India needs imagination beyond USA or China

Big City in China

India wants development. What is development in our imagination, especially the elite? This is the development model they have taken away from USA, Singapore and now the big cities of China. This is the Gurgaon model of development— big buildings, cars and malls. Some of the more ‘sophisticated’ elites will talk about the Scandinavian model — Equality, a working welfare state, peace, good health and clean environment.

However, the development of these countries comes at an unsustainable environmental cost — yes, even Scandinavia. Each person in the world cannot achieve that quality of life with the same development model without destroying the planet. In fact, it is a Sisyphean task — we will keep pushing the industrial model while climate change will push us back.

India is caught in a bind — it faces the challenge of achieving well-being for millions. Yet, the model of carbon intensive industrial growth is not an option for 1.3 billion people. India is the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change and we are rapidly running out of water. Even the government ministry report says that we are going to have more rains, droughts, and frequent severe cyclones.

Any vision for India’s development cannot exceed ecological limits. We need resources to improve social indicators toward certain thresholds, but without exceeding ecological limits. This is represented by the ‘doughnut’ — the Green Zone shows a safe and just space for humanity.

All the countries that we typically think of as ‘developed’ are unsustainable.

The question that arises is — is there any country in the Green Zone? This is where Hickel’s paper is eye-opening. I recommend reading it in full. He shows that:

The countries that seem to have the most balance between the social aspirations and planetary limits are not your usual suspects of USA, China, Scandinavia. They are in fact - Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Moldova and Tunisia.

Costa Rica

I was surprised and I will admit, I am not 100% sure about being able to place some of these countries on the map. Nobody talks about Sri Lanka or Costa Rica as a role model. So I dug into some data on per capita CO2 emissions, per capita GDP and Social score (comprising of Nutrition, Sanitation, Income, access to Energy and Education).

References and notes at the end

This is striking.

1. Sri Lanka is a superstar. It has twice India’s per capita GDP, a great score on social indicators and almost 50% less carbon footprint.
2. China has a similar level of per capita GDP as Sri Lanka but a lower social score and more than 6 times its carbon emissions.
3. Costa Rica has the same carbon emissions as India but has achieved all its social indicators and more than double India’s per capita GDP.
4. Moldova with a similar level of per capita GDP has achieved much better life for its people while keeping its carbon emissions lower than India.

What does this mean for India? I don’t want to compare small countries like Costa Rica, Moldova and Sri Lanka to India. But there is no reason for us to not look at their models more carefully and learn from them instead of dismissing them outright.

It also shows that a per capita GDP of $10–15K can provide a minimum good life for all without destroying the planet. It seems possible for India to achieve more GDP and better social indicators without increasing its carbon emissions. The future of 1.3 billion Indians and the world might just depend on it.

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1. My previous post on the onion dome shape of India’s income distribution.
2. Instead of India as a whole, a state-wise analysis is begging to be done. If anyone can point me to the data, I would be grateful.
3. The data for CO2 emissions and per capita GDP from Our World in Data. All data is from year 2016.
4. The data and indicators to calculate the Social Score are taken from Leeds University, “A Good life for All.” The social indicators chosen are based on Hickel’s approach — “‘the social indicators most tightly coupled to resource use are secondary education, sanitation, access to energy, income and nutrition’, as these are related to physical needs and all clearly require resource inputs.”
5. “The scores ignore values that exceed threshold levels, so that no value exceeds 1. For example, the UK’s life satisfaction score of 1.1 is rendered as 1. The scores are then simply averaged.”