It would quite hard to put together such a handbook on the subject of climate change, though, given the jungle of acronyms and thickets of controversy that fill this domain.
What we have instead in the Handbook of Climate Change and India: Development, Politics and Governance, is a sweeping panorama of Indian thinking and reasoning on the issue of climate change, on its impacts, on formulating a global regime on greenhouse gas emissions and determining India's place within it, and on national preparedness for an uncertain future.
Much has been said and written on climate change in the Indian media, especially in the run-up to Copenhagen in 2010 and since, but the subject continues to be perceived as specialist even occult domain, accessible only to an extremely fluent and internationally mobile few, who can embrace simultaneously and with ease the data overload, the organizational-legal complexities of the negotiations, the semantic nuances and the language of uncertainty, the multi-disciplinary and high-tech content and the multiplicity of economic taxonomies and future scenarios.
This exclusivist impression is corrected by the Handbook of Climate Change and India, which, by laying out side by side the range of expert views, on the one hand demonstrates the limits (or scope) and limitations of individual expert views, while on the other demonstrating the range of extant scholarship and the synergies and inter-linkages that are potent in these diverse experiences drawn from diplomacy, policy making, politics, academics, environmental activism, science and technology, agronomy, meteorology, urban design, water management, governance, etc.
The Handbook makes the subject available and accessible to a wide audience, while preserving its essential techno-economic, ethical and policy content.
The international negotiations have found India largely on the defensive, defending our 'right to development', preventing incursions into our space.
The underlying win-lose paradigm can be challenged in the context of a globalising economy, where the so-called losers will bring at least a part of the winning team down with themselves.
While this challenge is not offered in the writings, except obliquely in the observations of the invited Western commentators, the book provides rich narratives in defence of the traditional Indian negotiating positions, while allowing the emerging divergences and nuances to gently surface.
The felt need for a compelling Indian articulation, consistent with core values espoused by the nation's leaders past and present, but meeting the needs of a new era -- a potent linking of the past with the future -- echoes through the volume.
Stirrings of unease at the unraveling of new geopolitical configurations, where India stands apart from China and both stand apart from the small island nations and other traditional allies, can also be heard.
A significant contribution of the compendium is the precipitation of the view that climate crises will expose the weaknesses of India's governance systems and institutions, their bases and biases, thereby simultaneously exacerbating the crisis and offering a chance for renewal.
This observation comes predominantly from activists working on ground-level issues of empowerment, forest management, water management, and the like, who see the present debate as a curtain raiser to a wider debate on institutional effectiveness.
On the flip side, the least mature link, quite counter-intuitively, appears to be Indian industry.
A belief that it only needed to play second-fiddle to government in this matter has led to Indian industry largely assuming a short-termist view, focusing on small negotiating returns, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, a provision that was added to the UN Kyoto Protocol in order to provide relatively cheap short-term greenhouse gas offsetting options, and to kick-start a broad-based
The Jaipur boy whom India chose to honour
Huge gold imports strain balance of payment: Pranab
Pak seeks end to drone strikes, nuke deal with US
Kohli ideal player to replace Dravid at No 3: Ganguly
India's Internet economy to touch Rs 11 trillion