India's shine hard to spot through the chronic pollution
It's a lethal combination. India's smog-shrouded march towards developed nation status and a slothful political culture are conspiring to kill thousands of people every year. With the economy barrelling along at more than 8 per cent growth this year, India is hot on the heels of the other aspiring Asian economic giant, China.
A burgeoning middle class is transforming the feel of cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai. But for millions of Indians, the bid to escape decades of waste and inefficiency and fully enter the global economy is putting at risk the very people it seeks to lift out of poverty. India is becoming grossly polluted and nobody seems to care.
The ruling Hindi nationalist BJP is campaigning for parliamentary elections starting this month under the slogan 'India Shining'. The booming economy is the most highly burnished element of its re-election strategy. The environment can wait, is the message environmentalists are hearing.
'The environment is way down the government's list of concerns,' said Leo Saldanha, co-ordinator of Bangalore's Environment Support Group. 'Development is the top priority.'
Farmers have presided over massive ecological damage. India already has 130 million hectares classified as 'wasteland'. Vast numbers of people have been forced to flee the villages to desperately overcrowded cities.
Groundwater reserves are either being laced with chemical cocktails as fertilisers and pesticides leach from fields in ever-greater concentrations, or are running dry through over-extraction. Environmental protection laws are lax and rarely enforced. Rampant corruption means polluters, natural-asset strippers and developers can bribe their way around most obstacles. It took a public row last year between Coca-Cola and Pepsi and an environmental pressure group over pesticides found in soft drinks - at levels 30 times those allowed in the European Union - before MPs were moved to push for stricter, enforceable laws on drinking water quality.