Indian power

Chronically short of power, and heavily dependent on imported oil, India wants to massively expand its nuclear power output to improve its long-term energy security and meet surging demand. India’s national energy plan calls for 30,000MW of nuclear power by 2020, 63,000MW by 2030 and 250,000MW by 2050.

-- from an informative FT article. No mention of the near collapse of the NPT, though

Abode of snow

Just to say, a little late, how good to see the launch of Chinadialogue's third pole series, with Navin Singh Khadka's article New race to explore the Himalayas. Glad to have contributed to the genesis of this by commissioning Stephan Harrison in '06.

Jaipur in January

We took a view at the festival that it was extremely important to keep up the cultural dialogue between Pakistan and India, and that once you start pulling the plug on writers and artists, the fanatics have won. Our Pakistani delegates are still coming, and they've got their visas despite slightly hysterical travel warnings from their own government.

William Dalrymple on the Jaipur literature fesitval in The Week in Books

Mumbai and celebrity

Not sure this is right, but it is thought provoking:

Mumbai could represent something rather different in the history of terrorism, and possibly something far more disturbing even than global jihad. Perhaps we have come to the point where casually self-radicalised, sociopathic individuals can form a loose organisation, acquire sufficient weapons and equipment for a few thousand dollars, make a basic plan of action and indulge in a violent expression of their generalised disaffection and anomie.

Certainly, though, the attacks in Mumbai got vastly more attention in UK media (and I guess elsewhere internationally) than, for example the riots in Nigeria in which, it appears, many more people died.

1 Dec: Steve Coll

4 Dec: Armchair Generalist

5 Dec: Juan Cole

'Fidayeen'

An analysis by Sumantra Bose.

No no, new nuke?

Reagan-Gorbachev revisited?

Obama has stated: "A world without nuclear weapons is profoundly in America's interest and the world's interest. It is our responsibility to make the commitment, and to do the hard work to make this vision a reality. That's what I've done as a senator and a candidate, and that's what I'll do as president."

-- from Can Obama Say No to Nuclear Weapons?. But the Indians, for one, take a different view.

P.S. 18 Nov. See Report on Nuclear Security Urges Prompt Global Action.

Up in smoke

The brownish haze, sometimes more than a mile thick and clearly visible from airplanes, stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to the Yellow Sea. During the spring, it sweeps past North and South Korea and Japan. Sometimes the cloud drifts as far east as California.

-- U.N. Report Sees New Pollution Threat.

The deal

The U.S. Senate has passed the civilian nuclear agreement between the U.S. and India by a vote of 86–13.

Burying the NPT for now, consider what Wikipedia (as of 9am 2 Oct) says about the economic considersations:

the U.S. ...expects that [the] deal could spur India's economic growth and bring in $150 billion in the next decade for nuclear power plants, of which the U.S. wants a share. It is India's stated objective to increase the production of nuclear power generation from its present capacity of 4,000 MWe to 20,000 MWe in the next decade. However,... Dalberg, [a consultancy which] advises the IMF and the World Bank...[concludes] that for the next 20 years such investments are likely to be far less valuable economically or environmentally than a variety of other measures to increase electricity production in India. They have noted that U.S. nuclear vendors cannot sell any reactors to India unless and until India caps third party liabilities or establishes a credible liability pool to protect U.S. firms from being sued in the case of an accident or a terrorist act of sabotage against nuclear plants.

Gandhi

Views differ. Randeep Ramesh quotes Rudrangshu Mukherjee, one of those who say that Gandhi's ideas have been irrelevant to modern India:

India today has repudiated everything he stood for. He did not want industrialisation, he did not want a strong centralised state, he did not want violence or religious intolerance. Yet this is India today. He is at best an icon, respected but not relevant.

But Ramin Jahanbegloo is more positive (The modern Gandhi):

Gandhi was very conscious of the fact that the cultivation of an "enlarged pluralism" requires the creation of institutions and practices where the voice and perspective of everyone can be articulated, tested and transformed. This indeed is a vision of modernity, offering fruitful insights that may help us to confront the dilemmas of the new century: among them how to create a sense of global citizenship, how to turn inter-faith dialogue into a means of civic and moral self-understanding, and how to realise the potential of non-violence to heal a torn world. To reap the harvest of these ideas, we must sow the seeds - and the seeds are in Gandhi. In this respect, this moral and intellectual figure - sixty years after his death on 30 January 1948 - retains the disturbing capacity to unsettle fixed categories, shake inherited conceptual habits, and challenge us to see the world in a fresh light.

Official: "We're fucked"

“The world is already at or above the worst case scenarios in terms of emissions,” said Gernot Klepper, of the Kiel Institute for World Economy in Kiel, Germany. “In terms of emissions, we are moving past the most pessimistic estimates of the I.P.C.C., and by some estimates we are above that red line.”

-- from U.N. Report Describes Risks of Inaction on Climate Change.

[International Energy Agency] officials have stressed that if a solution was not found to curb the growth of energy use and improve energy efficiency in India and China, the trend would become harder and harder to reverse. China and India are building huge numbers of power plants to meet energy over the next 10 years, and 90 percent will burn coal. Coal is a highly polluting but relatively inexpensive source of power, making it the choice for developing countries. While technology exists to make coal plants somewhat cleaner, it is expensive.

"What choices China and India make will be with us for 60 years," said Fatih Birol, the agency economist. "These are locked in investments."

-- from Dire climate warning linked to China and India.

Inequality

In the Grandpont area of Oxford where I live we were concerned a couple of weeks ago about flooding after what may have been the the heaviest rains in a 24 hour period recorded in Britain. In the event we remained above the flood water. And, of course, our concerns seem ridiculously, even grotesquely petty and selfish compared to what is happening to some people in Bihar and other parts of South Asia. I heard one item on the radio last night which featured a grandmother and her family of nine somewhere in Bangladesh stranded on the roof of their hourse for the last five days with only a few kilos of rice.

[P.S. 9 August: Surviving on snails and rats in Bihar; 10 August: Extreme Floods Hit 500 Million People a Year - UN]

Unspeakable cataclysm

Development has not erased traditional values: in fact, selective abortion has been accelerating in a globalising India. Wealthier and better-educated Indians still want sons. A survey revealed that female foeticide was highest among women with university degrees. The urban middle classes can also afford the ultrasound tests to determine the sex of the foetus.

-- from Foetuses aborted and dumped secretly as India shuns baby girls by Randeep Ramesh. He notes that around 10 million girls are estimated to have been aborted in the past 20 years. An article earlier this week reported that there are thought to be over 11 million abandoned or orphaned children in India, 90% of them girls.

My reading list includes Martha Nussbaum's The Clash Within
Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future.