Global Warming and Indian Science Establishment

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Global Warming has today released its report in Paris. Some 500 of the top environment and climate change world scientists have gathered in Paris in a bid to focus attention on the issue of irreversible global warming, climate change and the rise of sea levels across the world. This conference is a reminder that the world of today is very intricately inter related and actions in one part of the world cannot escape global attention.
There is no home, sweet home, or gharonda in the globalized world of today. I quote from a poem of the metaphysical poet John Donne in Meditation XVII - "No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

European countries are certainly spearheading the effort to raise awareness on climate change issues on a global level. Maybe they do have their agendas as well. So be it.
At the same time it seems this present report is now finding ways to confront and engage India, its political elite, and its development policies, with the issue of global warming.

Indian diplomats and scientists in their learned erudition are publicly taking the view that for India, development and poverty alleviation is the primary issue, global climate change comes lower down in the hierarchy of priorities.
They articulate that those who are so concerned about climate change must foot the bill for global warming and enable yet some more transfer of technology in terms of energy generation and waste recycling.

Aware of this rhetorical stance of Indian officials, European countries are gearing up to put increasing pressure on India, because of the widespread recognition, that no efforts on global change will proceed successfully forward without getting India on board. Just as WTO will not proceed without India on board.
I personally think, Indian scientists are capable of more creative responses rather than reacting in terms of pro or anti India - US civil nuclear agreement. Indian scientific establishment is now faced with a choice of whether to ignore global warming and ride on its economic juggernaut, or to get its act together on asking the fundamental questions of science and the larger Indian society.
I think the creative response of Indian scientists, who have long preferred to act from behind positions of bureaucratic power, rather than in full public scrutiny, will be an important indicator of whether as a people we are still "coping" or are actually capable of creativity.

No more is this issue going to be an argument to be played out by the scientific advisers in Delhi and leading science and technology institutes. For the first time, with the global focus on global warming and the size of India's energy bill, Indian scientific establishment will have to ask deeper questions about itself and its creativity.