Health Initiatives Across Asia
Narendra Modi is considered a “savior” to some when it comes to the development and advancements India has been seeing ever since his inauguration in 2014. He has taken note of all the inefficiencies India has identified and set aside many different plans to mitigate those negative effects. Indian news outlet “The Times of India”, makes sure to cover every good effect he has had in this country. But, to truly measure the effectiveness of Modi’s initiatives, let’s compare a very bold initiative he claimed, Toilets before Temples, which prioritized the building of toilets and sanitation services in multiple locations across India.
To measure this initiative, I will look at the data presented by SocialStory, a news outlet that has covered a plethora of Modi’s valiant efforts, and will pin it head to head with data retrieved from the World Bank. This data consists of many different measurements spanning from 2014 to 2020, such as the percentage of the population that has access to basic sanitation stations, and the percentage of the population who have access to hand washing facilities. Modi has always had to act but by double-checking his effectiveness in his initiative, we can provide a call to action and give insights on how to fully optimize the well-being of the many residents of India.
An article from SocialStory that was written by Tenzin Norzom displays Modi’s efforts during his time as Prime Minister. One of the efforts mentioned in this article had the tagline “Toilets before temples”. Modi simply put that he wanted to build accessible toilets before he would build more temples. He would implement this task in a larger mission called the Swachh Bharat Mission, which was a campaign launched by the Prime minister to place importance on achieving universal sanitation coverage and to put the focus on the cleanliness of the people and environment. This initiative cost over nine crores equivalent to about 1.1 million USD.
To measure the efficacy of this initiative, let’s first look at a bar chart showing the % of the population using the least basic sanitation services provided by the World Bank that measures World Development Indicators.
We can see there is a steady increase of about 3% each year but nothing extraordinary. There is something worth mentioning in the SocialStory article, that this initiative resulted in over 32 states or Union Territories being open defecation-free since 2014. There has to be a slight disconnect between that statement and the data because only 53% of the population of India had access to basic sanitation stations like toilets. But this can boil down to the interpretation of this World Bank data, namely, an increase in basic sanitation could not necessarily mean a decrease in open defecation rates. We see steady growth, but to make a bold claim like that we would need to see larger percentage growths yearly.
To dive deeper, there is data that shows the percentage of the population that has “safely” managed sanitation services. For example, having janitorial services provided to these sanitation facilities.
In this chart, we see a smaller percentage of the population that has access to this “upgraded” amenity compared to the basic sanitation service, and we see a smaller growth rate per year at around 2% between the years 2014–2020. This tells me that Modi is making an effort to build more toilets/sanitation facilities but did the bare minimum and went the easy, convenient route.
Looking at the bigger picture of his mission of having an emphasis on cleanliness, The World Bank provided another metric of the percentage of people with basic handwashing facilities that include soap and water.
One would think that this metric would see large increases, but we see that there has been a .5% growth in 6 years…
This is quite disappointing and at the end of the day, we need to prioritize the people of India and ensure their safety. A recommendation would be implementing an initiative to have more hand-washing facilities in common places to increase the percentage growth in the population that has access to these kinds of facilities. There also needs to be some sort of education regarding sanitation and also incentives that can drive growth in accessibility. It truly comes down to the individual and there cannot be any shortcuts taken.
Although, there is one final recommendation, to see what other countries are doing and potentially have India follow in their footsteps. India and Modi could truly benefit from learning about what other countries are doing regarding strengthening their community through the development of sanitation and necessities. China and India are closely related in terms of numbers like population and also have similar cultural bindings. To prescribe India to follow in the footsteps of China, we must first ask ourselves this question. Is China better than India in terms of basic needs for their people during the same time frame as Modi’s supervision in India?
Let’s answer this question by taking a closer look at China’s efforts in terms of increasing the percentage of people that have access to safely managed sanitation, and also taking a look into a new feature in this analysis, the access to drinking water services. This new element in our analysis was provided by the World Bank.
According to the news outlet CGTN, China’s Toilet Revolution was a campaign imposed by the government that was focused on making sanitary conditions better in China. “In 2019, China invested seven billion yuan (one billion U.S. dollars) in the rural Toilet Revolution, aiming for 85 percent of rural households to have access to sanitary toilets by 2020. This sum is on top of the 8.27 billion yuan spent by the government between 2004 and 2013 to tackle the issue.” It’s key to remember that Modi’s “Toilets before temples” initiative only received around 1.1 million USD in funding, a small fraction of what this revolution received.
Let’s see if this Toilet Revolution truly had an impact on the growth of safely managed sanitation centers:
As we can see in this time series bar chart, it is quite evident that this revolution paid off quite significantly in comparison to India’s “Toilets before Temples” initiative. India had around a 26.75% increase from 2014 to 2020 in this same initiative, while China had around a 30% increase. We should also take note that China in 2014 already started better than India’s 2020 value and still saw that significant percent increase.
China seems to be on a positive trend with safely managed sanitation services due to them spending an adequate amount of resources. This should show India that they need to spend significantly more on revamping its current initiatives or rather create a new initiative that aims to bring more public restrooms/ sanitation services. This can provide a lot more job opportunities as well as a healthier population because various studies have shown that a lack of hygiene makes a person more susceptible to infections and illnesses.
Now let’s look at a new feature between the two countries that should be taken into consideration. The percentage of the population that is using the least basic drinking water services.
According to the China CDC Weekly news outlet, “The Chinese Government issued the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Water Pollution (the State Council, 2015) to strengthen the prevention and control of water pollution and ensure drinking water safety.” This call to action was a part of a bigger initiative that aimed to enhance overall health in China by 2030.
Taking a closer look at India, Modi also revamped a current structure according to UNICEF, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation had synergized with the new creation of the Ministry of Jal Shakti which would have a key emphasis on drinking water and sanitation. It seems like Modi has put a great amount of effort into revitalizing this effort due to the poor conditions in the past.
To truly pin the two countries side by side, let’s look at and see the linear trend in these drinking water initiatives:
As we can see, China has a slight edge in sheer population inclusion in this time trend. But, it also looks like India has kept its promise in the delivery of drinking water for all. China saw around a 3% increase from 2014 to 2020 which is good to see because China already had 90% of the population having access to clean drinking water.
Now, looking at India, we see a similar 3% change between 2014 to 2020 which is quite interesting to see. Ideally, we want India and China to match every initiative and feature like they are in their drinking water initiatives. India should look to China in their other efforts like sanitation as a bare minimum.
Both countries have a long way to go but I think China takes the edge in all of the features we’ve looked at. They’ve spent more money on each initiative than India and it has paid off tremendously. India needs to reconfigure their efforts in sanitation and spend more money for its population to grow healthy.
Since China and India still need a bit of growth, some more than others, who do they look to? They should look to Korea:
As you can see, all of the features spoken in this analysis are nearly maxed out by Korea. Meaning that on average, 99% of the Korean population has access to all three of these amenities. China and India should have aspirations to achieve this type of number. Korea does have an advantage because its population is significantly less than what China and India have. But that shouldn’t be a factor as to why they are so good at caring for their people. India should meet the benchmark set by China in terms of proper sanitation for their people but should have aspirations to be like Korea and truly exceed the limit and provide for all. Some recommendations like I mentioned before, would be to increase the cost that is being paid in these initiatives, increase education around these topics in classrooms, and have stricter regulations that help people abide by these initiatives.
