Economist
INDIA’S PERFORMANCE IN poverty reduction, since the early 1990s, has been remarkable. However, there is a constant lament that while the decline in consumption poverty has been large, the improvement in social indicators like education and mortality has not been as commendable. Absolute poverty declined from 46 per cent in 1993–94 to only 13 per cent in 2011–12 (Tendulkar poverty line of Rs 27 per capita per day in 2011–12 prices and/or World Bank international poverty line of $1.90 PPP dollars per person per day).
Social indicators showed that in parameters like stunting (height for weight) and wasting (weight for height) India lagged behind the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa. To address this anomaly, Indian governments increased the expenditure on food supply, the Right to Food Act, the Right to Education Act, and even the Right to Employment. Similar policies had been in operation in India earlier as well. The Maharashtra food for work programme, for instance, first became operational in 1973. However, while these programmes did make a dent on income poverty to a limited extent, social indicators still lagged behind sub-Saharan Africa.
But there is evidence that India’s performance in social indicators is improving, and is now keeping pace with its poverty reduction achievements. Indian policymakers are belatedly recognizing that growth per se brings about an enhancement in living standard indicators, i.e. parents invest more in their child’s education when they have more income. Some indicators of welfare belong to what have classically been called public goods (and public bads). As taught in Econ 101, a public good is one that has no exclusion – if it is made available to one person, it is made available to all. A classic example of public good – radio airwaves! Of public bad – air pollution.
While Indian policymakers have provided a multiplicity of private goods to the poor, they have been reluctant to provide genuine public goods. In a 2007 working paper for the Planning Commission, Arvind Virmani pointed out that one important reason for India’s poor performance in social indicators was the lack of public goods advancement; in particular, the provision of sanitation. Since 2007, research on Indian sanitation has proved Virmani right. Both academics and policymakers have recognized the importance of sanitation. One of the signature reforms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 August 2014, was the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). The major goal of this programme was to make India Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the original proponent of a Clean India. Unfortunately, our reformers forgot Gandhi’s message as they proceeded to make India modern and prosperous but without considering improvements in sanitation.
Both socially, and politically, the ODF India initiative was a bold one. As a surprise to all, in India and around the world, a word taboo in everyday conversation – ‘defecation’ – was openly discussed, and by the PM no less. That more than 60 per cent of rural India was indulging in this practice came as a shock to most. This was not what the elite, especially the upper-class elite belonging to the ‘in the name of the poor’ group, had discussed even in private, let alone in public.
The ODF India campaign has had its fair share of detractors and criticism has moved through three stages. The first stage was close to complete rejection of any possibility of success; ‘we have seen this movie before’ was the common refrain, and hence, the idea that crores of Indians would change their centuries-old habit was dismissed out of hand. There was evidence to support this dismissal. Incomes in rural areas had increased manifold since Independence in 1947, yet a large proportion of rural Indians were still defecating in the open in 2014. Income change had had almost a zero effect on habits – hence, the conclusion that the Government of India’s goal of a defecation-free India by 2019 was a pipe dream.
Nevertheless, the Government persisted with its plan. This brought forth the second round of ‘conscientious objectors’. Yes, toilets were being built, but they were being used for storage of grain and for every other purpose imaginable but not as a toilet. Clearly, habits were not being changed. There was evidence in the form of photographs and newspaper interviews with villagers testifying to the non-use of toilets. The results of the first survey of toilet usage (conducted by the Quality Council of India) were published in 2016, and were encouraging. But, and there is always a ‘but’ in reforming India, the survey was criticized for biased sample selection, i.e. it only surveyed ‘high-performing’ regions, and hence could not be relied upon as being indicative of what was happening in the backward states of India – such as Bihar – which were not part of the survey.
The third, and partially valid, strand of criticism was that while the toilets had been built, and individuals (especially women) were willing to use them, there was no running water and hence the toilets were white elephants. I had an occasion to test some of these claims (both pros and cons) when I visited a village in the Guna district in Madhya Pradesh in November 2018.
This visit was possibly my most heart-warming experience in my work as a (development) economist. In the dominantly scheduled caste village, I was confronted by six angry young women. They were vocal, and self-assertive (in a very positive way). They were demanding their rights. What rights? Their neighbour had received money to build a toilet (under the auspices of SBM) but they had not. That same neighbour had received money to build a house, but they had not. India has always had subsidies in the name of the poor but, for the first time, I was able to witness these subsidies at work, which explained the loud complaints.
Toilets have been built. In some states, upon geo-tagging the toilet using SBM’s app designed for this purpose, Rs 12,000 is deposited into the beneficiary’s bank account. But how are poor people going to obtain the few thousand rupees necessary for construction to begin? In some states, an instalment is given up front for economically weaker sections. However, since SBM bases the Rs 12,000 as an incentive, the idea is to motivate the households to invest in the benefits of safe sanitation themselves, regardless of the money. Still, not all deserving people in Indian villages (the bottom 50 per cent) can be first to get their toilets and houses built (costing Rs 2.5 lakh per house and paid by the Government). There is a queue, and those whose turn has not yet come are complaining. Genuine, legitimate complaints. But the same people – and in particular, the same women – are sending their children to school, and proud of the girls doing well in college. And yes, those who have the toilets are using them, especially the women; and are doing so with a water storage tank attached to the toilet, thus debunking the myth that running water is a must for toilet usage.
It may well be that SBM is the most important reform initiative of the Modi Government. How has it performed? What are the statistics about the decline in open defecation in India? How can long entrenched social attitudes change so quickly, especially when ‘expert’ studies have shown that this is a long and arduous journey which barely started four years ago? Some assert that Government statistics do not help because they are Government statistics, and hence, not that credible.
International Evidence on ODF
Since 2000, the World Bank has been reporting data on open defecation (OD) for more than 120 countries (urban and rural). This is a rich source of data to examine the performance of SBM. Data are available from 2000 when India is reported to have 82.2 per cent of rural population practicing OD; 62.7 per cent in 2011; and 57.4 and 55.6 per cent in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Census reports rural OD as 78 per cent and 67 per cent in 2001 and 2011 respectively; Government of India statistics for 2014 and 2015 are reported as 61 per cent and 55 per cent. In other words, GoI data, census data and World Bank data are near identical.
The best three-year performance in the decline in OD among 108 countries since 2000 was in Ethiopia – a decline of 11.5 percentage points (ppt) between 2004 (74.3 per cent) and 2007 (62.8 per cent). The second and third best performers were Cambodia (-8.3 per cent) and Pakistan (-8 per cent). At seventh place was neighbouring Nepal and India was ranked thirteenth. One important note about these data: the pace of decline is reported linearly for each individual country. For example, between 2000 and 2003, rural OD in India declined from 82.2 per cent to 76.9 per cent, a decline of 5.3 ppt; between 2012 and 2015 the decline was the same – from 60.9 per cent to 55.6 per cent.
In 2018, the Government of India’s website reports a rural OD magnitude of 8.8 per cent. This means that no matter how you slice the data (and even assuming some 11 ppt overstatement in the GoI figures, i.e. rural OD was 20 per cent in 2018 rather than the reported 9 per cent) the decline over three years in OD is a staggering 35.6 ppt (from 55.6 per cent in 2015 to 20 per cent in 2018). This is more than three times the best-ever observed in the world, at least since comparable data first became available in 2000. It might be worth researching the best three-year performance for all the countries in the world since the invention of the toilet circa 1852. Note that this record performance in India would still occur even if the Government is vastly overstating the achievement of SBM – even if OD in 2018 was five times the OD figure of 8.8 per cent i.e. 44 per cent, it would still be a world record.
But there is more to the Swachh Bharat policy achievement. The World Bank publishes annual data for more than 180 countries on several living-standard indicators. These data (on mortality rates for infants and children under five) can provide some indication about the pace of improvement in India post the introduction of SBM, say from 2014 onwards (with 2014 as the cut-off year for before the Mission). The mortality data are being looked at because apart from safety and dignity for women, open defecation has major implications for mortality, and especially mortality rates for children. If ODF India has been even partially successful, it should show up in mortality rates for small children (under the age of five). Note that looking at the pace of mortality reduction is not a very stringent test for the success/failure of the ODF programme.
It is not a strict test because mortality decline is affected by at least four other important factors – income growth, technological advances (medicine and vaccination), improvement in water supply, and education of women. All of these indicators are improving in India, so one cannot attribute the reduction in infant or under-five mortality to the reduction in OD alone. Possibly, becoming ODF is the most important, but how does one prove it?
The first goal is to compare like with like, i.e. compare India to its peers, loosely defined as emerging economies (aka developing countries) with a population greater than five million. Second is to rank their performance, with top rank for the country with the fastest rate of decline.
One possible method is to look at the pace of decline of mortality indicators. But there are several international factors (advancement in medicines, technology, etc.) that can increase the pace of mortality decline in India. Hence, looking at just the changes in the speed of change may not be that meaningful. There is one method, however, that can ‘isolate’ the country-specific trend from international trend influences. It is to look at the rank of the speed of change i.e. if India’s pace of change is greater than its comparators, then that can be indicative of some domestic policy factor.
Out of a sample of sixty-five developing non-oil exporting economies with a population greater than, or equal to, five million, India, in 2014, showed the thirteenth fastest decline in infant mortality rates, and the eleventh fastest decline in under-five mortality rates. Three years later, in 2017, the ranks had improved to seventh and sixth respectively.
One must give credit where credit is due. Academics said such a fast rate of change was not possible. Well-known bureaucratic inertia in India meant that even if theoretically (academically) possible, implementation of the ODF campaign would face insurmountable hurdles.
Why did the programme succeed beyond all calculations? Because it was a pro-poor, pro-women campaign. Because it improved the safety and dignity of women. Because it was (shockingly!) very well administered. And because it was a high-profile PM-led campaign.