JOWAI, India – On April 17, in a ruling that stunned miners, truckers, and owners in this region of black dust and rivers that run the colors of the rainbow, India’s National Green Tribunal ordered the state of Meghalaya’s $650 million coal mining industry to shut down.

SHILLONG, India – India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT), a judicial body with legal authority that ranks just below the Supreme Court, is quickly emerging as one of the world’s most important forums for testing the idea that economic advancement is tightly wired to public safety and the security of water, air, and land.

NEW DELHI, India – There are nearly 1.3 billion people in this swarming democracy, where over 66 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the general election last May. A few of them took me aside this week to express surprise at the puzzle that is the American electorate and its national leadership.

There’s nothing demur about Mother Earth these days. She’s fuming and pushing back hard. Very hard.

India’s new prime minister swept into office in May on a message of aspiration and a reputation for action.

During the nearly 13 years that Narendra Modi served as chief minister of Gujarat before becoming prime minister, his successes included drastically curtailing the number of hours that manufacturers in India’s premier industrial state went without electricity. The state’s transmission grid was strengthened and he promoted the development of 900 megawatts of solar generating capacity (equivalent to a large nuclear plant).

India has the second largest – soon to be largest – population of any nation on the planet and boasts a rapidly developing economy, yet it consumes only a fraction of the energy of China or the United States. Much like China before it, the Indian government has proposed an ambitious system of hydroelectric projects in an attempt to catch up.