India, Enlightened

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WHAT WOULD GANDHI DRIVE?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wound up his presentation of the National Action Plan on Climate Change last year with the homage to Gandhi that is obligatory for any Indian politician. In this instance he paraphrased one of the Mahatma's most famous sayings: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed."

But virtually in the same breath Singh set the bottom line of India's climate policy, and it seemed to sit oddly with Gandhi's philosophy: per capita greenhouse gas emissions would never exceed those of the industrialized world. To put this in perspective, the current per capita level is only about one-twentieth that of the United States. But a population of 1.15 billion is a powerful multiplier. India is already the world's fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and its recent economic growth rates, if sustained, will mean a doubling of energy demand by 2020.

By the time you read this, India will have a new coalition government. Perhaps the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party will come out on top this time; perhaps the Congress Party. Either way, there will be the same onward rush of economic growth, the same commitment to bring millions out of poverty. And given its agricultural and service-based economy, its lack of dependence on exports, India may be shielded from the worst of the global meltdown. Indian diplomats will take part in the climate negotiations that will lead, by the end of this year, to a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, and they will insist, with good reason, that the United States take the lead in finding a solution. You created the problem, they will say; you solve it. Meanwhile, the monsoons will grow more erratic. There will be worse floods and more severe droughts. The glaciers will go on melting. There will be more coal-fired power plants and more hydro dams. More Indians will buy cars.

What would Gandhi make of it all? I wondered. I had a pretty good idea what he'd think if he stood on that footbridge at the Okhla train station and peered out into the murk at the cranes and the malls of NOIDA. There was no mystery about what he'd think of the ads for the E-Class Mercedes. But in other respects I was less sure.

What would Gandhi make of the Nano? And, come to that, what would he think of village kids going to school in an SUV instead of sitting with their teacher in the shade of a neem tree or, more likely, not going to school at all? What would he think of a water pyramid, or the chance to power the spinning wheel in his ashram with solar panels? These were not easy questions to answer, and in trying to do so it seemed wise to leave many of my Western preconceptions behind.

The rutted back roads of Rajasthan and the sleek flyways of the Delhi suburbs: at first they seemed worlds apart. Yet there was a common logic in the changes that were under way in both places, and it was summed up in that word entrepreneur that people kept using. There are the kind of entrepreneurs, of course, who have created entire new Silicon Valleys in Bangalore and Hyderabad. There are those who will design the next generation of diesel engines and variable crankshafts. But there are also the jal sabhas with their account books and Mr. Singh with his lantern, Mr. Ram with his pyramid and Dilip Chenoy's parable of the milkman -- all of them hints, however small, of how India might yet realize its dreams of development without tearing itself, and the rest of the planet, apart.

This article was made possible by a generous grant from the Josephine Patterson Albright Fund for Special Features