India in the shadows, David Steven

David Steven — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 12:21:52 +0000

I've been promising something intelligent on India for days now, but it's hard to find time, what with spending all day on the beach.

Fortunately, Joydeep Gupta, a well-connected journalist for the Indo-Asian news service, remains prepared to put the hours in. ‘Why does India get the blame, China the praise?" he asks in an fascinating recent article.

You should read his analysis in full, but the gist is that India has arrived in Bali having failed to complete its homework. Its PR also sucks, even though it has a good story to tell. The country has put aside 2.5% of GDP to adapt to climate change, for example, and has been attempting to improve energy efficiency.

Quote:

The steps taken by China so far to fight climate change are similar. But the Chinese government outlined its national climate change programme early June and set itself some targets, which India has failed to do despite setting up a prime minister's task force on climate change.

Media reports say the task force met Nov 26 to discuss a position paper that the country would have at the Bali summit, and there the politicians rejected the paper prepared by the bureaucrats because it did not say anything concrete about what India planned to do to fight climate change. At that stage, it was too late to prepare another paper.

If India is feeling a tad bruised at the bad press it is receiving, I have a suggestion: hold a press conference.

Here in Bali, the Indonesian hosts are talking regularly to the press, but the other major developing countries have maintained radio silence. A bad idea, I say, when a thousand or so ravenous journalists are on the prowl.

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India in the shadows, David Steven