Last December the world leaders concluded the climate change conference in Paris with a great fanfare and euphoria. They all apparently agreed to promote the clean energy production sources to halt the climate change which occurs due to the use of dirty energy sources (mainly coal).
Bharat is trying hard to provide clean electricity, by installation of solar panels, to a quarter of its population who has never switched on an electrical light bulb in their lives. It has also planned and have high hopes to install 100 Gigawatts of solar power capacity by 2022.
On 25th February, a World Trade Organisation (WTO) panel has ruled that Bharat’s efforts to provide clean electricity to its poor citizens breaches the WTO trade rules.
The ruling was the result of a complaint lodged by the USA. The complaint was on the basis that Bharat is favouring local suppliers against the suppliers from their country!! It seems that this is an excuse to hide some unknown real motive. The panel ruling reduces the Paris euphoria and poor nations’ hopes to a smouldering heap of ashes.
The West (especially the USA) have control over organisations like the WTO, the Security Council, the World Bank and the IMF as well as near monopoly over the Public Financial Institutions (Huge Global Banks) and the Information Technology Companies (Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Apple, etc.) which has created a soft (virtual) global capitalistic colonisation which is much more debilitating and viciously over powering to the poor nations than the physical presence colonisation of the past centuries.
Would they ever relax their soft colonial grip on the poor nations and are they serious about climate change? Irony of all these is that the West has enriched themselves through industrial development by rampant coal burning in the past two centuries which has poisoned our Mother Earth. Of course, they have also plundered the poor nations during the period of physical presence colonisation.
Under the present circumstances there will be never a chance for the poor nations to have the industrial development and a decent standard of living which they rightly aspire and urgently need for upward mobility for more than half of the humanity on the Mother Earth.
Narsibhai Patel
New Malden
