Heed Gita Gopinath’s warning from Davos: Pollution is silently taxing India’s health and growth

Days earlier, Indore—celebrated as India’s ‘cleanest city’ year after year—was forced into a humiliating reckoning. At least eight people died after allegedly drinking contaminated water in one locality, while hundreds were hospitalized.

The cause may have been a local civic failure: an ageing pipeline network, poor safeguards and ignored warning signs. But the deeper lesson is national. How can rankings of ‘cleanliness’ coexist with deaths from drinking water? The imagery was almost allegorical: residents queuing at tankers and bullhorn announcements warning against piped water while walls nearby still had slogans boasting of Indore’s cleanliness.

If Davos was the global mirror, Indore was the domestic shock. These two remind us that pollution should be one of India’s top developmental priorities, not as a niche ‘environmental’ concern, but as a public health emergency and growth constraint.

The most dangerous feature of air and water pollution is that they kill quietly. Their effects accumulate through everyday exposure, burdening normal life with chronic risks. A recent multi-city study reported that across 10 major Indian cities, about 33,627 deaths per year were attributable to short-term PM2.5 exposure above the World Health Organization’s 24-hour guideline (15gm per cubic metre).

The sting is that even cities that meet our national standard show significant mortality impact. The same study pointed out that large health gains can be made by improving the quality of even ‘moderately polluted’ air. This also means that complacency based on meeting Indian thresholds can be deadly.

This is where the familiar AQI debate misleads. The Air Quality Index is a communication tool; PM2.5 is a biological hazard. You can have ‘acceptable’ headline indices and still inflict damage through fine particulates. In Delhi, the toxicity is visible and therefore politically salient. But the crisis affects us across the country.

Pollution is a classic example of a negative externality. Private actions impose a high public cost. The poor are worst affected. The affluent respond by buying packaged water, installing RO systems and air purifiers, or by shifting consumption. The poor queue at tankers and borrow money for treatment, often pawning jewellery to pay hospital bills while waiting for promised reimbursements. Pollution punishes those with the least capacity to escape it.

A World Bank report’s analysis notes several channels: low-income workers are more likely to work outdoors; low-income homes are likelier to be close to industrial plants, transport corridors and other sources of pollution; and as pollution rises, property values fall, reinforcing the concentration of poverty in the most exposed areas. So pollution doesn’t just make people sick—it can harden inequality over time.

This is not about ‘trees versus jobs.’ Framed this way, development projects can trump environmental hazards. We also have a peculiarly Indian phenomenon of ex post facto green clearances, despite the fact that polluted air and water destroy livelihoods, productivity and household savings.

Gopinath’s point was that we must not obsess over tariffs while ignoring a health-and-productivity crisis. While local pollution is often visible, we don’t see a sustained countrywide agitation.

Perhaps the political economy and psychology can explain this. There seems widespread resignation to the problem, reinforced by a feeling of powerlessness. A weak or inconsistent government response can discourage mobilization and protests are often frowned upon. This is why we need a ‘mission mode’ approach. Action without a let-up.

An environmental burden is inseparable from social deprivation. India’s insistence on climate justice is based on the fact that industrialized countries grew by burning cheap carbon for two centuries and are now linking trade with climate conditionalities. Yet, grievance cannot be an excuse for inaction at home. The Indore episode shows what happens when governance focuses on optics over public health systems and safety.

A pro-poor pollution agenda would first reduce pollution where it can deliver instant welfare gains: clean cooking fuels, electrified public transport, dust control at construction sites, waste burning, industrial compliance and reliable municipal water systems.

Second, enforce the polluter-pays rule; do not penalize the poor commuter, street vendor or informal worker. Third, we must focus on data and measurement, stronger monitoring and institutions.

And fourth, the national conversation must shift from episodic panic to continuous governance. Pollution makes news every November when Delhi chokes and fades by February. If India can run ‘missions’ for roads, toilets and more, it can run one for clean air and safe water.

Back to Gopinath. Yes, India should negotiate hard on tariffs, standards and carbon barriers. But it must also negotiate with itself —to stop accepting mass exposure as normal, stop confusing rankings with safety and stop letting the poorest pay for what they did the least to create.

The author is senior fellow with Pune International Centre.