but not important. Television is sought - not sanitation, car is sought - not car pool, booster pumps for more water is sought–but not conservation, and so the list goes on. I would like to imagine that it’s not all that dismal with so many little success stories dotting the nation. But even anna’s fire petered out. The movement shook everybody awake momentarily - then lost its sheen, much the same way that humongously expensive solar PV plants lie derelict ten years after being commissioned in remote islands with exquisite fanfare. There will then perhaps be a time when clean water will have to be bought the very same way as electricity, with bills reaching a notch higher each time, leaving the poor unclean and unhealthy, as they will be able to ill afford the luxury of a bath let alone source clean drinking water.

Read on.