“One of the hardest things in politics,” US President Barack Obama said in a recent interview, “is getting a democracy to deal with something now where the payoff is long term or the price of inaction is decades away.” Obama’s words are pertinent not only to the rules proposed on June 2 by his administration to cut future carbon emissions by US fossil-fuel power plants as a step to address climate change. They are also relevant to the other great democracy and its spanking new government on the other side of the planet: India.

On the road to development? Destructive projects promoted for short-term gains may have unaccounted long-term costs to people and nation (Photo of logs lying along the Andaman Trunk Road).

… This post appeared in my blog on the Coyotes Network, while a slightly edited version appeared in the opinion/editorial page of The Hindu on 3 July 2014. Read more in the The Wild Heart of India: Nature and Conservation in the City, the Country, and the Wild.