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India was paid a compliment recently by the National Geographic Society and international polling firm GlobeScan. Their second annual survey on environmentally sustainable behaviour showed that Indian consumers have overtaken Brazilians to take the top spot with a Greendex score of 59.5. The Chinese retained the third spot. At the bottom of the ladder in the 17-country survey are over-consumptive Americans, Canadians and the Japanese.

Are we Indians really that environment-conscious? Not really. There is a pithy Hindi aphorism which, rather irreverently, goes thus: ''Majboori ka naam Mahatma Gandhi''. There is no English equivalent but the rough meaning is that compulsion can be euphemistically viewed as choice. In the matter of eco-friendliness, much of the purported...