10 Special reportIndia The EconomistOctober 26th 2019
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ndia’s infrastructureis creaking, its health-care system even
more so. Poverty and inequality remain omnipresent, and now
the economy is struggling. Narendra Modi’s to-do list is long. But
there are three issues that, if dealt with, could bring about big im-
provements. The environment is one. Twelve of the world’s 15
most polluted cities are in India (see chart overleaf ), and the coun-
try ranks 120th of 122 on the global index of water quality. A second
is education. As more people move to cities for the first time, it is
crucial that they are trained to find jobs in India’s 21st-century
economy. A third issue is administration. With its basic structures
unchanged since the British Raj, India’s government is under-
manned, unevenly deployed and badly equipped to cope.
Take the environment first. A visitor from the past would
scarcely recognise the plains of Punjab and Haryana in northern
India. Vast irrigation works, mechanised farming and hybrid
seeds have greened the horizons, turning once-hungry India into a
big exporter of grain. But now a visitor may not even be able to see
the plains. Every year farmers setting fire to rice stubble create a
dense seasonal smog. This mixes with diesel exhaust, smoke from
coal-fired power stations and other noxious gases to form a toxic
cocktail engulfing the whole north Indian plain from Lahore in
Pakistan to Dhaka in Bangladesh, where some 800m people live.
The bad air may cause as many as 1.2m premature deaths a year,
and shave four years off the average lifespan.
Some of this comes from changing agricultural techniques.
Mechanical harvesters leave the rice stub-
ble longer, so it cannot be ploughed in and
must be burned. “What do you expect us to
do?” shrugs a turbaned farmer near Karnal,
a rural town 100km north of Delhi. But
much of India’s air pollution is simply the
price of progress. Western countries went
through it and their democratic process
forced them to change. China is passing
through it, too, but its one-party state can
wield a big stick at polluters. India is stuck
in between, with a democracy that is not
robust enough to force environmental-
policy change.
On paper, India has strong laws and in-
stitutions for protecting the environment,
including a powerful National Green Tri-
bunal, which helps bolster enforcement.
Mr Modi’s government has taken some big
steps, adopting stricter vehicle-emissions
standards, and achieving some ambitious
solar-power targets. It is spending $150m
on public messaging and new equipment
to dissuade farmers from burning their
fields, and has closed down some urban
coal-fired power stations. Indians are not
victims of deliberate policies but of a sys-
temic failure to account for, and deal with,
the uglier side-effects of progress. At the
climate-change talks that led to the Parisagreement, Indian diplomats argued for, and won, relatively le-
nient commitments, having pleaded that it was unfair to be pun-
ished for following the same path as developed economies.
India promised, for instance, that solar power will make up an
impressive-sounding 36% of its generation capacity by 2030. Yet
the government itself predicts that it will still account for just 23%
of actual generation as opposed to capacity. Coal’s share is expect-
ed to fall from 74% to 50% of the mix, but since the total amount of
power generated will grow, that still means adding more coal-
burning power plants. These suck up precious fresh water and
spew out greenhouse gases. Whereas the growth in carbon-diox-
ide output has slowed or fallen in much of the world, including
China, in India it has doubled since 2005.
As for water, a near-total reliance on moody monsoons has not
made Indians careful users. Around 70% of surface water is
thought to be polluted, and pumping from 20m tube wells has
dangerously lowered groundwater levels. Indian farmers use
more groundwater than America and China combined. They draw
as much as 6,000 litres of water to produce a kilo of rice, compared
with as little as 600 in China. This is because for 50 years Indian
governments have subsidised farming. Water for irrigation is free,
and seeds, diesel fuel, electricity and fertiliser are all sold below
cost. As a result, India now has a 70m tonne grain mountain and a
15m tonne sugar mountain. It ranks as the world’s biggest exporter
of virtual water, shipping out the equivalent of nearly 100bn cubic
metres a year in its exports of rice, textiles and other goods.
Lack of access to clean water kills an estimated 200,000 Indians
a year, and sickens millions more. Once-pleasant rivers such as the
Yamuna in Delhi and the Mithi in Mumbai are devoid of oxygen
and black with sewage. Bengaluru’s suburban lakes now regularly
burst into flames or erupt in towers of toxic foam. Between pollu-
tion, overuse and global warming—which appears to be making
the monsoons more capricious and slightly less generous—India
is fast approaching a water crisis.
Yet shifts in policy have been slow and piecemeal. Govern-Too much to do
Environmental, educational and administrative gridlock threaten
India’s futureThree challengesUnclear future