Answering why I call India the greatest ‘wannabe’ nation: Part 2 - Infrastructure

Thank you for reading my earlier post - Answering why I call India the greatest ‘wannabe’ nation: Part 1 - Economy. Your comments and all the conversations shall definitely not be wasted since the more we talk about these issues we'll unearth if not a resolution but at least the conscience and resolve to tackle them. Though I had promised to write about the 'wannabe' state of Sports in this post, I did realize later, that it would not be fair to leave the topic around 'Infrastructure' for later. That is because, if our nation is a tree that needs to grow healthy then economy is similar to the sunlight that is required and infrastructure is like the soil that it needs to grow. So sports can wait for some time.

Part 2 - Infrastructure

So this topic again brings me to the Q&A mode. And the question then is, when does a country prosper? And it's a simple answer, it is when it's treasury earns more and more money and it attracts more and more insiders or even visitors for a piece of that treasure. Well, that's just a very high level answer to a rather simple looking question. Now mind you, though the question looks simple it actually isn't as much simple to answer this for there are numerous reasons which accounts for a state's prosperity. But as you know my affinity towards simplicity, I shall go back to the answer we had earlier and elaborate on it. More money means a better economy and how does one get a better economy? By providing people within and outside the state with money making opportunities. Voila...and that exactly is what we know as Infrastructure.

Every aspect of life that is needed to sustain and better the standard of living in a state is referred to as infrastructure. So everything from electricity, water supply and sanitation, roadways, health, basic education and these days even the availability of adequate and widespread bandwidth can fall under infrastructure.

Now for some stats for these aspects of the 5 most populous countries in the world in chronological order China, India, United States, Brazil and Indonesia. Starting with Electricity. According to a 2009 UNESCO Report published on the internet, the population % with access to electricity in these countries are China - 99.4%, India - 66.3%, United States - 100%, Brazil - 98.3% and Indonesia - 64.5%. Now the same stats for population without electricity (in millions) are China - 8.1, India - 403.7, United States - 0, Brazil - 3.3 and Indonesia - 81.6. India and Indonesia are numbers 1 & 2 in the list of population without access to electricity. And the whole of the African continent has 41.9% of its population with access to electricity leaving 586.8 million without any power. Is there anything more to say?

Lets shift to Water supply & Sanitation. Worldwater.org is a non-profit endeavor from the pacific institute to collect and disseminate information about the world's freshwater resources. I have collected some data from their databank to analyze and try and get some insight into the situation in our country. My aim is to compare 2 important stats -  a) % of population with access to safe drinking water and b) % of population with access to improved sanitation. So, as per the data the % of population with access to safe drinking water in the 5 majorly populated countries of the world are China - 89%, India - 88%, United States - 99%, Brazil - 97% and Indonesia - 80%.  The stats for the % of population with access to improved sanitation in these countries are China - 55%, India - 31%, United States - 100%, Brazil - 80% and Indonesia - 52%.

According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP), 37% of the developing world’s population – 2.5 billion people – lack improved sanitation facilities, and over 780 million people still use unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day, and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for thousands more. The JMP website is a wealth of information for this and I was looking at their data bank for a comparative data set for these countries in terms of the population in numbers:

click to enlarge

So, though the earlier stats on paper are not that bad for India in i.e. w.r.t. access to safe drinking water, the situation with sanitation is really grim and this will feed in to the discussions on the health scenario.

Lets now move to arteries of a nation - the Roadways. This is one area of the infrastructure that India has lived up to with regards to its population and area. The results speak for itself. India has 3,320,410 km of roadways with just 18 vehicles per 1000 in their population. Comparing that with China which has 3,860,800 km of roadways for 83 vehicles per 1000, we are actually better placed. But what these stats do not reveal is the condition of these roads. I unearthed a report on the internet which depicts the reality of the road conditions in India. 54% of these thousands of kms of roads are unpaved which causes traffic hazards regularly. I was particularly alerted by a recent government report that has concluded that congestion in urban areas has risen, thanks to the disproportionate increase in road length and vehicular growth. The report cites while 59% of India's total road length is rural roads, urban roads account for only 9%. And in urban India, road length has increased by 3.3% in the past decade, but vehicles have risen by 10%.

Moving to the conditions of Health in India. Now this one is like digging a bagful of cans of worms out from the deepest of the graves'. There are thousands of gigs of data on the internet around health related stuff in India and I would not really go much deep into them. Instead I will leave you with the video grab of an episode of the recently concluded popular show 'Satyamev Jayate' which provides a very fine overview of this sector of the infrastructure.In an nutshell it is very very grim. Also a very good and useful source of some interesting stats would be the UNICEF website.

So, approximately 1.72 million children die each year before turning one. Shortages of healthcare providers, poor intra-partum and newborn care, diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections also contribute to the high infant mortality rate. 40% of the primary health centres in India are understaffed. Currently, India has approximately 860 beds per million population. This is only one-fifth of the world average, which is 3,960, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It is estimated that 450,000 additional hospital beds will be required by 2014. The government is expected to contribute only 15-20% of the total, providing an enormous opportunity for private players to fill the gap. Also, India is ranked 3rd among the countries with the most HIV-infected.

However there are rays of hope within the system. In 2012 India was polio free for the first time in its history. This was achieved because of Pulse Polio Programme which was started in 1995-96 by the government of India.

Education in India is the next aspect to talk about. Over two-thirds of the world's 793 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries (Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan). India now finds itself in an adult-literacy peer group that includes Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Yemen. The United Nations publishes a Human Development Index every year, which consists of the Education index. The Education Index is measured by the adult literacy rate (with two-thirds weighting) and the combined primary, secondary, and tertiary gross education enrollment ratio (i.e. with one-third weighting). In that ranking India languishes at a poor 147 on that list with the other top 4 populous countries at positions: China - 98, United States - 13, Brazil - 65 and Indonesia - 104. What does that mean for the country then. Well, despite growing investment in education, only 15% of Indian students reach high school, and just 7%, of the 15% who make it to high school, graduate. The quality of education whether at primary or higher education is significantly poor as compared with major developing nations. As of 2008, India's post-secondary institutions offer only enough seats for 7% of India's college-age population, 25% of teaching positions nationwide are vacant, and 57% of college professors lack either a master's or PhD degree. And to cover all this up, according to the UNESCO, India has the lowest public expenditure on higher education per student in the world. Ref: image below.

Source: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/WorldStats/

click to enlarge

 So, other than budgetary issues what plagues the education system in the country. Having a low enrollment rate does not help anyhow and to correspond we also have a very high drop out rate, being 28th in the world. The only other Asian countries having worse drop out rates are Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh. In fact 42% of the enrolled students are dropping out before the 5th class. Though the metrics for quality of education/ competency have received less attention in our country, I could find some interesting stats for the same. Student Performance on the Reading, Scientific and Mathematical Literacy Scales, mean score does not have India in the top 50. No Indian University is in the top 100 universities of the world. And finally we do not have enough teachers there is one teacher every 412 students in this country. And their quality is another concern. 89% of primary teachers have just studied till the 12th standard only and the average absence rate of teachers in India is 43%. So even if the kid ends up in school, almost half of the time he/she will not find a teacher around.

And finally to the newest constituent of infrastructure, the Internet or rather availability of bandwidth. Now, why suddenly has internet availability become such a necessity. A simple comparison of living conditions in developed and developing nations would tell us that the reliance on internet for proper and effective governance has been a key factor of growth off late. Though with regards to the number of internet users India ranks no. 3 in the world after China and the United States but in terms of population penetration it is way down at 163 in the world with just 10.2% of the population with access to internet. This needs to increase and be affordable especially for rural India to get the benefits of health and education programs that can be powered with the help of the internet, which I believe is the greatest scientific revolution in the 21st century.

So, where does all this leave us with? This rather long explanation of the infrastructure and its various aspects, why was it necessary? As you must have read in my earlier post, India is a rapidly growing economy, 3rd in the world infact. Well, if we are growing then where is the growth in our infrastructure? If the answer is "I don't know" then it's still better than a "I don't care". As I was writing this, I began asking myself the question, "what can I do to change this?" I mean just by writing a blog post with some facts and analysis won't help my country's infrastructure, would it? Sure, it won't. And then suddenly I realized that the country of my present residence is probably the best example of a citizen's contribution to the state's infrastructure. Let me explain. Infrastructure is the foundation or simply put it is the basis of essential commodities in the society. Now that in my IT jargon is a project which has a finite timeline to be set up and put into place. But, doesn't every project need a business as usual (BAU) process or a maintenance mode to be sustained? The answer has to be 'Yes'. So we the citizens have to take up that mantle of being the protectors and maintenance men & women of our infrastructure. If we have the government building roads, schools, hospitals, facilities for water supply and sanitation then we have to help sustain them. Else every time a budget is allocated for bettering the infrastructure, the majority of that will be spent in bringing things back to what they were. And that's sadly whats happening now, we are all pushing a wall and not a rolling stone. But, someday I'm sure, we will.