Maneka contradicts Modi, says Chennai flood is because 'India is destroying climate'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the ‘not our fault’ high ground when the world’s top three carbon culprits met in Paris but back home his own party’s top minister is taking a different line. [caption id=“attachment_2327590” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Maneka Gandhi / AFP[/caption] Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi, well known for her commitment to the green cause, said today in an interview to NDTV that India is a major culprit whose actions on climate have led to the Chennai floods Within one week of the Parliament’s winter session starting in New Delhi, the BJP government has already lurched from one end to the other on multiple issues: GST Bill, Kumari Selja’s ‘caste’ remark, a brief moment of statesmanship and now back to bickering over why it’s raining in Chennai. Never a dull moment, and to add some humour, the PIB’s photoshopped picture of Modi looking through the window pane, clearly. “It is a question of putting the blame always…the west did it. They may have done it 100 years ago. India is one of the main players in destroying the climate,” Maneka Gandhi told NDTV. “It is a question of putting the blame always… the West did it. They may have done it hundred years ago. India is one of the main players destroying the climate. We, China and Brazil are the largest producers of methane. Coal, animals and rice, these are the three reasons for methane and methane is 26 per cent more powerful than carbon dioxide in creating climate change,” she said. Last week in Paris, Modi said “climate change is not of our making”. “In Chennai, of course its climate warming, the moment you have the weather change and vou have even a one degree difference, it will rain more and more and more… From now, for the next 10 years, it will be raining all the time, more and more in unexpected places. Either we gear up… Nobody has connected climate change with economic disaster. Everybody keeps thinking we can do wonderful things economically but climate change is kabhi kabhi baarish aeyegi (sometimes it will rain).” Gandhi rubbished the government’s claim that India is not a carbon dioxide polluter. “It’s rubbish. We have been saying that for 50 years. And in the meantime we go on and on and on,” she said.