India, which claims to be the world’s sixth-largest economy (by nominal GDP), definitely lags far behind when it comes to addressing the environmental issues.
Despite Modi government’s ambitious ‘Swachh Bharat‘ programme, the country’s actual state is gloomy enough to cause a noted magazine to write about it.
The Economist Magazine writes “India is alarmingly filthy even by the standards of poor countries”. It stated that India’s air and water are heavily polluted causing not only a large number of deaths in the country but also contributing to the problem globally.
The important facts from what the magazine wrote are–
- The deteriorated air in Delhi is part of a wider crisis.
- 70 percent of the surface water in India is tainted.
- According to WHO’s report on air pollution, Indian cities claim 14 of the top 15 spots.
- The index of the environmental health of countries’ revealed by Yale and Columbia universities, India ranks a dismal 177th out of 180.
- The annual death toll from breathing PM 2.5 alone is estimated to be 12 lakh -22 lakh per year.
- A study by the University of Chicago says, “The lifespan of Delhi-dwellers is shortened by more than 10 years.”
- According to the government’s own think-tank, the consumption of dirty water directly causes 200,000 deaths a year.
- Some 6000 lakh Indians, which is roughly half the country, lives in areas where water is in short supply.
The article while taking a dig at the Indian administration says, “India can’t hide behind the excuse of being a poor country because it is polluted not just in absolute terms, but also relative to its level of development.”
Slamming the Indian bureaucracy, the magazine wrote, “It is true that some ways of cutting pollution are expensive. But there are also cheap solutions, such as undoing mistakes that Indian bureaucrats have themselves made. By subsidizing rice farmers, for instance, the government has in effect cheered on the guzzling of groundwater and the torching of stubble.”
Pointing out at India’s continued reliance on coal, it said, “Rules that encourage the use of coal have not made India more self-reliant, as intended, but instead, have led to big imports of foreign coal while blackening India’s skies. Much cleaner gas-fired power plants, meanwhile, sit idle.”
While the article lauded PM Modi for promising to free India of open defecation and then building 90 million toilets in four and a half years of his government, it also said “India is still not clean. India’s skies, streets, rivers and coasts require similar attention from PM Modi.”