The Indian road to unsustainability... is paved by the MoEF. In a recent article, T.N. Ninan quotes from a United Nations report that arrives at similar conclusions. The report estimates that India is depleting its stock of natural resources at a rate that equals 4.9 per cent of GDP — this, in real terms, more or less cancelling out the 5 per cent growth actually registered. Most alarmingly, India is drawing as much as 33.9 per cent of its renewable water resources (the comparable figure for China is 19.5 per cent). Citing these figures, Ninan notes that “if one factors in the additional point that the people who suffer the most on account of environmental damage are the poor, then it should be clear that a growth process that is environmentally harmful is also anti-poor”. The decision-making elite living in cities are themselves insulated from the debilitating forms of degradation that the poor suffer from. That is why they are so contemptuous of environmental safeguards. But their ignorance — or arrogance — is undermining the prospects of long-term economic growth in India. The poor, today, and the unborn, tomorrow, are paying the costs of the environmental illiteracy of our political and intellectual leadership. Among newspaper editors, Ninan stands out for his alertness to the environmental challenge. Likewise, Muthukumara Mani and his collaborators are unusual among economists in being fully aware of — and willing to systematically study — the true costs to society of different forms of environmental degradation. If India is to move away from its currently unsustainable pattern of development, it shall need more such editors and economists. But some ecologically literate ministers (and chief ministers) would help even more.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 03:46:46 +0000
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