If coal is here to stay, so are credible threats of 'calamitous changes' to our life-style

By Shankar Sharma*
"Coal is here to stay despite India's ambitious renewable energy goals", says a PTI report. But the same report has failed to acknowledge the fact that credible threats of calamitous changes to our life-style, and the growing threats to early extinction of mankind are also here to stay, and that the same can escalate with the passage of each year with such a common but unfortunate frame of mind in our authorities.
One can only wonder whether there is no one in our governance structure who can think beyond today and beyond the business as usual (BAU) scenario of high GDP growth rate, and foresee the near future for our children and grandchildren on the basis of a plethora of global scientific reports, which have elaborately highlighted the perils of continuing with the BAU scenario.
What is worrying is the grand silence or indifference of most sections of our intellectuals, media and law makers on such credible threats. It will be highly unfortunate if we, as a welfare oriented society, ignore our own associated responsibilities to our own families, children and grandchildren.

It is also sad that few media houses, which are seen as carrying some articles on the topic, are seen as failing in undertaking due diligence in such reporting, and in asking relevant questions of critical importance to our people.
But why is it so hard for our bureaucrats and political leaders to learn from the associated developments and alternatives from around the world?

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*Power & Climate Policy Analyst, Karnataka

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo* A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

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