Among India’s most populous cities, the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi would make the most impressive gains in average life expectancy (9 years), followed by Agra (8.1 years) and Bareilly (7.8 years).
 
The index estimates the number of years a country could add to its people’s lives by meeting national or WHO standards for PM2.5–particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size, or 30 times finer than a human hair, which, when inhaled, can enter deep into the lungs and sometimes the bloodstream to cause serious harm.
 
By providing the actual impact on lifespans, AQLI goes a step beyond India’s National Air Quality Index (AQI), which measures the presence of eight pollutants in the air and ranks their levels into six categories of severity.
 
AQLI shows that by reducing PM2.5 pollution to below the Indian standard–as set by the Central Pollution Control Board, and less stringent than the WHO standard–Indians could live 1.35 years longer on average.
 
PM2.5
 
The WHO standard for permissible levels of PM2.5 in the air (annual) is 10 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m³), but India’s National Ambient Air Quality standard for PM2.5 is three times higher at 40 μg/m³. “The WHO assigns such a low standard precisely because small particulate pollution have been shown to have negative impacts on health even at very low levels,” Michael Greenstone, director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, told IndiaSpend in an email.
 
The NCT of Delhi, with an estimated 15.5 million people, recorded an annual mean of 98 μg/m³, more than twice the limit considered safe under the National Ambient Air Quality standard and almost 10 times the WHO standard. Delhi stands the most to gain from controlling PM2.5 pollution, with citizens adding nearly six years (5.9) to their lives if national standards are met, and nine years if WHO norms are met.
 
The index
 
The AQLI is based on data from studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, which found that a 10 μg/m³ increase in airborne particulate matter of 10 microns in size (PM10) reduces life expectancy by 0.64 years. This PM10 estimate was then applied to global PM2.5 concentrations.
 
Estimates of ambient PM2.5 concentrations around the world during the year 2015 were taken from the Atmospheric Composition Analysis Group at the Dalhousie University, Canada, which had used a combination of satellite, physical monitoring and simulation-based sources to collect this data.
 
These measurements exclude dust and sea-salt, considered natural sources of PM2.5, so that the concentrations shown in the map depict pollution resulting principally from human activity.
 

 
The AQLI uses concentrations of PM2.5 to estimate how many years a country would add to the life expectancy of its people by adhering to the WHO’s air quality standard of 10 μg/m3.
Source: University of Chicago
 

Source: Air Quality-Life Index
Note: *Major metropolitan areas that include parts of or all of these districts are included in parentheses.
** Ambient population estimates are from LandScan Global Population Database 2011; administrative boundaries are from GADM database.
 
The way forward
 
In 2015, 92% of the world’s population lived in areas that exceeded the annual PM2.5 safe limit of 10 µg/m³ prescribed by the WHO, according to the first State of Global Air report prepared in 2017 by the US-based Global Burden of Disease Project and Health Effects Institute. Nearly all (86%) of the most extreme concentrations (above 75 µg/m³) were recorded in China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
 
The same year, exposure to PM2.5 was the fifth-highest risk factor for death, responsible for 4.2 million deaths from heart disease and stroke, lung cancer, chronic lung disease and respiratory infections, according to data from the Global Burden of Disease project.
 
More than 50% of these deaths occurred in China and India, and India is now close to China in terms of deaths attributable to PM2.5. At 1.1 million, China recorded the most mortality attributable to PM2.5, as IndiaSpend reported on July 29, 2017.
 

 
Despite evidence to the contrary, the Indian government has denied links between air pollution and premature deaths.
 
“There are no conclusive data available in the country to establish direct correlationship of death exclusively with air pollution,” the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change told the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, on February 6, 2017. “Air Pollution could be one of the triggering factors for respiratory associated ailments and diseases,” it said, enumerating among other factors people’s food habits, occupational habits, socio-economic status, medical history, immunity and heredity.
 
The scientists behind AQLI, however, believe there is new evidence that proves a direct link. “It is telling that the reductions in life expectancy are entirely due to cardiorespiratory causes of death as this strengthens the case that air pollution is the cause,” Greenstone told IndiaSpend, explaining the results of research his team undertook in parts of China that led them to build the index. “In contrast to most previous work, the study’s context (China) is particularly well suited for extrapolation to India because of the similarities in the countries’ pollution levels and economic conditions.”
 
Greenstone said there are “tremendous opportunities available” for India to reduce concentrations of PM2.5 and other pollutants, including market-based approaches to regulation such as cap-and-trade programmes that could “greatly reduce the costs of regulation to industry and, at the same time, reduce air pollution”.
 
India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency already runs one such market-based programme called Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) that enables businesses to trade energy efficiency certificates. Those that exceed their targeted energy savings sell certificates to those who fail to achieve their targets, as FactChecker reported on May 3, 2017.
 
(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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As of May 25, 2017, 13,523 villages have been electrified, but 100% household connectivity has been achieved in only 1,089 villages, according to data in the power ministry’s Grameen Vidyutikaran (GARV) dashboard.
 
Besides, 25% (45 million) of rural households across the country still have no electricity. In Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, fewer than 50% of rural households have electricity, three years after the BJP was sworn in at the Centre having promised “electricity for all”.
 
Among the 43.5 million below-poverty-line households identified to be provided with free electricity connections under the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, 23.5 million (59%) have been covered, and many geographically remote locations have been connected with off-grid sources of power. However, this kind of basic energy access does not provide larger benefits to recipients, and is not a substitute for grid connections, studies show.
 
As the BJP government completes three years in office this week, IndiaSpend is analysing five of its key electoral promises–on employment, Swachh Bharat, roads, access to electricity and terrorism. In the fourth part of the series today, we look at how the government has performed on providing access to electricity.
 
Households remain without power
 
A village is considered electrified if electricity is provided in public places such as schools, panchayat offices, health centres, dispensaries and community centres, and at least 10% of households, according to the criteria used by the power ministry since October 1997. So, a village can be considered electrified if 90% of its households do not have electricity.

Source: Central Electricity Authority
Note: Data up to March 2017. Hover for details on number of inhabited/uninhabited villages in the state.
 
As such, household-level data is a better metric to assess citizens’ access to electricity. At the household level, several states such as Bihar, Jharkhand, Nagaland and Uttar Pradesh report less than 50% of their rural households have electricity supply, data from the ministry of power show.
 
As of May 16, 2017, while 73% of the 18,452 villages identified for electrification had power, as we said, only 8% of these villages had all their households electrified, according to data published by the ministry of power.
 
“Two challenges to electrifying households are: One, many poor households cannot afford to pay the upfront cost of connection, which ranges from Rs 2,000-3,000 depending on the state,” Abhishek Jain, senior programme lead at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a not-for-profit research institution based in New Delhi, told IndiaSpend. “And second, even if they get connections, the supply is far from reliable; so there is no incentive for rural households above the poverty line to connect to the grid.” This is because families below poverty line get free connections.
 
This suggests that the challenge of 100% electrification can only be overcome through concerted improvements at various levels–not the least in the income levels of rural households and in the reliability of power supply.
 

Source: Ministry of Power
 
“100% village electrification by May 2018”
 
In 2014, when the BJP came to power, India had the world’s largest energy access deficit in terms of electricity–270 million people, accounting for just under a third of the world’s deficit, according to the World Bank’s 2017 State of Electricity Access report.
 
“Certain segments of India have been historically disadvantaged. Due to a lopsided development approach and skewed allocation of resources, they continue to lag behind the rest of the country in socioeconomic indicators,” the BJP had said in its manifesto for the 2014 general election, promising to ensure equitable growth and development by “Ensuring a basic level of Infrastructure to all – Home, Electricity, Water, Toilets and Access”.
 
The previous Congress-led government, under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY, a rural electrification scheme), had connected 108,280 villages to the grid between 2005-06 and 2013-14. From 2014 to 2017, under the BJP’s rural electrification drive, 14,528 villages have been electrified. On average, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government electrified 12,030 villages per year, while the BJP government has electrified 4,842–less than half the UPA’s average.
 
In the BJP’s third year, 2016-17, 6,015 villages were electrified, five times more than in 2013-14, according to this May 19, 2017, press release by the ministry of power, but fewer than the villages electrified the year before in 2015-16.
 
Celebrating the achievement, power minister Piyush Goyal tweeted: “In the past three years rural electrification has witnessed an unprecedented change, and it is our aim to provide everyone with 24×7 power.”
 
 
Source: Rural Electrification Corporation Ltd data; Power Ministry press release.
 

Source: Ministry of Power
 
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, North-eastern states lagging
 
Of the 4,492 villages that remained to be electrified at the end of March 2017, 2,268 were scheduled for grid connection, 2,196 for off-grid electrification because of geographical barriers, and 28 for electrification by state governments, according to data from the Central Electricity Authority.
 

Source: Ministry of Power
 
Most off-grid village projects are concentrated in states such as Arunachal Pradesh (958), Assam (357), Jharkhand (356) and Chhattisgarh (306).
 
Studies have shown that decentralised solutions that provide consumers with basic energy access do not provide larger socio-economic benefits, and are not a substitute for grid-connected electricity, as IndiaSpend reported on May 18, 2017.
 
Once provided off-grid power and marked as “electrified”, a village provides lesser of an incentive to the government to provide grid connectivity, further dimming the prospects of villages that already count among the least developed in the country.
 
As part of the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, the BJP’s rural electrification scheme, the government had also proposed to provide free electricity connections to over 43.5 million rural households below the poverty line (BPL, with the poverty line set at Rs 816 per capita per month for rural areas).
 
As of April 2017, 25.68 million BPL households (58.9%) were provided free electricity connections, according to this report by the power ministry. Between 2005, when the RGGVY was launched, and March 2013, a total of 20.5 million BPL households were provided free electricity connections.
 
However, the connection these households get is often unreliable, and the two free-of-cost LED bulbs they are entitled to are often siphoned off to the black market by unscrupulous sub-contractors, IndiaSpend found during travels in villages of eastern UP.  
 
As per the Modi government’s promise, all of India’s villages could be electrified by May 2018. However, it remains to be seen how many households will actually have access to reliable electricity supply. Despite villages having an electricity connection, true energy access remains low in many states, marked by poor quality, reliability and duration of supply, as IndiaSpend reported in October 2015.
 
(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)
 
This is the fourth of a five-part series tracking the status of the BJP government’s promises three years after it was sworn in. You can read the first part here, the second part here and the third part here.

Courtesy: India Spend
 
 

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A view of the Margao wholesale fish market. With notebandi, distress sales, market closures and anchoring of fishing fleets have been reported from West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.

Kundaikar, 50, brings her day’s supply of fish back home to her village, Chimbel, to sell. Kundaikar, who studied up to class 10, has no bank account and a phone without an Internet connection. She is the only earner in her family of three, which includes her ageing mother and unemployed son.

 

Gangu Kundaikar, a small fish seller from Chimbel in North Goa, has been hit hard by notebandi. Her sales have halved since the ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, and she is barely making enough to keep her family of three fed.
 
Kundaikar bought fish worth Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 every day and kept the unsold catch in her refrigerator–her only asset. She worked through most of the day and barely made enough to keep her family fed.
 
That was before midnight on November 8, 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped 86% of India’s bank notes, by value. Since then, Kundaikar has struggled to balance her family’s budget: Demand for fish has fallen and sales have dropped by 30%. “We are poor, hard-working people,” she told IndiaSpend. “Because of this move by the government, it has become hard for us.”  
 
After China, India is the world’s second-largest producer of fish, but it is a perishable commodity, and less than 19% of fishing centres nationwide have infrastructure that allows fish to be processed or stored: Less than 23% of fishing villages have Internet access, and the fishing economy depends on cash. Profit margins vary according to the species sold, varying from 3.5% (medium-priced fish) to about 10% (high-priced fish) to 20% (low-priced fish), according to this 2012 research paper.
 
So merchant charges by banks–of 2-2.5% (on credit cards), 0.75-1% (on debit cards)–and even the 1% fee charged by Paytm, a digital wallet, is largely unaffordable, even if fishing villages had good Internet access, which they do usually do not.
 

Source: Marine Fisheries Census 2010
 
With notebandi–as the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes is colloquially called–stories like Kundaikar’s have become common in fishing communities nationwide. Distress sales, market closures and anchoring of fishing fleets have been reported from West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala. A particular hammer blow appears to have been dealt by the new Rs 2,000 note because there is no change to return.

The crisis of 14.5 million Indians–more than the population of Greece or Portugal–dependent on fishing has crippled an industry that generates almost 1.1% to India’s gross domestic product (GDP). A quarter of these people work along 8,118 km of India’s coastline and 10 million along 197,024 km of inland waterways.
 
Most of these 14.5 million are part of India’s informal sector, unorganised workers, who constitute 82% of India’s 500-million-strong workforce–more than the combined populations of the USA, Germany and South Africa–and generate half of national GDP. Their world, as we found, changed almost overnight.
 
Ground reality: Over 50% loss in business, anger at government
 
Of the 20 fish sellers that IndiaSpend surveyed at a government-run market in Margao, south Goa, more than 80% reported buying less fish from wholesalers because demand was low, while 75% reported income-losses of half or more over the past month.
 
Our survey also showed that 30% of women did not have a bank account and that 55% did not use phones. Of the ones that did, only 33% had internet on their phone, which they did not use for banking.
 

Source: IndiaSpend survey
 
Small-scale fish retailers earn between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000 every day, IndiaSpend found. If they were to use Paytm for transactions, they would be paying 1% charge to withdraw their money, which is Rs 30-40. For a daily profit of Rs 350-400, they said, this is unaffordable.
 

Source: IndiaSpend survey
 
The table above makes it clear that cashless transactions are not an immediate option, so the losses will continue. In any case, most have no Internet on their phone and hardly use their bank accounts, said Shashikala Govekar, president of the Fish Vendors Association at the Mapusa market.
 

Shashikala Govekar, president of the Fish Vendors Association in Mapusa, Goa has no Internet on her phone, and has not used her ATM card despite having one. “Most of us are illiterate. How will we use swipe machines,” she responded to the government’s cashless urgings.
 
We found a cascading effect of such losses. Before November 8, 2016, fish sellers got Rs 280 to Rs 300 per kg of mackerel (bangda), which is now down by about 35% to Rs 180 to Rs 200 per kg, according to members of the All Goa Wholesale Fish Market Association. The Margao Wholesale market is the only wholesale market in Goa, where catch from the neighbouring states of Maharashtra and Karnataka is also sold. Vehicles carrying fish from outside the state have fallen by a third.
 
Unless frozen, fresh fish must be thrown away, if not sold within two days: 67% of fish consumed in India is fresh; no more than 23% is processed (dried, frozen or canned).
 
Neither fish markets nor landing centres (harbours where fishermen land their craft) have cold storages. Post-harvest fishing losses due to lack of infrastructure (for landing and berthing vessels) and domestic marketing are estimated to be as high as 20%, according to this 2011 report of the erstwhile Planning Commission. These losses are exacerbated by the current market slump.
 
By 2012, less than 19% of India’s fishing centres (256 of 1,376) were “developed”, which meant they had adequate landing and berthing infrastructure, and fish preservation & storage infrastructure. There are onshore facilities for a third or less of India’s marine fishing vehicles, said the report. With a large part of the industry informal and beyond the government’s purview, fisher folk are devising extra-legal ways to survive #notebandi.
 
The case of the Rs 500 note: Still legal tender at fish stalls
 
By 11 am on a sunny day in Siolim, North Goa, half of Deepali Govekar’s sales were in Rs 500 notes, which are, of course, outlawed.
 
Govekar runs Dilip Sea Food, a makeshift stall supported by wood and crates, that she rents for Rs 80 per day. Govekar sold jumbo prawns, squid, red snapper, and Indian salmon (rawas) to James D’Souza, who buys fish here every day for his restaurant in Mandrem, North Goa. “We are forced to give, and they are forced to take,” said D’Souza, referring to the seven Rs 500 old notes he had given Govekar. “We have to take, otherwise the fish will rot,” Govekar said. “I will give them to the tempo that brought the fish as payment, and he can use it for diesel at the petrol pump.”
 
This circulation of notes from customers to retailers to wholesalers to transporters/trawlers was underway until December 2, 2016–the last day that petrol pumps were accepting old notes.
 
Small-time fish sellers who had bank accounts were accepting Rs 500 notes even after December 2, 2016, and were depositing them because no one outside the fish market was accepting them. But if they refused these notes, they lost out on customers and were left with rotten fish the next day, because they had no change for the new Rs 2,000 note.
 
All but one of the 20 retailers we surveyed at the Margao market said they did not have change for customers, and this was why they were accepting Rs 500 notes, as of December 7, 2016.
 

A view of the South Goa Planning and Development Authority fish market at Margao. Of the 20 fish sellers that IndiaSpend surveyed at the market, more than 80% reported buying less fish from wholesalers because demand was low, while 75% reported income-losses of half or more over the past month.
 
“Why did the government not introduce the new Rs. 500 note first?” asked a Margao fish seller who requested anonymity. “This difference between the Rs 100 and the Rs 2,000 note is too large. Our business is suffering terribly.”
 
Can Goa really go cashless? Even the Chief Minister does not think so
 
On November 25, 2016, 16 days after the demonetisation announcement, the Indian Express reported Defence Minister and erstwhile Goa Chief Minister (CM) Manohar Parrikar saying that Goa would become India’s first cashless state by December 30, 2016.  
 
“Goans are using cards (ATM/credit) in a big way,” Parrikar was quoted as saying at a public meeting near Panjim. “Goa will soon be the first state with cashless society fulfilling a dream of the Prime Minister.”
 
On December 7, 2016, after his party and the opposition reflected the resentment across Goa, CM Laxmikant Parsekar said that there would be no deadline for Goa to go cashless. “There cannot be a deadline to go cashless,” said Parsekar. “I have always said that it is not cashless, but could be less cash to start with. Goa can do it.”
 
A major reason that India is unprepared for a cashless economy is a lack of connectivity. At least 73% of Indians (912 million people) do not have access to the internet, IndiaSpend reported on December 3, 2016.  
 
Within 3,237 marine fishing villages in nine of India’s coastal states, 91% villages had mobile phone coverage, but barely 23% had access to the Internet.
 

Source: Marine Fisheries Census 2010
 
Fishing is predominantly a cash-based economy. Diesel used for trawlers and transport, renting of stall space at markets, labour and buying ice and payment for fish (whether by retailers or customers) is done by cash or credit.
 
Ashok Lamane, who sells fish to several restaurants near Morjim, said the credit component of his transactions increased manifold since November 8, 2016. “I am owed at least Rs 180,000 by the restaurants and, in turn, I owe money to the trawler owners,” he said.
 
Similarly, at the Margao wholesale market, the use of credit is rising. “Earlier, too, the market worked on credit–around 50% of all transactions–but now, this has increased to 80%,” said Sridhar Pujari, a wholesaler. “And while earlier, the payments would come in two to three days, now it is taking people eight to 10 days to return the cash.” Pujari pays for fish stock by cheque, but said it is “impossible” for the business to go cashless.
 

Rajashree Sawant travels 45 minutes by bus every day to sell fish at a Goan municipal market. She is there from 10 am to 7 pm. Her sales have fallen from Rs 1,000 a day to Rs 200 after notebandi. “Modi said ‘Garibi Hatao, Garibi hatao, (eradicate poverty)’, and now he is the one pushing us into poverty with this move,” she said.
 
One reason is the nature of the business itself. Since fish does not last long, retailers buy on credit and then repay wholesalers after they have sold their stock. Another reason is that daily wage labourers, such as fish-cleaners, ice-carriers and crate-carriers, don’t have bank accounts and want to be paid daily in cash.
 
Back in Mapusa, Shashikala Govekar–she has no Internet on her phone, and has not used her ATM card despite having one–offered her response to Modi’s cashless urgings.
 
“Seventy percent of people dealing with fish, whether wholesale or retail, are illiterate,” she said. “We don’t even know how to use smart phones, how will we operate swipe machines? We make a profit maybe once in four days and have 12 other kinds of trouble without having to add these machines to the list. Besides, the wholesale markets run from 3 am to 6 am, and it is dark. While handling fish, how will we swipe and sell?”
 
For our continuing coverage of #notebandi see Currency Chaos.
 
(Patil is an analyst with IndiaSpend. Video produced in partnership with Video Volunteers, a global initiative that empowers disadvantaged communities with story and data-gathering skills, and trains them to use video as a tool to mobilise for change.)

Courtesy: India Spend
 

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