Fresh from crushing the opposition in the 2019 general election, Narendra Modi’s India is starting to flex its muscles.
Weeks after celebrating the launch of India’s second lunar space mission, Modi turned his eyes back to Earth and revoked the special status of Jammu-Kashmir in the country’s north west.
Modi sold it as a domestic issue that needed fixing, but the government knew it would unleash waves of condemnation, and carried on.
What happens in Delhi reverberates globally. Growth rates over 7% make it the world’s fastest growing major economy. By 2030 it is expected to sit alongside the US and China in terms of size.
Yet where climate is concerned, the tiger turns into a mouse. Happy to boast of leadership across economic, sporting and cultural sectors, Modi goes curiously quiet when it comes to carbon emissions.
In some ways this makes sense. Per capita incomes are $148 a month, compared to $2492 in France. Emissions per head are 1.8 compared to the 4.2 tonne global average.
Under the UN’s climate body, it’s the responsibility of countries that were deemed ‘developed’ in 1990 to lead, rather than emerging giants like India.
The audience Modi needs to win and keep content is domestic. Economic growth and jobs are the priority. And yet — what a year India has endured so far.
Delhi experienced a brutal heatwave in June that saw temperatures pass 50C. Chennai rain out of water a month later, forcing the government to send tanker trains to the city.
Intense monsoon rains relieved the heat, but have caused flooding across Gujurat, Kerala, Assam and Maharashtra as higher-than-average rain fell in many states.
The country is no stranger to extremes. Running from the Himalayas to the tropics, India’s 3.28 million square kilometres and 1.3 billion population will always be vulnerable to the weather.
But evidence suggests these extremes are getting worse: India is becoming practiced in the mass evacuations of hundreds of thousands due to incoming Cyclones, as seen in June this year.
Take 2018. For the fifth year in a row India’s weather forecaster over-estimated monsoon levels- which have now been below average in six of the last seven years.
It’s a big deal for a country that relies on the monsoon for 70% of its water supplies, with an agriculture sector that employs well over half a billion and is worth $271 billion a year.
Scientists are clear: climate change is driving many of these shifts. Long periods of drought followed by short bursts of intense, extreme rainfall are becoming more common.
What’s also clear is that these droughts and water shortages across India have a devastating human cost — not to mention the chronic air pollution that blights India's major cities.
Villagers are abandoning their homes for cities, death rates among newborn babies have been pushed up, the physical risks to business in a country to vulnerable to extremes are worrying analysts.
If the impacts are clear, so are the causes. We know global greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise, and we know India is the fourth biggest global polluter.
It leaves Modi and his government in a conundrum. How long can Delhi afford not to be a leader? How long can it afford to ignore the impact its coal use has on domestic air quality and global emissions levels?
That might seem unfair, given India’s progress on clean energy and the per capita emissions mentioned earlier.
According to Delhi-based think-tank TERI, India installed 124 gigawatts of renewables by 2018, with a target of 175 GW by 2022. For context, the capacity of the UK’s entire grid is around 90GW.
Equally — and again according to TERI — India’s forests are growing, with a government target to raise forest cover from 21.5% of the country to 33%.
These are impressive — yet compared to what it could do — less so. TERI is clear India could go further, faster. Signalling that globally would instill confidence in other countries and business sectors.
What India says and does matters — yet on present levels of effort you’d have to suggest it’s coming up short.
Indian policymakers can rightfully look at other major emitters and ask why the US, Europe, China, Brazil, Japan and Australia are not doing more.
But we live in odd geopolitical times where old rules and norms don’t apply. No-one looks to Washington DC for leadership, Europe is in flux, China battling to maintain order in Hong Kong and a damaging US trade war.
If handled well, this is a massive diplomatic and economic opportunity for Delhi. We know from data analysts CDP that India is over-achieving on its 2015 climate pledge.
Last month CDP India’s director, Damandeep Singh, argued there is “room to increase its climate ambition” — calling on PM Modi to deliver “an ambitious and viable pathway to a net-zero carbon economy by 2050.”
The UN’s UN Special Envoy on Climate Change — Luis Alfonso De Alba — recently arrived in Delhi with a similar message. “I am aware that India has achieved a lot and it may surpass its Paris agreement targets. I hope that this will translate into enhanced NDC [climate plan],” he said.
If it sounds simple, coming armed to the upcoming UN climate summit this September with a boosted climate plan would be a huge break from India’s climate diplomacy manual.
For years Indian diplomats were steadfast in the face of pressure from the developed world to do more, citing the principle of ‘equity’ or fairness, and calling on the rich to lead.
In the past decade this stance slowly but steadily shifted, culminating in Indian pledges at the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit and ahead of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
US academic Timmons Roberts — in his seminal book ‘Power in a Warming World’ points to Delhi’s desire for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council as well as more influence at IMF and the World Bank.
In 2009 and 2015 there was still a sense India was following, moving only when cajoled and badgered. In 2019 India knows it can play the game, it knows it can deliver. It also knows it has the economic heft and deft to leverage ambition from the EU and other rich nations
With power comes responsibility — and one calculation that must be rumbling around Delhi is that the longer it drags its heels, the more its population will pay the consequences in terms of incoming impacts.
Can the economy continue to grow at 7% a year in the face of increasing droughts, fearsome monsoonal rains and killer heatwaves? Indian weather has always been extreme, but everyone has limits.
What’s clear is that in a moment of deep geopolitical uncertainty, Modi stands out as a leader who can make tough and often unpopular decisions and deliver on them.
Judging by the Jammu-Kashmir stance, India is no longer afraid of stepping out of line and breaking old norms. Perhaps it’s time Modi broke his vow of climate silence: he has little to lose, much to gain.
