SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH www.sagepublications.com DOI: 10.1177/0262728017745385 Vol. 38(1): 1–19 Copyright © 2018 SAGE Publications Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY OF INDIA: MODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT Rajnish Saryal Panjab University, Ludhiana, Panjab, India abstract Since the 1970s, and especially following the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, climate change has become an area of high politics, engaging the whole world at the international and diplomatic level. What matters, though, is how this translates into tangible policies at national and local levels, and how these different scales interact. Highlighting India’s unique position in international climate negotiations, this article first scrutinises various official statements and documents of the Government of India (GOI) on climate change and puts them into an analytical framework that demonstrates continuities, but also significant recent shifts. Investigating the reasons for such modifying trends and examining their consequences, the article then suggests that partly owing to recent changes in global and (geo)political contexts, but also due to an Indian re-thinking of responsibility for addressing global climate change, there is a significant new development. This seems to augur a South Asian ‘silent revolution’ in green technologies, a prudent, economically and ecologically beneficial step, not only for India but possibly a sustainable global model. keywords: climate change, development, environment, global climate negotiations, greenhouse gas emissions, India, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Introduction Climate change has emerged over the last few decades as a major issue of debate in international politics and diplomacy. Leelakrishnan (2005: v) highlights that ‘[i]nternational efforts for the protection and preservation of the global environment started with the convening of the Stockholm Conference on Human Environment in 1972’. The Brundtland Commission Report of 1987, which introduced the notion of ‘sustainable development’ (Adams, 1990; Carter, 2001: 196), was followed by the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, which adopted the UN Framework Convention on