Hello again. Welcome to Waiting For you Podcast Episode #2. Over the next few podcasts, I will expand on the three things we discussed in the last podcast.
1. people say we are a young democracy and we need more time. See how far we have come in 70 years. It is a tremendous fallacy.
2. it is the population, which is keeping India backward. That is surely not correct as a number of other countries with high population density have achieved prosperity for a vast majority of their citizens.
3. Finally, I will discuss as to how India can solve day-to-day problems faced by most of the people and bring exponential wealth to millions of its citizens by following the two basic principles 1) limit the role of the government to key functions and act as a referee and 2) transition day to day business to the private enterprise.
Today I want to expand on the first point i.e. when people say we are a young democracy and we need more time. See how far we have come in 70 years. It is a tremendous fallacy. Today, when you ask educated people in India, why things are not good for the majority of India’s population, you mostly hear, what do you mean – things are very good. We are a young democracy. We need more time and you should see how far we have come in the last 70 years. Most people now have refrigerators in their houses and middle-class families have cars.
India has a 300 million large middle class. Out of the 300 million, the top 100 million people can afford luxuries common in developed countries such as one or more cars, modern household amenities and money for eating out, going to movies, and take a family vacation. The remaining 200 million middle-class families live paycheck to paycheck trying to give their children a better life.
There is hardly any consideration for the bottom 1.2 billion people in India, who are living in extremely harsh conditions. As per the Indian government data, in 2020, India’s average monthly income is rupees 11254. Since top 10% earners control 77% of the wealth, the bottom 90% of the people live on less than 10,000 rupees per month. Let me repeat, the bottom 90% of the people live on less than 10,000 rupees per month. I am not sure if it is okay after 70 years of democracy in India.
Let’s start with seven very basic necessities, which are needed for an average citizen in their day-to-day lives: air, water, electricity, transportation, sanitation, healthcare, and education.
Let’s start with very basic human needs, Air. Over the last seventy years, we have polluted this very basic natural resource. Today, 40% of children below 12 years of age, and millions of adults in India suffer from asthma. It is not okay. India’s cities air is 100 times more polluted than what is okay for healthy human life. India’s government rather being the caretaker of its people to solve the problem, is complicit in polluting India’s air across the country by being the power generator, industry owner, and completing neglecting its role as the enforcer of air quality. I hope you agree that it is not okay that after 70 years we are considerably worse off from where we started.
Let’s discuss water. It is not okay that almost all of India’s 1.4 billion people do not have access to clean running water. India’s rivers run dry in the summer. Even the rich can’t get the running water in their homes. In the last 20 years, it has become a norm for major city populations to get water by a tanker service. Massive unplanned urbanization and massive pollution have reduced glaciers and dried up rivers. At the same time, the lack of management of underground water has brought havoc to significant parts of the country. Today India uses more underground water than the United States and China combined. At the same time, we have systematically paved over village reservoirs and almost have no policy to store water during monsoons. Lack of water is forcing thousands of farmers to commit suicide every year in India without any outrage. At the same time, water pollution is causing massive seasonal diseases such as dengue killing hundreds of thousands of people across India every year. So, I do not think it is okay that after 70 years of democracy, we cannot provide clean running water to all of India’s citizens.
Let’s discuss the next basic utility – electricity. It is not okay for India’s 1.2 billion people to live without or extremely limited access to electricity in 45-degree Celsius heat. In the last seventy years, India has become dryer and warmer year over year. Even though India has made investments in generating the electricity needed to live in India’s extremely harsh weather, we are still far behind in electricity production in comparison to most developed countries. Just for comparison, in 2019, China produced 7.5 Terawatt hours, United States product 4.5 Terawatt hours and India produced 1.6 Terawatt hours. In most developed countries, electricity is a basic utility. Power outage for over five minutes makes the local news. It is a twentieth-century problem solved by a large number of countries around the world. I think people in India deserve better and it is not okay to live in such harsh weather without just the basic comfort of a fan or a light bulb.
Let’s talk about the next basic necessity – Transport. It is not okay that 1.2 billion people have to travel inhumanely in government-run railways and road transport. Most of the 1.2 billion people in India travel in railways “general compartment” and government-run buses. The word “overcrowding” does not do justice to the ratio of available seats and people traveling on those buses and trains. Even the rich can’t escape the traffic. A 50-kilometer trip in any major city can take hours. It is again a twentieth-century problem solved by most large cities. New York, London, Tokyo, and Seoul to name a few have cities that have a population of 10 million people. None of these cities are gridlocked with traffic like all major cities in India and you don’t see overcrowding in buses, trains or metro as in India today. It is not okay.
Another basic necessity is sanitation. It is not okay for the whole country to live in trash up to our eyes. Not only it is bad for industries like tourism, it is a health hazard and directly responsible for disease and death for millions of people every year. India’s culture demands sanitation and most people go out of their way to keep their houses clean. It is India’s neighborhoods, villages, towns, and cities, which are piled with trash because of a lack of recycling and garbage disposal policy at every level. Most of the developed world has put standards and processes in place to keep their cities clean for over 50 years ago. Its time, India’s citizens demand not to live in squalor. It is not okay.
Next, let’s discuss education. It is not okay that millions of Indian children from the poorest families as well as middle-class families cannot get a good education. If you look around the world from the United States to China, before they could create jobs for their populations, they first heavily invested in the education of their children. India’s public schools lack the infrastructure, trained teachers, and updated curriculums to compete with their counterparts around the world. It is not okay that after seventy years we cannot provide quality education to our kids.
Lastly, lets’ talk about healthcare. It’s not okay that most of 1.2 billion people get substandard healthcare in government-run hospitals. These government-run hospitals still look like nineteenth-century dispensaries with a lack of supplies and rampant corruption. Modern hospitals are out of financial reach for most people. I do not have statistics on the performance of the government-run hospitals but anecdotally, if you are admitted to a government-run hospital, it is almost fatal. Healthcare is a major issue in India and after 70 years, the healthcare provided to 1.2 billion people in India is not okay.
In the 1980s, “middle class” family income was under INR 1,000 a month. A typical “middle class” family life was rather harsh. Government schools were overcrowded and lacked basic amenities. Power cuts across the year were a norm. Local public transport was non-existent and the intra-city transport was as miserable as it is for the 1.2 billion people living in India today. Since then the average income for the same family has gone up by 50 times but the cost of living has gone up over 100 times. So, in reality over the last 30 years, if you look at the numbers, for the bottom 1.3 billion people things have gotten worse.
India has progressed for the top 100 million people. Rest 1.3 billion people are either stagnant or worse off. Even for the top 100 million people, this is not sustainable. Is it okay for them to live with the poor quality of air, lack of running water, travel on traffic-congested roads, live in filth once they come out of their homes, and can be a target of ever-increasing random crime in India?
So, everything is not okay. Seventy years is a long time. At the same time, Japanese, Germans, South Koreans, Taiwanese, Singaporeans, Europeans, and Americans have made tremendous gains. We can get there if we first agree that we have fallen far behind and we deserve better.
If you agree that we can solve these problems with two basic principles – 1. Limit government roles to key functions and government should only act as a referee and 2. allow private enterprise to provide solutions to day-to-day problems in India then please visit www.waitingforus.in and send a message as to how you can help. Thank you.
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