References
- Rajamani , L. 2008 . “ The Indian Way: exploring the synergies between development, energy and climate goals ” . In Beyond the Carbon Economy: Energy Law in Transition , Edited by: Zillman , D.N. , Redgewell , C. , Omorogbe , Y.O. and Barrera‐Hernandez , L.K. 419 – 440 . Oxford : Oxford University Press . The human rights dimension of environmental problems has generated its own literature. It is important to note that the provisions of environmental law (whatever the legal jurisdiction may be, including decisions of Indian courts) converge with the general law and also with human rights law. See Subhro Niyogi, 2008, Climate horror to be worse than Partition. Times of India, 26 March, p. 16
- BBC News . 2008 . “ Blair wants ‘climate revolution’ ” . In The Times of India, 2008, 26 March 13 BBC website, 15 March. See India Today, 2008, special conclave issue (leadership and management conference), 31 March. Aroon Purie, the editor‐in‐chief in his introduction (p. 20f) counterpoints India’s ‘fossilised ideology’ (i.e. socialism) to the general state of the Indian economy; ignores its inflationary trend and such matters as suicides of Indian farmers because of debts; and at a time when China’s repression of Tibet was very obvious says that China’s leadership is ‘getting more sensitive to the public sentiment’. On the other hand, Bill Clinton’s address pp. 22–24 and that of Al Gore, pp. 26–28, are much more adapted to ecology. See also ‘14 farmer suicides in 3 days in Vidarbha’, near Nagpur
- Harden , G. 1961 . Biology: Its Principles and Implications , 169f San Francisco, CA/London : W.H. Freeman & Co. . The discussion of predation by man as ‘top dog’ includes close reliance on the work of Darwin
- BBC website, 2008, Dying of hunger in Indian state. Geeta Pandey, Kushinagar, BBC News, Uttar Pradesh, 5 March. See Balchand, K. 2008, The Hindu, 29 March, p. 15, reports the humiliation and torture of a Dalit woman – Lalpari Devi – in Adalchak Dumaria village, Patna district, 27 March 2008, by one Ramayodhya Rai. This despicable man had called Lalpari Devi from a neighbouring village to treat his mentally ill wife, but the wife’s condition deteriorated, at which point the credulous husband accused Lalpari Rai of witchcraft and attacked her with the help of neighbours. The report includes a photograph of the event. Aroon Purie does not attack this form of ‘fossilised ideology’ but it is pernicious
- Ambedkar , B.R. . Indian Round Table Conference . Proceedings of Sub‐Committees, Part II . pp. 108 – 110 . cited in Philips, C.H. (Ed.), 1962. The Evolution of India and Pakistan: 1858 to 1947, Select Documents (London: Oxford University Press), p. 295. See Menon, A.S. 2008. It’s no sacrifice. The New Indian Express, 28 March, section City Lights, p. 4. This concerns Daya Bai (born Mercy Mathew), a former Roman Catholic nun. Now an activist social worker, she has identified herself with the Gonds (a tribal group). She fights against abduction of girls and for the extension of water rights, in Chindwara village, Madhya Pradesh
- 2007 . International Journal of Environmental Studies , 64 (6) December special issue, India. This offers a conspectus of energy alternatives for India. See India Today, 2008, 31 March, Al Gore, p. 27: ‘Our real challenge is to face them [environmental problems] not as political problems but as imperatives.’ And Bill Clinton, p. 23, argues that the easiest way to spread economic growth – confined to 35 percent of India’s population – to the deprived 65 percent in the population ‘by changing the way you generate energy, by localising it, by making the country more energy independent and by … using the sun, using the wind, using the tidal energy along the coast, particularly in the Indian Ocean where the tides are quite strong, and by maximising energy efficiency – in lighting, in heating, in building material.’ This might almost be seen as a result of having read the International Journal of Environmental Studies, 64(6), December 2007
- Gandhi, as a barrister of the Inner Temple, carried always the frame of reference of the British tradition and should be perceived within it as well as being a distinctive traditional Hindu figure; and in some ways, Gandhi was a characteristic Victorian (e.g. his interest in vegetarianism and non‐violence coming via India as well as Tolstoy). Gandhi’s association with the eccentric Anglican priest C.F. Andrews affected his development and made him responsive to the idea of Christ as an Asiatic figure: a tendency established in Indian thinking of the period. Ambedkar, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, had a superior intellectual discipline to Gandhi’s. Gandhi’s plaque is on the staircase to the Library of the Inner Temple and Ambedkar’s portrait is in the lecture theatre of the Inns of Court School of Law. It is unlikely that many English lawyers have the least understanding of either man
- Basham , A.L. 1967 . The Wonder that Was India: A Survey of the History and Culture of the Indian Sub‐continent Before the Coming of the Muslims, , 3rd rev. edn , 3f London : Sidgwick & Jackson . (originally published 1954)
- For example, the blackout which occurred in 1965 when the East Coast of the US, and related areas of Canada experienced an electricity shortage. It is understood that a rise in the birth rate in New York was related subsequently to this episode of unexpected darkness. Brownouts – a lesser form of electrical supply loss, or outage – have been experienced since in many places. By now, there may well be some adaptive behaviour on which mass societies can rely in dealing with them. On 5 March 2008, the 13 million population of Karachi experienced a loss of electricity when the State power utility cut supplies to the supplier because of unpaid bills. Cf. ‘Powerless India feels the heat’, by Jeremy Page, Delhi, reporting riots caused by 24 hr power cuts in North Indida, notably Gorakhpur and Knapur, with the prediction from the Uttar Pradesh Power Minister that there would continue to be insufficient capacity for 2 yr: The Times, 3 May 2008, p. 41. Behaviour in these circumstances cannot be guaranteed to be accepting or peaceful. There is the example of Georgia in the Caucasus and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Georgia has long had to put up with cold and darkness, sometimes at predictable points in a day, sometimes unpredictably. Ukraine has been unable to resolve its economic problems and remain in receipt of reliable gas supplies from Russia. This has been the experience even of Belarus, a notably ‘unreconstructed’ post‐Soviet Russian satellite. The European Union seeks to avoid the risks that dependence on Russia incurs. India’s search for energy independence is similar
- An observer may find strange the fact that Gandhi’s term for the Untouchables of India – Harijans, Children of God – has become today Dalit, Harijan being now avoided; although there is still a State of the Union called Haryana. True, Ambedkar regarded the term as patronizing and a Hindu device to resist change. Also strange is the manner in which political figures have absorbed the term Dalit and in some cases made unfair use of it to advance careers, irrespective of the social needs to which it ought to refer. In regard to the problem of sanitation in India, see Chaudhuri, N.C., 1965, The Continent of Circe: Being an Essay on the Peoples of India (London: Chatto & Windus), p. 31f on the need to be ‘unflinchingly real’ about matters which are omnipresent, as excreta in cities. Yet no‐one can be presumed to be willing to be humiliated by a lack of sanitation and the unavoidable necessity of a public call of nature. India’s affluence only heightens the natural feelings
- The frame of reference for his paper is international and interrelated. According to an analysis delivered at the sixth special session of the UN General Assembly, Plenary Meeting 2207, 9 April 1974, by Kurt Waldheim, former Secretary General, UN, there are six primary problems: food, energy, population, mass poverty, military expenditure, world monetary system. These we regard as constituting the world problematic. A problematic – problematique (Fr); problematik (Ger) – is a multi‐problem; its interactions also offer solutions. The six primary problems idea can serve as a frame of reference for policy‐making in the Indian sub‐continent. See also Waddington, C.H. (1978) The Man‐Made Future. (London: Croom Helm) p. 9: ‘a series of major world problems – of population, food supplies, energy, natural resources, pollution, the conditions of cities, and others’. All these problems as described by Waddington are evident in the sub‐continent. Further, the problem of energy supplies is linked to all others identified by Waddington and Waldheim. To quote an old English saying, One thing leads to another.
- Lovelock , J. 2006 . The Revenge of Gaia , London : Allen Lane . The indispensable character of nuclear energy is a fact recognized by the President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy; see International Journal of Environmental Studies, 64(6), December 2007, special issue, India, pp. 651–658, for the English and French expression of the President’s views
- See Popper , K.R. 1949 . The Open Society and its Enemies, Vol I: The Spell of Plato , 3rd impression , London : Routledge & Kegan Paul . (originally published 1945); Soros, G., 1995, Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (New York: Wiley), p. 135. ‘… my concept of open society … requires people to make sacrifices for the common good …’
- 1962 . Entry in Who’s Who , 2193 f London : Adam & Charles Black .
- This understanding permeates the India special issue; see [6]
- See Basham [8], pp. 200–207
- Globalization demands an accelerated rate of adaptation, but also an intense effort at retaining ethics and cultural values. In a globalized world – which means one where trade causes mutual and international dependence leading to international, interrelated mass society – we are all vulnerable. Independence cannot now be absolute, because relationship is general and necessary. See Rajamani’s analysis of India’s legal and political response to low carbon necessity [1]
- The coercion inevitable in the life of a mass society may be more or less obvious depending on circumstances. It is a problem not much discussed in the context of urban futures. This may be because those who discuss such matters tend to side with authority, or because it is a frightening question to which no easy answer is possible. The pattern of social disturbance – riots and rebellion – in Indian history is instructive
- See Jain , A.K. 1996 . The Indian Megacity and Economic Reform , New Delhi/Dehradun : Management Publishing Co. . foreword by M.N. Buch, citing these data at p. xi
- One response to this is the work of the World Society for Ekistics
- The apparent commitment of the Chinese Government and the British Government to do this may provoke a response in the sub‐continent. But the general trend of China’s development suggests that her ‘green cities’ may well be tokens, since there is less reason to believe that she accepts any principles external to her own idea of the Communist Party and its unfettered right to act, irrespective of law, international agreement or world opinion. There is a general concern in developed economies to avoid dependence on any re‐run of the energy price rise scenario of 1973, when under OAPEC pressure the price of oil rose sharply. But with current prices of c. $110 a barrel, avoiding dependence on the Muslim states of the Middle East is only one element of a complex energy politics in which the global warming issue has imposed a further demand
- Pyarelal, M., Vol. I, February 1956; Vol. II, February 1958, Mahatma Gandhi: The Last Phase (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House), p. 65. One of the last notes left by Gandhi, these words show his concern with village India and with a politics in which values transfigure lives. This is no less relevant today than in 1948, and its significance is by no means restricted to India
- 1981 . “ Irwin’s words, quoted in Irving, R.G. ” . In Indian Summer: Lutyens, Baker, and Imperial Delhi , 354 New Haven, CT/London : Yale University Press .