The Path Ahead: Transformative Ideas for India

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst,

Forum for Population Action 

India is sitting on a demographic dividend, expected to become the world’s youngest country by 2020 with 65 per cent of its population, roughly 875 million people, of working age. But the country cannot become a global powerhouse unless we resolve the contradictions and bridge the gaps that distort our society. The challenge before us is to enable every one of India’s 1.3 billion citizens to realize their aspirations. The only way to do this is to focus and elaborate on some “transformative ideas for India”.

The Path Ahead: Transformative Ideas for India, a book edited by Amitabh Kant, present CEO of National Institution for Transforming India, popularly known as NITI Aayog, contains 27 chapters, which gives details on a wide array of development topics by distinguished persons from a basket of mixed talent pool including policy makers, professors, government officials and industry experts. In addition, there is an introductory remark by the editor, a 1980 batch Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer and the author of Branding India - An Incredible Story.  The volume ends, though, with a brilliant cautionary ‘Epilogue’ by Dr Arvind Subramanian, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Central government.  [1] 

As such, it is indeed fascinating to read this book in times of India’s determination   to “empower every India”, as noted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8, 2016 through  many social and economic transformations. [2]

The volume under consideration was conceptualized as a collaborative effort that borrows from very essence of working in tandem to have meaningful discourses. Its vision is to highlight constraints for India’s future growth and suggest workable strategies.  The authors were asked to present their views on what they felt were the best strategies to promote a particular sector that they personally felt was vital for sustainable growth.

The volume is divided into four sections. Section I furnishes information about Human Capital Development. Section II discusses issues concerning Transforming Rural India. Section III entitles: Towards Inclusive Growth and Prosperity.  Finally, Section V deals with Building Brand India.

The volume, The Path Ahead discusses many socio-economic issues/problems   – from fiscal policies, the future of mobility pegged to electric vehicles given global climate challenges, the opportunities to grab and the pitfalls to avoid in urban development as cities are engines of economic growth, and the revival of special economic zones vis-a-vis Chinese model, have all been exhaustively discussed by academics and specialists, a valuable source for policy makers and leaders.

Yet the book leaves one with a mixed feeling. Where is the human soul or is it wrong to ask that question? India is a country that is facing the challenges of people and nature. The book, therefore, should have discussed two- three issues related with sustainable but inclusive development. The book did not discuss why population matters in the development of the country. It leads to a massive diversion of national investable resources to consumption which could otherwise be used for increasing investment and productivity and for improving the quality as well as supply of public services like education, health, sanitation, provision of safe drinking water, etc.  Without population stabilization, India cannot solve its current problems since virtually all major problems that confront India today relate in some critical way to the galloping population.[3] The current population growth in India, however, is mainly caused by unwanted fertility.  Around five in ten live births are unintended/unplanned or simply unwanted by the women who experience them and these births    trigger continued high population growth.[4]

Another greatest challenge facing India, climate change deserves serious treatment by all of us. Of all the most polluting nations – US, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc – only India’s carbon emissions are rising: they rose almost 5 percent in 2016. No one questions India’s right to develop, or the fact that its current emissions per person are tiny. But when building the new India for its 1.35 billion people, especially those who are living below poverty lines, whether it relies on coal and oil or clean and green energy will be a major factor in whether global warming can be tamed. India, therefore, has to step up to balance economic growth with nature. [5]

In closing, India’s future is apparently bright, but it will depend on which direction our policies lead us to.  India has to develop not only in wealth but also in human potential. It is because sustainable rapid economic growth comes only on the back of sound human development policies.  HD, therefore, is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenges of increasing productivity, reducing inequality, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.  It is high time that the Government of India and research institutions focus on developing effective and smart human development agenda to unlock the human capital. [6]

These are some missing points. Otherwise, The Path Ahead: Transformative Ideas for India is a good book that needs to read to understand the basics of employment, education and healthcare industries in our country.  “The time is ripe for India to innovate and cement its position as one of the leading economies of the 21st century and beyond. I believe this book rises to the occasion. It will not only be a ready reference for today’s policymakers, academics and industry professionals and leaders, it will also serve as an inspiration for India’s youth and leaders of tomorrow,” says John T Chambers, Chairman Emeritus, Cisco Systems and Chairman of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum, in a very apt and succinct foreword to this book.

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[1] Kant, Amitabh (Ed.). 2018. The Path Ahead: Transformative Ideas for India New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2018, pp. xix +346

[2] Refer PM Modi speech at the joint meeting of the US Congress on June 8th 2016 at: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/prime-minister-narendra-modi-us-congress-speech-2842046/

[3] Kothari, Devendra. 2015. India: Why population matters? at: https://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2015/04/india-why-population-matters.html

[4] Kothari, Devendra. 2014. “Managing Unwanted Fertility in India: Way Forward”, --   in Suresh Sharma and William Joe.   (eds.):   National Rural Health Mission: An Unfinished Agenda, Bookwell, New Delhi. Also, see: Kothari, Devendra and Sudha Tewari. 2009. “Slowing Population Growth in India: Challenges, Opportunities and the Way Forward”. MIPD Policy Brief No. 2, Management Institute of Population and Development, Parivar Seva Sanstha, New Delhi.

[5] Kothari, Devendra.  Population and Climate Change, The New York Times, September 11, 2018 at: http://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/climate/united-nations-climate-change.html?comments#permid=28574593 Also see: Kothari, Devendra. 2019. What kind of India do we want? Managing the climate change (paper under preparation), Forum for Population Action, Jaipur.

[6] Kothari, Devendra. 2019. Nurturing Human Development: A Strategy for New India, New Delhi: Paragoan International Publishers

What is the one issue which needs urgent attention in India and why?

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

On factors holding India back, my biggest disappointment is the low level of human development.

—Bill Gates

Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Times of India, November, 2017

An unknown commentator, who commented on my last post- Empowering India through HDPlus strategy (https://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2018/10/managing-poverty-and-hdplus-strategy.html) -, asked me the question: “What is the one thing you want to change in India and why?”  And this post aims to answer this question.  There is plenty of stuff to be changed in making India as a developed country, but we cannot focus on everything in one go.  To start with, one has to put all its energies around few selected things and among these unlocking the human potential is vital.

Now question arises: why human development? Let’s consider some facts.

The event, "Human Capital Summit 2018: A Global Call to Action" during the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings held in Indonesia this April, the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced the ranking of the countries on  human capital index (HCI). India ranked 115th out of 157 countries.

HCI seeks to measure the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by the age of 18. According to its parameters a child born in India today will only be 44 per cent as productive as she/he could have been if she enjoyed quality education and full health as well as quality of living environment including water and sanitation.  In other words, there are grave deficiencies in human development efforts and that are preventing our children from reaching their full potential. Further, the World Bank findings point out that India’s score is “lower than the average for its region and income group.”

Singapore topped the HCI list after it was highly rated for its universal primary healthcare system, primary education exams results and life expectancy figures. It is followed by South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Finland.

The Government of India, however, rejected the World Bank results. In a statement, the Indian finance ministry said the HCI has “major methodological weaknesses, besides substantial data gaps” and declared it would “ignore” the ranking. But experts called on the government to acknowledge its failures and take steps to improve health and education outcomes.  India’s performance in the UNDP’s Human Development Index, another measure of human capital, also hasn’t improved much over the years, experts said. This year, India ranked 130 out of 189 countries. Whether India is going to reject this finding too?

There are many national and international reports which indicate that situation is fast deteriorating. For example, the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2017 survey titled “Beyond Basics” reveals that nearly one-fourth of India’s youngsters aged 14-18 cannot read their own language fluently. The report, an initiative by an Indian NGO Pratham, also reveals that 57 per cent of the children assessed struggled to solve a simple sum of division - exposing chinks in the quality of education imparted in the country. Further, 47 per cent of all 14 year-olds in the sample could not read English sentences. For 18-year-old youth, this figure is closer to 40. Also, the report revealed that only 28 per cent had used the internet—26 per cent had used computers in last one week. 64 per cent had never used the internet.

As far as wellbeing of children are concerned,  India is among the countries accounting for the highest burden of stunted, wasted, and overweight children, as per the latest Global Nutrition Report 2018 reflecting the growing concern around child nutrition in the country. With 46.6 million stunted children, India accounted for nearly one-third of the world’s 150.8 million children who are stunted; the report shows warning against a major malnutrition crisis. India is followed by Nigeria (13.9 million) and Pakistan (10.7 million). [1]  The three countries together are home to almost half of all stunted children in the world. This is despite the improvement made by India in reducing
stunting since 2005-06. This is one of major impediments in empowering human resources.

India’s demographics are mind-boggling. During the next one and half   decades there will be a massive increase in the population in the working ages because one  million or so  young people will join the labour force every month and many of them will not have the ability to earn living wages because of their poor human development. Many vested interests would like to perpetuate the current low-level equilibrium of human development.

So what sort of change we need? No doubt, India has to empower its people. For this author has suggested a way out, as noted in my previous post:  Empowering India through HDPlus (HD stands for Human Development) strategy. [2]   At the centre of the HDPlus strategy is the concept of capabilities. Basic capabilities valued by virtually everyone include: good health, access to knowledge, and a decent standard of material living. However, around 50 per cent of population (approx. 700 million people or 135 million families) in India still has inadequate access to basic goods such as quality education, health or sanitation. Much more, therefore, can be done in terms of investments for the bottom income groups. This will substantially increase income growth rates at the bottom, and the growth rates of the economy as a whole. What is required is single-minded focus on growth, based on human development, which increases the jobs pie.[3]

70 years after independence, India I know is losing its way. Only human development can save us. It appears that our policy makers are convinced that rapid economic growth is the most (or only) effective tool to dent into inequality and poverty, through “increased opportunities” for the needy sections. Twenty-seven years ago, India embarked on the journey of economic liberalization, opening up to globalization and market forces. We and the rest of the world have watched that the investment and trade regime introduced in 1991 raised economic growth, increased consumer choices, and reduced poverty to some extent. The trickle-down effect of economic liberalization, however, could not lift millions of Indians and the level of inequality increased. It is because our policy makers in last seventy years did not seem to endorse the concept of "Small is Beautiful" in unlocking human potential.  [4] 

 

Recently, I was interviewed by the Citylive dialogues to understand what happened in the last seventy years. You may like to watch it at:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr4QKlmIwg8 

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[1]  For details , see at:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/66873472.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

[2] For details , refer at: https://kotharionindia.blogspot.com/2018/10/managing-poverty-and-hdplus-strategy.html

[3] Kothari, Devendra. 2019. Nurturing Human Development: A Strategy for New India, New Delhi: Paragoan International Publishers

[4] The book, Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered  is a collection of essays by German born British economist E.F. Schumacher, first published by Blond & Briggs in 1973.

Empowering India through HDPlus strategy

Dr.  Devendra Kothari 

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for population Action

Though India has made extraordinary strides in the last couple of decades in reducing poverty, the country is still home to a very large number of the poor.  It is projected that India may experience an increase in number of poor in coming years, which calls for increased efforts to attend to the needs of the vulnerable, especially those in the bottom 50%.   According to the French Economists, Piketty and his colleague Chancel, “over fifty per cent of India’s population still has little or no access to basic facilities, such as quality education, health or sanitation even after the adoption of market-friendly strategies during the 1990s and record-high GDP growth in recent years.” [1] As such around 70 crore or 700 million out of the total population of 1350 million in 2018 can be classified as deprived or vanchit Indians. And, without empowering this population of 140 million families, India cannot resolve the issue of poverty, since   poverty is a feature of life only where people’s opportunities to overcome it are brutally limited.

Now question arises what holds India back from realising its potential, the best answer is its failure to develop its human capital. With the World Bank ranking India at 115th out of 157 countries on the Human Capital Index, India cannot avoid the issue of empowering people.  HCI seeks to measure the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by the age of 18. According to its parameters a child born in India today will only be 44% as productive as she could have been if she enjoyed quality education and full health as well as quality of living environment including water and sanitation.  In other words, there are grave deficiencies in our human development inputs that are preventing our children from reaching their full potential. Commenting on the poor quality of human development, Bill Gates and Ratan Tata rightly noted: “Human capital is one of India’s greatest assets. Yet, the world’s fastest growing economy hasn’t touched millions of Indian citizens at the bottom of the economic pyramid”.[2] For this, India has to empower its people by investing in their health, education, and physical living conditions. Our development slogan must be “Sattar Crore Vanchit   Bharatiya ka Vikas (Development of 700 million Deprived Indians).

What will it take to help these people to improve their potential? For this, a strategy has been developed and it is being christened as “HDPlus”.[3] It is based on a ‘whole child’ concept, that is child and his/her family should be the fulcrum of human development efforts. The concept is being described by policies, practices, and relationships which ensure that each child is healthy, educated, engaged, supported and encouraged. For this, integrating the child and his or her family more deeply into the day-to-day life of school and home activities represents an untapped instrument for raising the overall achievements including learning skills and health parameters, and hence improving overall productivity. In other words, creating an enabling environment at family and school levels is a way  to empower people.

Looking to the prevailing situation, HDPlus strategy will focus on five interventions in a more closely integrated form. They are:   Improving the quality of elementary education, Strengthening WASH factors (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene), Enhancing primary health, Reducing gender gap, and most importantly Stabilizing the population by minimizing incidents of unwanted childbearing incidences and bringing down infant mortality. In addition, we must recognize that shifting of excess labour from agriculture to non-agriculture sectors and managing climate change including the quality of air and water are important inputs in the process of human development.

HDPlus strategy is based on Amartya Sen's capabilities approach which revolves around people as human being; it sees development as expansion of people's capabilities – it is an enabling (empowering) preposition. It aims to enhance people's well-being by expanding their capabilities which is connected to freedom of choices. The main features of HDPlus strategy are:

1.           The focus of action will be all school-going children, aged 6 to 14, in government schools and their families (HDPlus families).
2.      The focal point of various governments’ pro-poor schemes along with HD interventions will be HDPlus families.
3.      The framework will be implemented by government agencies in collaboration with civil organizations.  

The figure below shows as to how HDPlus strategy will lay foundation for human competency in empowering people. It will focus on   children aged 6-14 attending   local Government primary schools and their families to be known as HDPlus   families.  The identified families will be   focal point of various governments’ pro-poor schemes along with selected HD interventions like education, water, sanitation, primary and reproductive health, etc. This will result in the human competency that is quality of being adequately or well qualified physically and intellectually. The strategy will  ensure that 14 year olds (8^th graders) is well prepared to read, write and be efficient in maths as well as in digital technology before moving to higher education.

The above analysis reveals that HDPlus strategy rests on the assumption that people, when given tools and opportunity, can defy the odds. “This is especially true of young people, because they are determined to lead a better life than their parents have and eager to follow new ideas and new technologies where they lead,” as noted by Bill and Melinda Gates.  [4] The policy makers, civil society, donor agencies and international partners, therefore, should scale up advocacy and mobilise support for key interventions that would not only empower people by enhancing productivity but will also help in accelerating the process of achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Slow progress towards HD is indeed everybody’s problem and must be treated as a national emergency!

Courtesy: Prof.LK Kothari 

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[1] Chancel, Lucas and Thomas Piketty. 2017.  “Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?”  WID, World Working Paper Series No. 2017/11, World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics.  Also refer at: http://wid.world/document/chancelpiketty2017widworld/

[2] Gates, Bill and Ratan Tata. 2016. “New nutrition report underscores the importance of leadership in addressing stunting in India” at:https://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-editorials/new-nutrition-report-underscores-the-importance-of-leadership-in-addressing-stunting-in-india.

 [3] Kothari, Devendra. 2019. Nurturing Human Development: A Strategy for New India, New Delhi: Paragoan International Publishers.

[4] Gates, Bill and Melinda. 2018. “Our Precarious Progress on Poverty”, The New York Times, Sunday Review, Sept. 23, 2018.

Responding to climate change

60th 

What kind of India do we want? Managing the climate change

Dr. Devendra Kothari

Population and Development Analyst

Forum for Population Action

India is a country that is facing the challenges of people and nature.

The Nature Conservancy[1]

The Issue:

As one of the greatest challenges facing India, climate change deserves serious treatment by all of us. Of all the most polluting nations – US, China, Russia, Japan and the EU bloc – only India’s carbon emissions are rising: they rose almost 5 percent in 2016. No one questions India’s right to develop, or the fact that its current emissions per person are tiny. But when building the new India for its 1.35 billion people, especially those who are living below poverty lines, whether it relies on coal and oil or clean and green energy will be a major factor in whether global warming can be tamed.

Over fifty per cent of India’s population (around 700 million)   still has little or no access to basic facilities, such as quality education, health or sanitation even after the adoption of market-friendly strategies during the 1990s and record-high GDP growth in recent years.[1]  As such, “India is the frontline state,” says Samir Saran, at the Observer Research Foundation in Delhi. “Two-thirds of India is yet to be built. So please understand, 16% of mankind is going to seek the American dream. If we can give it to them on a frugal climate budget, we will save the planet. If we don’t, we will either destroy India or destroy the planet.” This view is shared internationally: Christiana Figueres, the UN’s former climate chief who delivered the landmark Paris climate change agreement says India is “very, very important” for everybody. Similarly. Lord Nicholas Stern, the climate economist who has worked in India for 40 years, says a polluting, high-carbon development would leave India alone accounting for a huge chunk of the world’s future emissions, making it “very difficult” to keep the global temperature rise below the internationally agreed danger limit of 2C. Right now, India gets 0.4 per cent  of its energy from wind and just 0.03 per cent from solar PV, and even in 2040, in an extremely optimistic scenario, India will get just 3 per cent of its energy from wind and solar.

India, therefore, has to step up to balance economic growth with nature. For this, there is work to be done everywhere in India with various perspectives to manage the climate change.  In the face of such overwhelming need, the paper, based on secondary data and analysis, will try to identify and respond to the most pressing challenges, and will suggest a way out. In fact, it offers an opportunity for nations including India to step in and help lead the way with a smarter approach to manage the climate change.  Here, India could contribute the path breaking way out looking to its tradition – coexisting with nature – with right type of policies.  In a news item, The Guardian argues that “How India’s battle with climate change could determine all of our fates.” [2] It is because India’s population and emissions are rising fast, and its ability to tackle poverty without massive fossil fuel use will decide the fate of the planet.

Climate change and its impact:

The difference between the two terms environment and atmosphere is that the atmosphere refers to the envelop of gases for the earth, whereas the environment refers to all the living and non-living things including atmosphere that make up the surroundings. Climate is part of environment. Climate affects and is affected by the environment in reciprocal fashion.

Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time. The change is attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ produced by the use of fossil fuels and/or by human activities. Global warming, also referred to as climate change, is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.[3]

The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees.[4] The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. Large scale migration cannot be ruled out.  Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.[5]

Climate change has occurred repeatedly throughout Earth's history.  Some aspects of the current climate change are not unusual, but others are. The concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has reached a record high relative to more than the past half-million years, and has done so at an exceptionally fast rate. Current global temperatures are warmer than they have ever been during at least the past five centuries, probably even for more than a millennium. If warming continues unabated, the resulting climate change within this century would be extremely unusual in geological terms. Another unusual aspect of recent climate change is its cause: past climate changes were natural in origin, whereas most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.[6]

When comparing the current climate change to earlier, natural ones, three distinctions must be made. First, it must be clear which variable is being compared: is it greenhouse gas concentration or temperature, and is it their absolute value or their rate of change? Second, local changes must not be confused with global changes. Local climate changes are often much larger than global ones, since local factors (e.g., changes in oceanic or atmospheric circulation) can shift the delivery of heat or moisture from one place to another and local feedbacks operate (e.g., sea ice feedback). Large changes in global mean temperature, in contrast, require some global forcing (such as a change in greenhouse gas concentration or solar activity). Third, it is necessary to distinguish between time scales. Climate changes over millions of years can be much larger and have different causes (e.g., continental drift) compared to climate changes on a centennial time scale.

Why does carbon dioxide (CO2) get most of the attention when there are so many other heat-trapping gases? Climate change is primarily a problem of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This carbon overload is caused mainly when we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas or cut down and burn forests. As a result, rate of acceleration of climate change is   gaining momentum. Globally, 2018 is shaping up to be the fourth-hottest year on record. The only years hotter were the three previous ones. That string of records is part of an accelerating climb in temperatures since the start of the industrial age that scientists say is clear evidence of climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.[7]

In 2018, record heat wreaked havoc on four continents.[8] For example, the contiguous United States had its hottest month of May, Japan was walloped by record high temperatures in July, killing at least 86 people in what its meteorological agency bluntly called a “disaster.” Further, Nawabshah is in the heart of Pakistan’s cotton country. But no amount of cotton could provide comfort on the last day of April, when temperatures soared past 122 degrees Fahrenheit, or 50 degrees Celsius. Even by the standards of this blisteringly hot place, it was a record. Similarly, May had been the warmest in 100 years in Oslo. June was hot, too, according to MET Norway. And weather stations logged record-high temperatures on the edge of the Sahara and above the Arctic Circle. At 3 p.m. on July 5, on the edge of the vast Sahara, the Algerian oil town of Ouargla recorded a high of 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Even for this hot country, it was a record, according to Algeria’s national meteorological service. While attribution studies are not yet available for other record-heat episodes this year, scientists say there’s little doubt that the ratcheting up of global greenhouse gases makes heat waves more frequent and more intense. No doubt, there will be variations in weather patterns in the coming years, scientists say. But the trend line is clear: 17 of the 18 warmest years since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001.The temperatures and wildfires witnessed this summer are set to become the new normal - yet much of the world is unprepared for life on a hotter planet, scientists are warning.

India is no exception. The country has about 18 percent of the world’s population, eight percent of its biodiversity, about two percent of its land and less than one per cent of its water. As such, the country is highly vulnerable to climate change. Average temperatures have been rising throughout the country, and rainfall has become more erratic. These changes are projected to continue accruing over the coming decades. South Asia’s Hotspots: The Impact of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards (2018) is the first book of its kind to provide granular spatial analysis of the long-term impacts of changes in average temperature and precipitation on one of the world’s poorest regions. [9] The book finds that higher temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns will reduce living standards in communities across South Asia including India —locations that the book terms “hotspots.” More than 700 million people in India currently live in communities that are projected to become hotspots under a carbon-intensive climate scenario.

According to this World Bank report, rising temperatures and changing monsoon rainfall patterns from climate change could cost India 2.8 percent of GDP and depress the living standards of nearly half the country’s population by 2050. Most of them now live in the vulnerable areas and will suffer from declining living standards that could be attributed to falling agricultural yields, lower labor productivity or related health impacts. Some of these areas are already less developed, suffer from poor connectivity and are water stressed.

India’s average annual temperatures are expected to rise by 1.00°C to 2°C by 2050 even if preventive measures are taken along the lines of those recommended by the Paris climate change agreement of 2015. If no measures are taken average temperatures in India are predicted to increase by 1.5°C to 3°C.

The work scientifically identifies vulnerable states and districts as “hotspots” using spatial granular climate and household data analysis. The report defines hotspot as a location where changes in average temperature and precipitation will have a negative effect on living standards. These hotspots are not only necessarily higher temperature zones than the surrounding areas, but also reflect the local population’s socio-economic capacity to cope with the climatic changes.

In India today, approximately 600 million people live in locations that could either become moderate or severe hotspots by 2050 under a business-as-usual scenario, the report says. States in the central, northern and north-western parts of India emerge as most vulnerable to changes in average temperature and precipitation.

According to the report’s analysis, by 2050 Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are predicted to be the top two climate hotspot states and are likely to experience a decline of more than 9 percent in their living standards, followed by Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra. Seven out of the top 10 most-affected hotspot districts will belong to the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.

“These weather changes will result in lower per capita consumption levels that could further increase poverty and inequality in one of the poorest regions of the world, South Asia,” says report author Mani Muthukumara (2018), a Lead Economist in the South Asia Region of the World Bank. “

To be concluded.....

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[1] Chancel, Lucas and Thomas Piketty. 2017.  “Indian income inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj?”  WID, World Working Paper Series No. 2017/11, World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics.  Also refer at: http://wid.world/document/chancelpiketty2017widworld/

[2] Carrington, Damian and Michael Safi, 2017. “How India’s battle with climate change could determine all of our fates,” The Guardian Weekly (Nov. 6 2017) at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/06/how-indias-battle-with-climate-change-could-determine-all-of-our-fates

[3] IPCC. 2013. Climate Change 2013 – The Physical Science Basis Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Edition: 2014, Chapter: Observations: Atmosphere and Surface,  Cambridge University Press, pp.159-254

[4] . The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.”

[5] Rich, Nathaniel. 2018. Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change, The New York Times Magazine (August 1, 2018). Also refer at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html

[6] IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007. FAQ 6.2 Is the Current Change Unusual Compared to Earlier Changes in Earth’s History? at: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-6-2.html

[7]As quoted by: Sengupta Somini. 2018. 2018 will be fourth-hottest year on record, climate scientists predict at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/climate-change-global-warming-records-2018-heatwave-a8489151.html

[8] Sengupta Somini, Tiffany May and Zia ur-Rehman, 2018. How Record Heat Wreaked Havoc on gout continents, The New York Times at: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/climate/record-heat-waves.html

[9] Mani, Muthukumara, et al. 2018. South Asia's Hotspots : Impacts of Temperature and Precipitation Changes on Living Standards. South Asia Development Matters; Washington, DC: World Bank. Also refer at:  https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/28723 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”

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[1] The Nature Conservancy is a charitable environmental organization, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, United States. Its mission is to "conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends."