In water stressed India, women walk for miles to fetch water. A stunning illustration of the problem is in the Himalayas. Its millennia-old glaciers are the source for many of Asia's great rivers. They are shrinking at such a rapid rate that in a quarter of a century they may disappear. The official response in India? Build more dams. What is New Delhi thinking? There will not be enough water to drive the new turbines. The paradigm of growth and so-called development is intoned like a sacred mantra, it is never even challenged. It is touted as a panacea for all problems. With the various environmental crises facing the planet it is urgent for a radical reevaluation of conventional concepts of growth.

Sunita Narain. (Soo-nee-ta Na-ra-yan) Director of the Centre for Science and the Environment in New Delhi, is a leading environmentalist. She is the editor of Down to Earth magazine. She is recipient of the Stockholm Water Prize and the Padma Shri from the Government of India. She was listed as one of the top 100 public intellectuals in the world by Foreign Policy magazine.