This whopping figure will be one of the weapons with which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to fight back the pressures from developed world on reducing the green house gas emission at the upcoming G-8 summit.

In the three-day summit beginning on June 6, the G-8 president, Germany, and other nations are likely to put concerted pressures on three large, populous countries — India, China and Brazil — demanding specific emission reduction targets.

The trio has been invited to the G-8 outreach summit.

However, the PM is unlikely to bow down, the hint for which came from the union environment secretary, Dr Pradipto Ghosh, on Monday.

“Any legal mandate on green house gas emission will impact our GDP growth. It’s not acceptable to us,” he said here. If India agrees to have emission reduction targets, this will mean a sharp cut on the industrialisation and modernisation drives as the number of factories, industrial parks, trading hubs and automobiles has to be brought down. This will kill the booming economy, which is growing annually by more than eight per cent.

Dr Ghosh claimed that the government spent more than two per cent of its GDP of $646.37 billion in 2006-07 on adaptation measures.

The fruits will be visible in another 20 years.

Admitting that India’s pollution burden will be high, he said India’s contribution should be evaluated on per capita basis. “We are a responsible nation, but we are a large nation,” he said.

Climate change issues are expected to take the centre-stage in the global polity in the next few years in order to find out a roadmap beyond 2012 when Kyoto Protocol expires.

The political conflict will be intense as emission reduction is directly linked to industrialisation and economic growth.