Goa, July 8 -- MARIAN PINHEIRO

India has consecrated rivers and worships mountains, yet it now presides over some of the world's most polluted wa terways, denuded hills, and ecologically fractured landscapes. The gap between the sanctity and treatment of nature is a cultural irony. It is a governance failure. The Polluter Pays Princi ple (PPP) forms the back bone of much environ mental jurisprudence. But the Principle, suffers from three structural weak nesses. First, it operates only af ter damage has occurred, after the river has been poisoned, the hill has been levelled, the aquifer has been depleted Second, it is most effec tive when the link between polluter and pollution is direct and visible. Like a tannery discharging chro mium i...