ECONOMY   (CONT)

like millet, sorghum and pigeonpea.

For now, the ambitious projects are keeping them just ahead of drought and economic peril. But in the future, brown clouds could blot out all they've achieved.

We in the United States are in no position to lecture Indian policy-makers on the evils of extravagant fossil fuel consumption. But the brown-cloud route to the future wasn't the only one on India's map.

The subcontinent is woven with the planet's largest passenger railway system, which uses much less fossil fuel to move people than the automobile. India ranks third in the world for solar power generation and fifth for wind power. Those and other such strengths could have been built upon.

Instead, the new, global India is steering its economy down the smog-choked road to wealth traveled so enthusiastically by the 20th century industrial powers. But this time it may be a highway to hunger.

Stan Cox is senior research scientist at the Land Institute and has spent seven years in India since 1980. He wrote this for the institute's Prairie Writers Circle, Salina, Kan.

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