Hindi Chini Bhai Bhai

Climate change: Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai Jug Suraiya Monday October 26, 2009
Can climate change and global warming be the tune to which the two adversarial Asian giants, China and India, will finally learn to tango together? Is their similar position on environmental concerns the common ground on which the Chinese dragon and the Indian elephant can learn to dance together, turning the acrimonious cry of 'Hindi-Chini hai-hai' to the amicable mantra of 'Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai'?
Since the 1962 conflict, relationships between Beijing and New Delhi have been strained, often to the point of snapping. Recently they touched a new low after Beijing objected to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Arunachal Pradesh shortly before the assembly elections in the state. China it seemed was making its displeasure felt after New Delhi had raised no objections to the Dalai Lama - persona non grata in Beijing's eyes - visiting Tawang monastery in Arunachal, to which China lays claim. India, in turn, had reason to be miffed too by Beijing having inked a joint project with Pakistan on territory the ownership of which was under dispute between New Delhi and Islamabad.
But just when it seemed that the two Asian giants were once again on a collision course, the sun broke out of the gathering clouds of conflict: New Delhi and Beijing signed an agreement making common cause on the contentious issue of climate change against the western powers.
Respectively the fastest and second fastest growing economies in the world at a time of recession, China and India are viewed with increasing ambivalence by the developed world. On the one hand, the economic progress of the two great Asian dynamos is seen as a lifeboat for a global economy in danger of sinking. On the other hand, the environmental consequences of such growth are viewed with apprehension by the First World. Such fears are not groundless. Today, China is the world's worst polluter. India is fourth on the list of environmental offenders, after the US in second place and Russia in the third slot.
Since the 1996 Montreal Protocol, Beijing and New Delhi have adopted a parallel strategy to make the developed world reduce its carbon emissions by 5 per cent and provide clean technology to the developing world to enable it to maximise economic growth with minimal environmental damage.
Led by the US, the developed world, having already eaten the cake of economic prosperity is resentful on environmental grounds of the developing world having its own cake of economic growth. The logic behind this is simple as it is skewed: if everyone on the globe were to be as environmentally wasteful as Americans, we would need 13 planets the size of Earth to supply us with the natural resources required to sustain such levels of consumption.
Led by China and India, the developing world's response to these arguments is that they amount to environmental apartheid: having gained affluence at the expense of the environment, the rich nations want to deny the poorer nations the same right. Indeed, it could be, and has been, argued that the First World is using fears of climate change and environmental degradation as a stalking horse to curb the aspirations of the developing world, particularly those of China and India which today threaten the economic - and therefore political - hegemony that the North has so far enjoyed over the South.
It is in the mutual interest of Beijing and New Delhi to adopt a joint action plan on the challenge of climate change, and the developed world's attempts to use it as a shackle to hobble the economic growth of the developing world at large, and of China and India in particular.
The threat of global warming - and the First World's cynical use of it - might be the unifying factor which will lead to a thaw in Indo-Chinese relations. Back to 'bhai-bhai' from 'hai-hai'.

Sonam Singh