Updated: October 26, 2020 8:32:42 am
A subway train runs in foggy weather in New Delhi (PTI)
Last week, the president of the USA. Donald Trump referred to her as “dirty India”. during the final presidential debate and India received a lot of unwanted attention.
This raises two important questions.
One, how “dirty” are we per se and also compared to other countries? I suppose here that, regardless of how hurtful it sounds, not many will say that we have a long way to go before we call ourselves a clean country.
Two, how much does it cost us as an economy to be so filthy? Because frankly, if being dirty and polluted doesn’t cost us, that would be a great “economic” argument in favor of staying dirty.
But before attempting to answer these questions, let’s first look at the other big analytical news on the economic front. This had to do with how the members of the newly formed Monetary policy committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) saw the state of the Indian economy.
The week began with news reports from RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das stating that “India at the door of economic reactivation ”. But the week ended with news from You are contracting Covid-19 and the release of the MPC minutes of the October policy review that presented a much more sobering outlook for economic recovery.
The most notable, and easily the most accessible, assessment was that of Michael Patra.
He claimed that “it may take years” for India to regain production (read GDP) lost as a result of the pandemic. And at a time when many commentators, especially in government, have chosen to emphasize so-called green shoots, Patra said: “While this has raised optimism about the long-awaited recovery, perhaps a pragmatic caution is warranted. ”.
His reason: “The fear of a second wave looms over India; it has already forced closures in Europe, Israel and Indonesia, and India, with the second highest number of infections and an overloaded health infrastructure, cannot be immune. In the absence of intrinsic drivers, the recovery can last only until pent-up demand has been sated and inventory replenishment has been completed. Empirical evidence suggests that consumption-led recoveries are superficial and short-lived.
Returning to Donald Trump’s reference to “dirty India”, it must be remembered that while speaking in reference to the Paris Climate Agreement, the intent here is to look at the dirt in terms of poor or inadequate sanitation and increasing levels of pollution.
According to the website “Our World in Data”, part of the University of Oxford, “an estimated 775,000 people died prematurely as a result of poor sanitation in 2017.” This was 1.4% of global deaths. In low-income countries, it accounts for 5% of deaths, ”he says.
See the chart below for the annual number of deaths from risk factors in India. “Air pollution”, both indoors and outdoors, as well as “poor sanitation, unsafe water sources and lack of access to hand washing facilities” compete with risks due to blood pressure high, high blood sugar and smoking.
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The annual number of deaths from risk factors in India
The table below shows how the proportion of deaths due to unsafe sanitation has changed over the years. In India, this proportion has been higher than that of its neighbors such as Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Proportion of deaths from unsafe sanitation
Also, although the proportion has been falling in India, the pace has slowed a bit since 2015. Of course, these data are only up to 2017 and are the latest available according to the Global Disease Burden study, published in the Lancet, by the Institute. . of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).
The reason so many people die from unsafe sanitation is that in India a large proportion of the population does not have access to “improved sanitation”. Improved sanitation is defined as facilities that “ensure the hygienic separation of human excreta from human contact”. This includes facilities such as discharge / discharge (to piped sewer system, septic tank, pit latrine), improved ventilated pit latrine (VIP), pit latrine with slab, and a composting toilet.
In 2015, 68% of the world’s population had access to improved sanitation facilities. In other words, almost a third of the people did not have access.
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In India, only 40% of the population had access to improved sanitation. This is much lower than its next door neighbors such as Sri Lanka (95%) and Pakistan and Bangladesh (both more than 60%). With 40% access, India is next to countries like Zimbabwe and Kenya, and is below countries like Zambia and Senegal.
While the more general trend is that access to improved sanitation increases with higher income levels, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Rwanda and Nepal have achieved better access to lower levels of GDP per capita than India (see box below ). Furthermore, at roughly India’s per capita GDP level, Uzbekistan has 100% access, while Vietnam and Myanmar have twice the levels of access to improved sanitation.
Proportion of population with improved sanitation to GDP per capita, 2015
In general, poor sanitation and pollution have significant adverse impacts on public health standards. Childhood stunting, which means being shorter for age, is a sign of chronic malnutrition, and data shows that stunting is higher in countries (such as India) where access to improved sanitation is low (see graph below).
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Prevalence of stunting versus better sanitation facilities, 2015
All of this leads to the cost of being dirty. According to the World Bank: “Lack of sanitation also slows economic growth. Poor sanitation costs billions for some countries ”.
In the case of India, the most cited study is one from the 2006 World Bank, when these costs were set at $ 53.8 billion or 6.4% of India’s annual GDP. Even if this percentage (of GDP) has remained the same, to current GDP, the losses (a rough approximation) would be close to $ 170 billion (or Rs 12 lakh crore).
“The economic losses are mainly due to premature deaths, the cost of health care treatment, the loss of time and productivity in seeking treatment, and the loss of time and productivity in finding access to sanitation facilities,” according to the World Bank.
According to the World Health Organization, “Every dollar spent on sanitation generates about $ 9 in savings on treatment, healthcare costs, and earnings from more productive days.”
Clearly, countries like India are not worth remaining dirty, regardless of what more prosperous countries like the United States say or do.
Therefore, keep yourself clean and safe.
Udit
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