Environmental, educational and administrative gridlock threaten India’s future

INDIA’S INFRASTRUCTURE is creaking, its health-care system even more so. Poverty and inequality remain omnipresent, and now the economy is struggling. Narendra Modi’s to-do list is long. But there are three issues that, if dealt with, could bring about big improvements. The environment is one. Twelve of the world’s 15 most polluted cities are in India (see chart), and the country ranks 120th of 122 on the global index of water quality. A second is education. As more people move to cities for the first time, it is crucial that they are trained to find jobs in India’s 21st-century economy. A third issue is administration. With its basic structures unchanged since the British Raj, India’s government is undermanned, unevenly deployed and badly equipped to cope.

Take the environment first. A visitor from the past would scarcely recognise the plains of Punjab and Haryana in northern India. Vast irrigation works, mechanised farming and hybrid seeds have greened the horizons, turning once-hungry India into a big exporter of grain. But now a visitor may not even be able to see the plains. Every year farmers setting fire to rice stubble create a dense seasonal smog. This mixes with diesel exhaust, smoke from coal-fired power stations and other noxious gases to form a toxic cocktail engulfing the whole north Indian plain from Lahore in Pakistan to Dhaka in Bangladesh, where some 800m people live. The bad air may cause as many as 1.2m premature deaths a year, and shave four years off the average lifespan.