NCERT World History

Borrowing from the statement of a famous French historian, Fernand Braudel, we may also say: it is not possible to talk of the nation without the world.

French revolution
1774 - Louis XVI ascends to throne and marries Marie Antoinette
14 July 1789  - Convocation of Estates General, Storming of Bastille, Third Estate forms National Assembly
1791- constitution framed with equal rights to all citizens, but a constitutional monarchy with division of power between legislature, executive and judiciary
1792-93 - France declared a republic. Jacobins imprisoned the royal family. Convention was established to rule.
1793-94 - Reign of terror
 1794 - Jacobin rule terminated. Directory rules France
1804 - Napoleon becomes the emperor
1815 - Napoleon defeated at Waterloo

Old regime - French society in the eighteenth century was divided into three estates, and only members of the third estate paid taxes.
The Church too extracted its share of taxes called tithes from the peasants, and finally, all members of the third estate had to pay taxes to the state. These included a direct tax, called taille, and a number of indirect taxes which were levied on articles of everyday consumption like salt or tobacco.
The burden of financing activities of the state through taxes was borne
by the third estate alone.
These ideas envisaging a society based on freedom and equal laws andopportunities for all, were put forward by philosophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. In his Two Treatises of Government, Locke sought to refute the doctrine of the divine and absolute right of the monarch. Rousseau carried the idea forward, proposing a form of government based on a social contract between people and their representatives. In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu proposed a division of power within the government between the legislative, the executive and the judiciary. This model of government was put into force in the USA, after the thirteen colonies declared their independence from Britain. The American constitution and its guarantee of individual rights was an important example for political thinkers in France.
The situation in France continued to be tense during the following years. Although Louis XVI had signed the Constitution, he entered into secret negotiations with the King of Prussia. Rulers of other neighbouring countries too were worried by the developments in France and made plans to send troops to put down the events that had been taking place there since the summer of 1789. Before this could happen, the National Assembly voted in April 1792 to declare war against Prussia and Austria.
Thousands of volunteers thronged from the provinces to join the army. They saw this as a war of the people against kings and aristocracies all over Europe. Among the patriotic songs they sang was the Marseillaise, composed by the poet Roget de L’Isle. It was sung for the first time by volunteers from Marseilles as they marched into Paris and so got its name. The Marseillaise is now the national anthem of France.
The revolutionary wars brought losses and economic difficulties to the people. While the men were away fighting at the front, women were left to cope with the tasks of earning a living and looking after their families. Large sections of the population were convinced that the revolution had to be carried further, as the Constitution of 1791 gave political rights only to the richer sections
of society.
Jacobins under Maximillian Robespierre (sans culottes - without knee breeches, wearing striped trousers similar to dock worker) are less prosperous section of the society.
The fall of the Jacobin government allowed the wealthier middleclasses to seize power. A new constitution was introduced which denied the vote to non-propertied sections of society. It provided
for two elected legislative councils. These then appointed a Directory, an executive made up of five members. This was meant as a safeguard against the concentration of power in a one-man executive as under the Jacobins. However, the Directors often clashed with the legislative councils, who then sought to dismiss them. The political instability of the Directory paved the way for the rise of a military dictator, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Society of Revolutionary and Republican Women 
Olympe de Gouges - Declaration of the rights of woman and citizen
Women’s movements for voting rights and equal wages continued through the next two hundred years in many countries of the world. The fight for the vote was carried out through an international suffrage movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The example of the political activities of French women during the revolutionary years was kept alive as an inspiring memory.

It was finally in 1946 that women in France won the right to vote

The Abolition of Slavery
One of the most revolutionary social reforms of the Jacobin regime was the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. The colonies in the Caribbean – Martinique, Guadeloupe and San Domingo – were important suppliers of commodities such as tobacco, indigo, sugar and coffee. But the reluctance of Europeans to go and work in distant and unfamiliar lands meant a shortage of labour on the plantations. So this was met by a triangular slave trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas. The slave trade began in the seventeenth century. French merchants sailed from the ports of Bordeaux or Nantes to the African coast, where they bought slaves from local chieftains. Branded and shackled, the slaves were packed tightly into ships for the three-month long voyage across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. There they were sold to plantation owners. The exploitation of slave
labour made it possible to meet the growing demand in European markets for sugar, coffee, and indigo. Port cities like Bordeaux and Nantes owed their economic prosperity to the flourishing slave trade. Throughout the eighteenth century there was little criticism of slavery in France. The National Assembly held long debates about whether the rights of man should be extended to all French subjects including those in the colonies. But it did not pass any laws, fearing opposition from businessmen whose incomes depended on the slave trade. It was finally the Convention which in 1794 legislated to free all slaves in the French overseas possessions. This, however, turned out to be
a short-term measure: ten years later, Napoleon reintroduced slavery. Plantation owners understood their freedom as including the right to enslave African Negroes in pursuit of their economic interests.
Slavery was finally abolished in French colonies in 1848.


Growth of socialism and Russian revolution
Robert Owen (1771-1858), a leading English manufacturer, sought to build a cooperative community called New Harmony in Indiana (USA). Other socialists felt that cooperatives could not be built on a wide scale only through individual initiative: they demanded that governments encourage cooperatives. In France, for instance, Louis Blanc (1813-1882) wanted the government to encourage cooperatives and replace capitalist enterprises. Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) added other ideas to this body of arguments.
By the 1870s, socialist ideas spread through Europe. To coordinate their efforts, socialists formed an international body – namely, the Second International. Workers in England and Germany began forming associations to fight for better living and working conditions. They set up funds to help members in times of distress and demanded a reduction of working hours and the right to vote. In Germany, these associations worked closely with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and helped it win parliamentary seats. By 1905, socialists and trade unionists formed a Labour Party in Britain and a Socialist Party in France. However, till 1914, socialists never succeeded in forming a government in Europe.

El nino, IOD, EQUINOO and Indian Monsoon

In 1997, even before the monsoon began, waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean had warmed sharply, leading to one of the most powerful El Nino events in the last century. As such a phenomenon typically suppresses monsoon rains over India, a severe drought was widely predicted. As it turned out, the monsoon that year ended with above average rains. Just five years later, in 2002, a moderate El Nino unexpectedly wrecked the monsoon and produced a massive drought.

With another El Nino developing in the Pacific, there is considerable worry over its impact on this year’s monsoon. With the onset of rains over Kerala delayed by a few days and the monsoon’s subsequent northward progression stymied, those concerns are bound to escalate.

Although not every El Nino retards the monsoon, the Pacific becoming exceptionally warm greatly heightens the risk of a monsoon turning deficient. When the Pacific is neither unusually warm nor cool, there is only a 16 per cent chance of a monsoon ending in a drought. Rainfall data for 126 years indicates that the odds of a drought jump to over 40 per cent when there is an El Nino.

Almost a century has passed since Sir Gilbert Walker, then Director-General of Observatories in India, found indications that what happens far away in the Pacific affects the monsoon. Scientific understanding of what is known as the ‘El Nino Southern Oscillation’ (ENSO) has grown in leaps and bounds over recent decades.

Nevertheless, predicting how an El Nino will shape up and, more importantly for India, forecasting what might thereby happen to the monsoon are still challenges.

There could be several factors influencing the interplay between an El Nino and the monsoon. For one thing, which part of the Pacific warms has an impact on the monsoon.

El Ninos come in two ‘flavours,’ noted K. Krishna Kumar, who was then with the Indian Institute of the Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune, along with a group of other scientists in a paper published inScience in 2006.

In 1997, the eastern Pacific had become exceptionally warm, thereby limiting the atmospheric circulation changes that adversely affected the monsoon. It was when the sea surface temperature anomalies were highest in the central Pacific that an El Nino had drought-producing effects over India.

Central Pacific El Ninos had appeared in 2002 as well as in 2004 and 2009, with all three years ending in drought, said Dr. Krishna Kumar, currently a consultant with the Qatar Meteorology Department.

Not clear

As this point in time, it was difficult to say which sort of El Nino would manifest this year, he told this correspondent. “The current generation of climate models do not have the capacity to distinguish whether a central or eastern Pacific El Nino will evolve.”

Besides, what happens in the Indian Ocean also shapes the course of the monsoon.

Toshio Yamagata’s research group at the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) has studied the ‘Indian Ocean Dipole’ (IOD) and its effect on rains over India. During a ‘positive IOD’, the eastern equatorial Indian Ocean off Sumatra in Indonesia becomes colder than normal while the western tropical part of the ocean near the African coast becomes unusually warm. Such an event has been found to be beneficial for the monsoon. On the other hand, a ‘negative IOD,’ when temperatures at either end of the Indian Ocean swing in the opposite direction, hampers the monsoon.

An IOD can counter or worsen an El Nino’s impact on the monsoon, according to a paper by K. Ashok, currently at IITM in Pune, along with Dr. Yamagata that was published in Geophysical Research Lettersin 2001.

A positive IOD had facilitated normal or excess rainfall over India in 1983, 1994 and 1997 despite an El Nino in those years. But during years such as 1992, a negative IOD and El Nino had cooperatively produced deficit rainfall.

The latest prediction from the JAMSTEC group suggests a ‘very high’ probability of a negative IOD turning up this year. Sulochana Gadgil, a much respected atmospheric scientist who was with the Indian Instititute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, has along with colleagues been examining wind patterns over the equatorial Indian Ocean that are associated with changes in cloud formation.

During the positive phase of the ‘Equatorial Indian Ocean Oscillation (EQUINOO),’ there is enhanced cloud formation and rainfall in western part of the equatorial ocean near the African coast while such activity is suppressed near Sumatra.

This phase is associated with good rains over India. Its negative phase, when cloud formation and rainfall flares up near Indonesia, retards rains over India.

While EQUINOO and IOD go in step during strong positive IOD events, such as in 1994 and 1997, they do not always do so, according to Prof. Gadgil. The severe drought of 2002, for instance, occurred when a moderate El Nino as well as strong negative EQUINOO together took a toll on the monsoon; that year, the IOD was slightly positive.

The fate of the monsoon depends to a large extent on the Pacific Ocean system and EQUINOO, she argues. While climate models can generate reasonable predictions of events in the Pacific and its impact on the monsoon, they are not able to do the same for EQUINOO.

“The monsoon has a mind of its own,” cautioned Raghu Murtugudde, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Maryland in the U.S. It was not a one-way street with an El Nino affecting the monsoon. What happened to the monsoon in the key months of July and August might determine how the El Nino evolved.

“We need to be able to forecast the monsoon without relying totally on the predictability of El Nino.”

The Hindu -Bali talks of WTO

The trade agreement reached in Bali last weekend has provided much-needed oxygen to a moribund World Trade Organisation. The WTO, founded in 1995, was fast fading into irrelevance what with countries forging bilateral trade pacts and powerful regional trade agreements, especially in the developed world. In the event, the first-ever trade agreement between the 159 member-countries of the WTO is a shot in the arm for multilateralism even as it keeps the agenda of the Doha Round alive. “We have put the world back into the WTO,” declared Roberto Azevedo, Director-General, and he could not have put it more eloquently. The agreement is designed to simplify customs procedures and lower trade barriers between countries. The International Chamber of Commerce has estimated that the Bali deal will cut trade costs by 10-15 per cent even as it adds an estimated $1 trillion to global trade. How realistic these numbers are will only be proved in the years ahead, but there is little doubt that global trade will get a significant boost from the Bali agreement. In a sense, the emergence of regional trade blocs which was seen as a threat to the WTO eventually proved to be its saviour as those countries left out from them, mainly emerging economies such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia, realised the WTO was critical to their interests.

The unyielding stance of India on protecting its farm subsidies which are set to increase following the enactment of the Food Security Act did cause some disquiet amongst the member-countries and at one stage seemed set to hold up an eventual agreement. The interim mechanism devised as a via media will allow India to continue with its agricultural support price programme undisturbed until a final solution is negotiated. A phase of tough and tricky negotiations is ahead for the country as it seeks to get its farm subsidy programme into the WTO framework; support from other developing countries with similar programmes is crucial here. Indeed, from a larger perspective, the agreement at Bali is just the beginning. A lot of hard work lies ahead for the WTO, and Mr. Azevedo has acknowledged this. Trade negotiators need to carry forward the positive momentum built up at Bali as they seek to push through the Doha Round agenda. This will not be easy though, as negotiators will have to contend with regional groupings such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which involves the U.S., Japan and ten other Pacific Rim countries, and the powerful trans-Atlantic alliance between the U.S. and the European Union, negotiations for which are now on. Bali may have infused life into the WTO but its biggest battles lie ahead.

The Hindu - political unrest in Thailand

The political unrest in Thailand against a popularly elected government is a clear sign that democracy is yet to fully take root in that country. Protestors, mainly belonging to the opposition Democrat Party, have besieged Bangkok for days demanding that the government resign. They are not willing to countenance Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra or her government even in a caretaker role until a mid-term election that she has announced for February 2014 in a desperate bid to quell the protests. In a sense, this is a continuation of a crisis that preceded the 2011 election. That election was held after a series of protests in 2010 against the royalist Democrat Party government by supporters of Thaksin Shinawatra, brother of the Prime Minister, who headed the government until 2006 when he was sent packing by the military. Ms. Yingluck led the Pheu Thai Party to a convincing victory in the election, winning well over half the seats in the 500-seat Parliament. The present bout of unrest began when the government tried to introduce an amnesty arrangement that would allow Mr. Thaksin, who fled the country to escape being tried on corruption charges, to return without fear of prosecution. Though the proposal was dropped, the leader of the present protests, Suthep Thaugsuban, Deputy Prime Minister in the previous Democrat Party government, has vowed to continue until power is handed over to non-elected councils. He resigned as an Opposition member of Parliament to lead the protests. Other parliamentarians of the party have since resigned to join the protests. Clearly the DP wants to avenge its electoral defeat, in a manner not in keeping with its name. Indeed, with its supporters mainly Bangkok’s elites, its chances of winning are slim, while the PTP, whose supporters are drawn mainly from rural Thailand and among the urban poor, may triumph again.

Notwithstanding the criticism that she is her brother’s proxy, Ms. Yingluck has emerged as a leader in her own right in the last two years. While her government has made its share of mistakes, in the present crisis she has appeared in better light than the protestors. Despite its stormy relationship with the PTP, the military has kept away from this new edition of Thailand’s political tug-of-war so far — even though the protestors openly sought its intervention, storming the Army headquarters demanding support. In a country where the military has carried out coups 18 times since the end of monarchical rule in 1938 and, as in Pakistan, has played a backroom role even in civilian dispensations, it cannot be ruled out as a player. If the impasse persists, it might still be called upon to play the arbiter. There will be no knowing then, where its role will end.

NYT - Sn 377 reinstated by Supreme Court of India

NEW DELHI — The Indian Supreme Court reinstated on Wednesday a colonial-era law banning gay sex, ruling that it had been struck down improperly by a lower court.

Related in Opinion

• Editorial: India’s Reversal on Gay Rights (December 12, 2013)

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The 1861 law, which imposes a 10-year sentence for “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with man, woman or animal,” was ruled unconstitutional in a 2009 decision. But the Supreme Court held that only Parliament had the power to change that law.

There is almost no chance that Parliament will act where the Supreme Court did not, advocates and opponents of the law agreed. With the Bharatiya Janata Party, a conservative Hindu nationalist group, appearing in ascendancy before national elections in the spring, the prospect of any legislative change in the next few years is highly unlikely, analysts said.

Anjali Gopalan, founder of a charity that sued to overturn the 1861 law, said she was shocked by the ruling.

“This is taking many, many steps back,” Ms. Gopalan said. “The Supreme Court has not just let down the L.G.B.T. community, but the Constitution of India.”

S. Q. R. Ilyas, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which filed a petition in support of the reversal, praised Wednesday’s ruling.

“These relationships are unethical as well as unnatural,” he said. “They create problems in society, both moral and social. This is a sin as far as Islam is concerned.”

India has a rich history of eunuchs and transgender people who serve critical roles in important social functions and whose blessings are eagerly sought. Transgender people often approach cars sitting at traffic lights here and ask for money, and many Indians — fearing a powerful curse if they refuse — hand over small bills.

Despite this history, Indians are in the main deeply conservative about issues of sexuality and personal morality. National surveys show that Indians widely disapprove of homosexuality and, on average, have few sexual partners throughout their lives.

The pressure to marry, have children and conform to traditional notions of family and caste can be overwhelming in many communities. Indian weddings are famously raucous and communal affairs. So gay men and women are often forced to live double lives.

Asian nations typically take a more restrictive view of homosexuality than Western countries. In China, gay sex is not explicitly outlawed, but people can be arrested under ill-defined laws like licentiousness.

The law banning homosexuality is rarely enforced in India, but the police sometimes use it to bully and intimidate gay men and women. In rare cases, health charities that hand out condoms to gays to help prevent the spread of H.I.V. and AIDS have had their work interrupted because such efforts are technically illegal under the law.

But inspired by gay rights efforts elsewhere, activists in India have in recent years sought to assert their rights, holding gay rights marches and pushing for greater legal rights and recognition.

As part of this effort, the Naz Foundation, a gay rights advocacy group, filed suit in 2001 challenging the 1861 law, known here as Section 377. After years of wrangling, the group won a remarkable victory in 2009, when the Delhi High Court ruled that the law violated constitutional guarantees for equality, privacy and freedom of expression.

India’s judges have sweeping powers and a long history of judicial activism that would be all but unimaginable in the United States. In recent years, judges required Delhi’s auto-rickshaws to convert to natural gas to help cut down on pollution, closed much of the country’s iron-ore-mining industry to cut down on corruption and ruled that politicians facing criminal charges could not seek re-election.

Indeed, India’s Supreme Court and Parliament have openly battled for decades, with Parliament passing multiple constitutional amendments to respond to various Supreme Court rulings.

But legalizing gay sex was one step too far for India’s top judges, and in a rare instance of judicial modesty they deferred to India’s legislators.

India’s central government had offered conflicting arguments during the many years of wrangling around the case. But Indira Jaising, an assistant solicitor general of India, said in a televised interview that she was surprised that the court had decided to punt on the underlying legal case.

“They have never been deterred by the argument that the government, the legislature or the executive has not done this or that on other policy matters,” she said.

DNA - India ranks 56 on global web index for freedom and access

India has been ranked 56 out of 81 countries in the annual Web Index, which looks at how the Web empowers people and delivers socio-economic impact.

Pakistan was ranked 6th in the list, showing the poor level of contribution the country has made to development and human rights.

The Web Index is the world’s first measure of the World Wide Web’s contribution to development and human rights globally.

Scores are given in the areas of access; freedom and openness; relevant content; and empowerment.

According to the report, first released in 2012, the 2013 Index has been expanded and refined to include 20 new countries and features an enhanced data set, particularly in the areas of gender, Open Data, privacy rights and security.

Sweden topped the annual Web Index which looks at how the Web empowers people and delivers socio-economic impact.

The World Wide Web Foundation's annual Web Index placed the Scandinavian nation in the top spot for the second year in a row.

It was followed by Norway, the U.K. and the U.S. The Philippines is the highest-ranked developing country.

The bottom ten countries are as follows

1. Vietnam

2. Burkina Fas

3. Malaw

4. Rwanda

5. Cameroon

6. Pakistan

7. Zimbabwe

8. Male

9. Ethiopia

10. Yemen

The Hindu - Climate talks and India

India needs an early agreement, and also adequate atmospheric “space” in terms of allowed carbon emissions to pursue its development goals. It needs to take a proactive stance on this

By all accounts, no dramatic developments are to be expected from the 19th edition of the Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that started in Warsaw last week. But it is generally acknowledged that the key issue at Warsaw, even if there are many other significant subjects on the agenda, centres around moving forward the negotiations on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (DPA) initiated at COP 17 two years ago.

It is widely understood that the Durban Platform was a game-changer, setting the stage for decisive climate action based on clear commitments to emissions reduction from all nations. Subsequently, the discussions in the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP) have resulted in demanding timeline for achieving its aims, including a draft text to be produced by the COP in 2014, a global meeting of heads of states of all nations to be convened by the United Nations Secretary General to push forward such an agreement, and a final agreement to be reached by COP 21 in 2015.

While it is not a foregone conclusion that the DPA will achieve its stated goals by 2015, there are now additional factors conducive to reaching a global agreement. Even if no individual extreme climate event can be attributed exclusively to increased global warming, increasing awareness of the impact of climate-driven disasters, such as Typhoon Haiyan and the Uttarakhand flash floods, is contributing to a global recognition of the urgency of a climate deal, among governments as well as civil society. Significantly, the release of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) over the next several months, culminating in the release of the final synthesis report of all its findings next year, will add to the sense of urgency.

At the UNFCCC, the European Union has been the most active in pushing forward the agenda of the Durban Platform, laying out in increasing detail the framework and broad outlines of its content and a methodology for securing commitments that would ensure an effective treaty. It has been joined in this effort by many African nations, especially South Africa, and have the strong support of the island-states of the world — support that was vociferously expressed at Durban in 2011. The United States has pursued a two-track policy with respect to the DPA. On the one hand, the U.S. insists that it would undertake only such emissions reductions as it deems feasible, a strategy that is referred to as the “bottom up” approach in the global climate discourse. On the other hand, it has not hesitated to support the European Union, the Africa Group and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) in their efforts to have a binding climate agreement with assigned commitments to all nations, especially when such commitments are to be imposed on China and India.

India’s interests

Where do India’s interests lie in the matter of a global climate agreement? There can be no doubt that India needs an early climate agreement, for two reasons. On the one hand, there is increasing evidence that unchecked global warming would lead to increasingly severe effects in several sectors, especially agriculture and water, apart from the increased frequency of extreme climate events. The enhanced climate variability that accompanies global warming will have serious impacts on Indian farmers, the bulk of whom are small-holders who even today suffer the consequences of weather and climate shocks, before the effects of global warming have risen to more alarming levels. An early climate agreement with the potential to restrict global average temperature rise to at least 2 degrees Centigrade, if not lower, is certainly a necessity. An early and effective limit on greenhouse gas emissions will also contribute to lowering the need, and associated costs, for climate change adaptation, which otherwise could be considerable.

At the same time, India needs adequate atmospheric “space” in terms of allowed carbon emissions to pursue its development. Even in a highly optimistic scenario in which renewable energy rapidly takes up the bulk of the requirements for sectors such as domestic lighting and heating, agriculture, and all energy needs of small-scale establishments, India will still need fossil fuels for a considerable time until reliable sources of clean energy become available for large-scale use in the expansion of industry, transportation and the like, all of which are needed for development. Even infrastructure needs for adaptation will require such emissions.

The IPCC’s AR5 report has brought to the centre-stage of discussion the notion of a global carbon budget, referring to the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, from the beginning of the industrial era till the end of the 21st century, that are permissible, if the global temperature rise is to be kept below 2 degrees C. For a 66 per cent probability of keeping the rise in global average temperature below this limit, the world is allowed approximately 1000 billion tonnes of carbon emissions (taking account solely of carbon dioxide). But the nub of the issue is the equitable distribution of this space. In per capita terms, or indeed by several other measures of equitable distribution as well, the developed countries have already substantially exceeded their fair share of this global budget. As a consequence, a large number of developing countries, including China but especially India, will have to make do with less than their fair share of the global carbon space as their national carbon budgets for the future, if indeed global warming has to be kept in check.

‘Top-down’ agreement

To maximise the developing countries’ access to the global carbon budget, an early “top-down” agreement to impose constraints on the developed nations’ consumption of carbon “space” in the atmosphere is an obvious necessity. Even more obviously, an approach based on “voluntary” commitments to emissions reduction by developed and developing countries would not address India’s needs.

In view of these considerations, it is surprising that New Delhi’s guidelines for its Warsaw delegation should set aside India’s long-standing commitment to treating the atmosphere as a global commons, to be shared equitably by all nations, and instead back the “voluntary commitments” approach. Predictably, even before this approach has been articulated, it has run into rough weather. The EU is of course fully aware of the global carbon budget and hence demands that the gap between the sum of all voluntary commitments and the allowed global budget has to made up by further emissions reductions that all nations have to agree to. This demand, as well as India’s response that the gap must be made up by the developed nations based on historical responsibility for emissions, brings us back to what is indeed a “top-down” approach.

At the heart of the Government of India’s current confusion lies its unwillingness to acknowledge that in an eventual global agreement, all countries have to shoulder some part of the burden, even while any such burden-sharing must be based on equity and climate justice in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. New Delhi’s view currently is that developing countries will have no binding commitments whatsoever even into the future, a view that will increasingly isolate India from even others in the ranks of the G-77. The inadequacy of official India’s unhappy approach is brought out by the fact that it has allowed the term “equity reference framework” in the context of the ADP negotiations to be hijacked by other nations, including nations of the African Group as well as the EU. India and its like-minded friends are left in the unenviable position of opposing this term, claiming that developing nations will never undertake any binding commitment.

For too long, India’s official climate policy has portrayed the absence of a proactive stance on a climate agreement as a strategy to protect the country’s interests. Climate science as well as good climate politics demand that India shift to making clear to the world its commitment, in concrete terms, both to securing its developmental future as well as preserving the global environment.

(Dr. T. Jayaraman is Dean of the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai)