REWIND

New Delhi, 28 May 2026

EMERGENCE OF YOUTH POWER

By Inder Jit

(Released on 30 November 1976) 

Every Congress’ session is usually described as historic. Yet if there was one in recent years which was truly historic it was the session that concluded on Tuesday last in Gauhati. Indeed, a week after the curtain came down on the colourful and memorable meet, it appears no less significant than it did at Jawahar Nagar on November 22 – especially on three counts. First, it saw India’s hitherto dormant youth power and, more specifically, the Youth Congress and its leader, Mr Sanjay Gandhi, not only “steal the thunder of the AICC” in the words of the Prime Minister but emerge as a major factor in Indian politics. Second, the Communist Party, which has been enjoying for the past seven years an influence in national affairs disproportionate to its intrinsic strength, was virtually cut down to size and told for the first time in so many words where it got off. Third, it saw Assam and the six neighbouring States in the sensitive and strategic north-east area open a new and welcome chapter in regional integration, burying the troubled, suspicion ridden past.

At the Chandigarh Congress, as I wrote on January 6 last, Mr Sanjay Gandhi made “an impressive debut” on the political stage and “infused the Youth Congress with a new sense of involvement and adventure.” Komagatu Maru Nagar, moreover, saw Mr. Sanjay Gandhi and Mrs. Ambika Soni, the dynamic President of the Youth Congress, hold out promise of blazing a new trail. Both proved as good their word and the Indian Youth Congress show at Jawahar Nagar turned out to be one better than even their highly impressive meet at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi on August 9 last. For one thing, the attendance at the conference was unprecedented a record: number of 13,000 delegates from all over India, including a thousand women, as against the target of 10,000 delegates, notwithstanding the long travel and inconvenience involved. More important, the enthusiasm and inspiration of those who attended had to be seen to be believed. The session itself was largely businesslike with Mr Sanjay Gandhi and Mrs Soni, who again impressed all by her powerful oratory and superb chairing of the conference, setting the pace by speaking briefly and effectively.

Acknowledgement of the success of the Youth conference came not only from the Prime Minister but from several Chief Ministers and Central Ministers. Of particular significance was the compliment paid by the Prime Minister when she said “After attending your convention at Pragati Maidan and after seeing you function here, I am fully assured that India’s future is safe in the hands of our youth.” In fact, she was happy that India’s youth was again astir and had understood, and accepted its due responsibility. “India’s problems are now your” she said and added: “Remember, what happens hereafter is not my "bhavishya but aap ka bhavishya. You must go ahead with courage.” Earlier, four Chief Ministers complimented the Youth Congress, lauded Mr Sanjay Gandhi’s result-oriented leadership and explained what each had done to implement the five-point programme. Giani Zail Singh, who described Mr Gandhi as a great national leader (“desh ke mahaan neta”), drew loud applause as he advocated greater association of youth and, in support, quoted Guru Nanak's saying: "Aap ditta so doodh baraber...” (What you, give on your own is milk!)

Apart from expressing her confidence in the youth, Mrs Gandhi made two other significant points. First, she gave a new import and dimension to Mr Sanjay Gandhi’s five-point programme. She clarified that this programme was more fundamental than the 20-point programme and that, in fact, the success of her own programme depended upon the success of the Five-point programme, which provided the foundation for the super-structure. In other words, the mathematical equation was meaningfully changed from 20 +5 to 5+ 20! Second, she also took care to set the record straight for such of the CPI and other lenders who extended their support to the 20-point programme but refused to take notice of the five-point programme on the ground that they could not be expected to support a programme put forward by “a private individual”. Mrs Gandhi said the Congress party had all along stood for the programmes outlined in the five-point plan. Now these had been strung together and projected pointedly to ensure affective implementation. Had the programme been taken up in its present form and thrust twenty years ago, “we would have had today an altogether new and better picture of India.”

The CPI has of late been at its old and familiar game of publicly and repeatedly drawing a distinction between Congressmen and Congressmen. It has also been labeling a section of Congressmen as “a reactionary caucus” within the ruling party and alleged that it was trying to destabilize several State Governments. The CPI General Secretary, Mr Rajeshwar Rao, has advisedly desisted from naming the persons constituting the alleged caucus. But who the CPI has in mind is pretty well known. Mrs. Gandhi also took care of this without naming the CPI and in the bargain gave the party its worst-ever drubbing and, what is more, sought to end what Congressmen have been silently but increasingly resenting for long: CPI’s “dominance over Congressmen and policies”. She said the Congress would not tolerate interference by any other party in its internal affairs about what it should do or should not do and what steps it should take or not take in one State or another. Their offer “of cooperation to Indira Gandhi” while opposing others in the Congress was meaningless, she said and, raising her voice, added: “This is not acceptable to me at all.”

The CPI also came under implied attack from Mr Sanjay Gandhi. He, too, preferred not to name the CPI in the course of his brief speech. But no one was left in doubt that the reference was to the CPI. Some parties which called themselves socialists, he said, were trying to run down the Youth Congress by arguing that it had no political programme and what it was promoting was merely a social programme. This, he added, was a strange argument especially coming as it did from parties which claimed to be socialist. The Youth Congress was not interested in their kind of politics which comprised burning buses, stopping trains and indulging in violence. The Youth Congress stood for serving the poor people and considered this to be the only healthy socialist programme. Mr Sanjay Gandhi, however, has hastened to clarify for the benefit of the fraternal delegates, including those from the Soviet Union and East Europe, that the IYC was neither pro this country nor pro that but was only pro-India. His subsequent reference to bhải bandi with those who had helped India in times of need and had cooperated with it at the UN drew a meaningful applause.

Jawahar Nagar”also provided a glimpse into the style and outlook of Mr. Sanjay Gandhi, who attracted the spotlight only next to the Prime Minister and was invariably the most popular draw in Gauhati from the moment he alighted by a scheduled flight at the airport. First and foremost, he wants politics to become work-oriented and not remain power-oriented. As he told the Congress-affiliated NSUI, presided over by energetic Miss Githanjali Sharma, they could have easily come forward with many more points. But he was not interested in mere paper resolutions. Second, his outlook does not appear to be authoritarian, as is sought to be made out by his detractors. He complimented Mrs. Soni and the Youth Congress for setting up 6,000 block committees ahead of the schedule announced at Chandigarh. However, he pointed out that these had been appointed and not elected. He then suggested that the IYC should set itself a target of having duly elected block committees during the next year adding: “It is easy to banao and udao from above and carry on mage se. But if those committees are to enjoy prestige and respect, we must have chunao. Then only these will be good, strong and effective.”

Some excitement was caused when the Youth Congress leaders fired three broadsides at the “old Congress”. Mrs Ambika Soni initially complained that senior Congressmen were spurning ÏYC’s cooperation in implementing the 20-point programme and were even obstructing the Youth Congress in its work for fear that their chairs would be threatened. Subsequently, Mr Sanjay Gandhi said: “In Chandigarh, the Congress met in a big way and we as a small cell. Now we are meeting in a big way and the Congress as a cell. This is so because we have implemented what we had promised at Chandigarh. The Congress talked of making 1976 the year of the organisation and yet what has been done?” Finally, when Mr Borooah came to address the IYC session in the afternoon, Mrs Soni reminded the Congress President of his promise at the AICC in June last that the Youth Congress would be fully associated with the implementation of the 20-point programme. But, she added, the promise had not been kept.

Mr Borooah tactfully sought to assuage the IYC feelings by addressing them as “esteemed colleagues of the Youth Congress”. He also humoured them in the course of his speech analysing historically, like a learned leader that he is, the recent developments. There had been a “qualitative change” in politics since the Emergency, he said, and this change wan summarised in the IYC slogan: “Talk less, work more.” (Two days later, Mr Borooah, who described himself as “a temporary President”, asserted at the AICC meeting that the Congress, too, had implemented its Chandigarh resolve: five lakh seva dal workers had been recruited of which three lakhs had been trained and were in uniform; by the end of 1976 another three lakh workers would be trained, bringing the total to six lakhs. Mr Borooah’s remarks at the youth meet manifestly assuaged feelings but what really helped was Mrs Gendhi’s own bouquets to the IYC and her firm view that there was need for active cooperation between the Congress and the Youth Congress. Finally, Mrs Soni briefly intervened at the AICC meeting to clarify that the IYC was a part of the parent organisation and that there was no question of any parallalism.

Nevertheless, steps will need to be taken from now onwards to prevent any sense of rivalry emerging between the two at some stage. This will be necessary all the more in view of the outlook stimulated among some Youth Congressmen by the success of the Gauhati meet. At any rate, immediate action is required to remove the grievances of the Youth Congress against senior partymen about cooperation. Simultaneously, IYC leadership will need to ensure that even as they individually screen their membership of about 5 million, as suggested by Mrs Gandhi, members of the Youth Congress do not in their zeal start throwing their weight about. The Youth Congress has the required vigour and vitality --  and new ideas. But, in the final analysis, youth and experience are complimentary and have to function together in the best national interest.

While the arrangements made by the Reception Committee, which was headed by Mr Hokisho Sema and included Assam’s Chief Minister, Mr Sarat Sinha, who understandably had to carry the main burden, were excellent within its many limitations, almost all prominent Congressmen and Youth leaders I met at Jawahar Nagar were agreed that time had come to change the style and method of future AICC meetings. In fact, Mrs Gandhi herself said that efforts needed to be made to make the meetings more businesslike. True, as Mrs Gandhi emphasized, the Congress has been a movement, is a movement and must continue to be a movement. Nonetheless, the Congress has to think in terms of encouraging greater involvement of its AICC members in the formulation and execution of its policies. Mr Sanjay Gandhi and the Youth Congress have already helped to set a now tone by emphasizing the mood to talk less and work more. Will they now blaze another trail to ensure effective implementation of various programmes?---INFA.

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Round The World

New Delhi, 29 May 2026

Quad’s Delhi Drift

RUBIO CAME TO SALVAGE OR TOUR?

By Dr. D.K. Giri

(Prof. International Relations, JIMMC) 

When US Secretary of State, Mark Rubio landed in Delhi last week, the atmospherics were impeccable. The motorcade signalling the big power, the Hyderabad House lunch, the inspired visit to Missionaries of Charity with his wife Jeanatte – all choreographed to indicate that India-US ties were back on track. But the observations and inferences pointed to the contrary. The question raised is whether Rubio was here to salvage a fraying bilateral relationship or was this a well-timed diplomatic holiday before a multilateral event in Delhi. 

The multilateral event in reference here is the Quad Foreign Ministers’ conference. As the dust settled after the conference, New Delhi was left with more questions. For India, the answers matter because the Quad itself now looks adrift. India’s approach to Quad has moved the full circle. New Delhi was apologetic about Quad suggesting it as a networking platform for developmental purpose whereas it was purely a security arrangement to contain China in India Pacific. Now, America, which was largely responsible for creating Quad, is moving away from multilateral engagement by bilaterally making up with China. There could be more than what meets the eye. But we can only go by what is in the public domain. 

Rubio’s visit was primarily commercial. With President Trump’s “America First” agenda back in force, Washington’s view of India has boiled down to single metric, market access. The State Department’s talking points were blunt. India is being asked to import 500b USD worth of American goods over the next five years, from LNG to defence equipments to apples and almonds. 

Rubio played a salesman-in-chief with skill. He used every forum to push the trade task, framing it as a win-win with India that would cut her dependence on China and Russia. But the subtext was clear to all discerning observers. That is, tariffs are off the table only when the cash register reigns. The irony is hard to miss. 

The Quad was created as a value-based coalition of democracy. But in Trump-Rubio era, it is being used as a buyers’ club. America-India ties were strategic vis-à-vis countering China, now are more transactional. Partnership in defence is deepening but that may also have a trade angle as the volume of cash is highest in this sector. 

Unarguably, Quad was the real casualty of Rubio’s visit. The Foreign Ministers of India, the US, Japan and Australia met in New Delhi with one agenda, announced a date for the Leaders’ Summit which has not been held since 2024. After Trump’s trade tirade against India which derailed the Summit last year, New Delhi made a renewed diplomatic push to host it in 2026, fearing that grouping would otherwise slide into geo-political irrelevance. 

What happened instead was telling. The Ministers concluded the meeting in just over an hour with no Summit date, no joint press conference, just a bland statement on maritime domain awareness and critical technology. Clearly, without the political weight of a Leaders’ Summit, the Quad is reduced to a talk shop of bureaucrats. Trump’s invitation to Modi signals theunlikelihood of his visit to India this year. 

India will pass on the baton to Australia for the next Summit. But the damage is done. In absence of Leaders’ Summit, Quad loses both purpose and the punch. Worse, Trump’s reaching out to Beijing suggests that countering China is no longer the lodestar. If Washington is making up to Beijing while squeezing New Delhi on Pakistan and trade, what exactly is the Quad containing? 

If the trade was high on agenda, human rights were not, contrary to the expectation of many Indians especially Christians. Rubio, a practicing Catholic, who was built his political brand on religious freedom, chose not to raise the issue of Christian persecution with the Government of India. Therefore, his visit to the Missionaries of Charity was heavy on symbolism and light on substance. There was no press statement, no demarche, no allusion to the churches vandalised, or the anti-conversion laws proliferating across states. 

Indian Christian community saw it all in despair. For years, they have looked upto successive US governments as moral counterweight. Rubio’s silence was therefore not neutral, it was a statement. It revealed to minorities in India that in the new hierarchy of US interests 500b USD in exports outranks Article 25 of the Indian Constitution. It also told New Delhi that the Trump administration will not allow values to override deals. To America, it may be realpolitik, but it undermines its image as defender of freedom and human rights. 

Rubio’s ambivalence on Pakistan reflected old patronage with new excuses.Asked repeatedly about continued US military aid and F-16 sustenance package to Pakistan, Rubio gave the standard Washington straddle: “We have relationships with both countries”. He also said that India-Pakistan relations are of their own kind. He condemned terrorism in general but refused to call out Pakistan unlike in the past. For a Secretary of State, who had called China, “the greatest threat of our time”, such hedging on Pakistan left a bad taste in the mouth. 

New Delhi’s concern on America-Pakistan relation is not abstract. Every time Islamabad gets aid from United States, the fallout is seen in Kashmir through Indians’ blood. Rubio’s ambivalence signalled that Trump 2.0 will revere to the old American style: use Pakistan when needed and placate India when necessary. Indians will continue to ask if Washington does not stand with us on Pakistan, why we shouldstand with Washington on China. New Delhi should raise this concern strongly with Washington. Trump likes to strike deals, why is Modi not offering him deals on China, on Pakistan, on Russia and others. 

From Rubio’s four-day visit to India culminating in Quad Ministers’ Conference, the most uncomfortable question emerges: What was Rubio really doing in India? The official schedule was thin, the deliverables were thinner. Mrs. Rubio accompanying the Secretary of State in the visits to cultural sites gave the trip a tourist tick flavour. For a Foreign Minister of the United States, the biggest power in the world, to mix diplomacy with what looks like a family holiday, would be unseemly at any point of time. More so, when Quad needs resuscitation, it borders on the cavalier. 

Great powers are judged by how seriously they take their partners. When a top US diplomat comes for one day of meetings and two days of optics, it lends a message of disengagement not repair. From Rubio’s visit and the Quad conference, India must draw three conclusions. Bipartisan consensus on India in Washington is tearing up. Second, the Quad’s strategic importance cannot be taken for granted. If the US is distant from Quad, India could explore other options. Third, India on chair seems to be the most stable leg of the Quad table. So, if New Delhi dies not lead, no one will. 

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)

Round The World

New Delhi, 29 May 2026

Quad’s Delhi Drift

RUBIO CAME TO SALVAGE OR TOUR?

By Dr. D.K. Giri

(Prof. International Relations, JIMMC) 

When US Secretary of State, Mark Rubio landed in Delhi last week, the atmospherics were impeccable. The motorcade signalling the big power, the Hyderabad House lunch, the inspired visit to Missionaries of Charity with his wife Jeanatte – all choreographed to indicate that India-US ties were back on track. But the observations and inferences pointed to the contrary. The question raised is whether Rubio was here to salvage a fraying bilateral relationship or was this a well-timed diplomatic holiday before a multilateral event in Delhi. 

The multilateral event in reference here is the Quad Foreign Ministers’ conference. As the dust settled after the conference, New Delhi was left with more questions. For India, the answers matter because the Quad itself now looks adrift. India’s approach to Quad has moved the full circle. New Delhi was apologetic about Quad suggesting it as a networking platform for developmental purpose whereas it was purely a security arrangement to contain China in India Pacific. Now, America, which was largely responsible for creating Quad, is moving away from multilateral engagement by bilaterally making up with China. There could be more than what meets the eye. But we can only go by what is in the public domain. 

Rubio’s visit was primarily commercial. With President Trump’s “America First” agenda back in force, Washington’s view of India has boiled down to single metric, market access. The State Department’s talking points were blunt. India is being asked to import 500b USD worth of American goods over the next five years, from LNG to defence equipments to apples and almonds. 

Rubio played a salesman-in-chief with skill. He used every forum to push the trade task, framing it as a win-win with India that would cut her dependence on China and Russia. But the subtext was clear to all discerning observers. That is, tariffs are off the table only when the cash register reigns. The irony is hard to miss. 

The Quad was created as a value-based coalition of democracy. But in Trump-Rubio era, it is being used as a buyers’ club. America-India ties were strategic vis-à-vis countering China, now are more transactional. Partnership in defence is deepening but that may also have a trade angle as the volume of cash is highest in this sector. 

Unarguably, Quad was the real casualty of Rubio’s visit. The Foreign Ministers of India, the US, Japan and Australia met in New Delhi with one agenda, announced a date for the Leaders’ Summit which has not been held since 2024. After Trump’s trade tirade against India which derailed the Summit last year, New Delhi made a renewed diplomatic push to host it in 2026, fearing that grouping would otherwise slide into geo-political irrelevance. 

What happened instead was telling. The Ministers concluded the meeting in just over an hour with no Summit date, no joint press conference, just a bland statement on maritime domain awareness and critical technology. Clearly, without the political weight of a Leaders’ Summit, the Quad is reduced to a talk shop of bureaucrats. Trump’s invitation to Modi signals theunlikelihood of his visit to India this year. 

India will pass on the baton to Australia for the next Summit. But the damage is done. In absence of Leaders’ Summit, Quad loses both purpose and the punch. Worse, Trump’s reaching out to Beijing suggests that countering China is no longer the lodestar. If Washington is making up to Beijing while squeezing New Delhi on Pakistan and trade, what exactly is the Quad containing? 

If the trade was high on agenda, human rights were not, contrary to the expectation of many Indians especially Christians. Rubio, a practicing Catholic, who was built his political brand on religious freedom, chose not to raise the issue of Christian persecution with the Government of India. Therefore, his visit to the Missionaries of Charity was heavy on symbolism and light on substance. There was no press statement, no demarche, no allusion to the churches vandalised, or the anti-conversion laws proliferating across states. 

Indian Christian community saw it all in despair. For years, they have looked upto successive US governments as moral counterweight. Rubio’s silence was therefore not neutral, it was a statement. It revealed to minorities in India that in the new hierarchy of US interests 500b USD in exports outranks Article 25 of the Indian Constitution. It also told New Delhi that the Trump administration will not allow values to override deals. To America, it may be realpolitik, but it undermines its image as defender of freedom and human rights. 

Rubio’s ambivalence on Pakistan reflected old patronage with new excuses.Asked repeatedly about continued US military aid and F-16 sustenance package to Pakistan, Rubio gave the standard Washington straddle: “We have relationships with both countries”. He also said that India-Pakistan relations are of their own kind. He condemned terrorism in general but refused to call out Pakistan unlike in the past. For a Secretary of State, who had called China, “the greatest threat of our time”, such hedging on Pakistan left a bad taste in the mouth. 

New Delhi’s concern on America-Pakistan relation is not abstract. Every time Islamabad gets aid from United States, the fallout is seen in Kashmir through Indians’ blood. Rubio’s ambivalence signalled that Trump 2.0 will revere to the old American style: use Pakistan when needed and placate India when necessary. Indians will continue to ask if Washington does not stand with us on Pakistan, why we shouldstand with Washington on China. New Delhi should raise this concern strongly with Washington. Trump likes to strike deals, why is Modi not offering him deals on China, on Pakistan, on Russia and others. 

From Rubio’s four-day visit to India culminating in Quad Ministers’ Conference, the most uncomfortable question emerges: What was Rubio really doing in India? The official schedule was thin, the deliverables were thinner. Mrs. Rubio accompanying the Secretary of State in the visits to cultural sites gave the trip a tourist tick flavour. For a Foreign Minister of the United States, the biggest power in the world, to mix diplomacy with what looks like a family holiday, would be unseemly at any point of time. More so, when Quad needs resuscitation, it borders on the cavalier. 

Great powers are judged by how seriously they take their partners. When a top US diplomat comes for one day of meetings and two days of optics, it lends a message of disengagement not repair. From Rubio’s visit and the Quad conference, India must draw three conclusions. Bipartisan consensus on India in Washington is tearing up. Second, the Quad’s strategic importance cannot be taken for granted. If the US is distant from Quad, India could explore other options. Third, India on chair seems to be the most stable leg of the Quad table. So, if New Delhi dies not lead, no one will. 

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)

Open Forum

New Delhi, 27 May 2026

Severe Heat Wave

CONTROLLING SYSTEMS VITAL

By Dhurjati Mukherjee 

The latest India Meteorological Department bulletin shows scorching maximum temperatures across north-west, west central and adjoining eastern and north-peninsular India with the highest recorded in Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and some parts of Rajasthan, all of which remains under heatwave to severe heatwave conditions. As per latest reports all 50 of the world’s hottest cities are in India as a brutal heatwave tightened its grip, pushing temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius, sometimes even before noon. 

What makes the heat unbearable is the ‘real feel’ temperature which is 10 degrees higher. The external conditions are being driven by persistent dry north-westerly winds, clear skies and few pre-monsoon reliefs, across large parts of Gangetic plains. 

The burden of this heatwave is obviously highest in densely populated low-income neighbourhoods with poor ventilation, limited tree cover and inadequate access to cooling mechanisms. While cities are the hotbeds of pollution and heat due to increasing activity and business, rural India faces an equally severe challenge. Prolonged direct exposure to heat for those working in the fields and doing outdoor work, which is quite common in villages, affects poor people quite gravely. Moreover, limited access to cooling infra and minimal institutional support add to the problem. 

Unlike urban populations, the rural populace remains exposed to high temperatures for most part of the day. Managing heat stress in the country needs spatial planning backed by geospatial technologies that can identify and quantify local heat sources across both urban and rural regions. While in metros and big cities, urban forestry is the need of the hour, unfortunately, the congestion has been increasing at a very fast pace. Similarly in rural areas, more tree shades are necessary. Hospitals in several states reported rising cases of dehydration, heat exhaustion and sunstroke, specially among outdoor workers and the elderly. 

Experts rightly believe that India urgently needs a dedicated research programme on heat risk, supported by stronger space-borne and ground observations, including smart sensor networks and continuous monitoring of air and wet bulb temperatures. Restoring nature, reducing use of chemical fertilisers and preventing land degradation may have some environmental impact in rural areas while in big cities, it is necessary to control vehicular pollution and ensure more open spaces are made available in congested areas. 

There is an urgent need to take preventive action for unless this is done, heat waves cannot be controlled in the coming years. This is all the more necessary as the poor are likely to be affected severely as well as those from the lower echelons of society who are engaged in outdoor work.  

A recent study in Nature Communications aptly pointed out that cities, specially poorer and hotter ones, can and should do more to increase tree cover. But due to limitations in availability of water, land and proper species, combined with worsening climate change, at most they could reduce urban heating by 15 to 20 per cent. 

While decongesting cities may not be a possible alternative, what is happening is that there is expansion of these places to accommodate the huge population inflow. As a result, the bigger cities in the country are becoming more polluted and dirtier. India may have taken the term ‘dirty rich’ literally as our cities’ growth remains tied to polluting fossil fuel use and consequent pollution. However, China and several other nations have pulled ahead on cleaner urbanisation, according to a study in Nature Cities. Researchers analysed 5435 cities worldwide between 2029 and 2024 using satellite-based nitrogen dioxide NO₂ and GDP estimates. 

If the 390 cities classified as ‘dirtier and richer’, where economic growth coincided with rising pollution or 138 or nearly 35.4 per cent were in India. Mumbai and Kolkata showed cleaner growth trends, the study stated many Indian urban centres continue to depend heavily on fossil-fuel intensive industries and transport. The researchers used satellite observations of NO_2, a pollutant strongly associated with fossil fuel combustion from transport, industries and thermal power generation to classify urban centres into four categories – ‘cleaner and richer’, ‘dirtier and richer’, ‘cleaner and poorer’ and ‘dirtier and poorer’.  

India also dominated the study’s ‘dirtier and richer’ category described by researchers as cities where GDP per capita rises alongside increasing pollution. Of the 390 cities worldwide in this category, 35.4 per cent were in India, the highest share for any country. This reflects the fact that while the richer sections have facilities to counter the heat, the lower echelons oof society, which includes the low-income groups and even the lower middle class, have to bear the brunt of heat. 

In backdrop of the problems of increasing heat due to climate change, it has been found that under a high-end emissions scenario could lead to a 16.9 per cent loss in GDP by 2070 across Asia and the Pacific region with India projected to suffer a 24.7 per cent GDP loss, according to a report titled ‘Asia-Pacific Climate Report’. Rising sea levels and decreasing labour productivity would drive the most significant losses with lower income and fragile economies being hit the hardest. If the climate crisis continued to accelerate, up to 200 million people in the region could be at risk from coastal inundation and trillions of dollars’ worth of coastal assets could face annual damage by 2070. 

 “Climate change has supercharged the devastation from tropical storms, heat waves and floods in the region, contributing to unprecedented economic challenges and human suffering”, according to the ADB. The report said that developing Asia has accounted for most of the increase in global greenhouse gas emissions since 2000. It further stated that “the region’s share of global emissions rose from 20.4 per cent in 2000 to 45.0 per cent in 2021. Emissions from Asia continue to rise, driven primarily in China, which contributed about 30 per cent of global emissions in 2021”.  

Keeping in view the need for an all-round strategy to counter heat, several factors need to be considered which includes controlling emissions – bath vehicular and industrial -- and ensuring a clean and congenial atmosphere, specially for children and the elderly. As pointed out by several experts, more open space must be created which can be done by dismantling unauthorised settlements and roadside shops and relocating these people to some other place and keeping the city pollution-free. It goes without saying that more trees need to be planted in residential colonies to keep the place cool.---INFA 

(Copyright, India News & Feature Alliance)