In recent years, there’s been a great amount of discussion, both in academia and in the popular media, around the pollution epidemic in Indian cities. A recently released WHO report stated that 19 of the top 20 polluted cities in the world are in India. However, it should be noted that the data was collected in 2016 and doesn’t exactly reflect current reality.

Nevertheless, ambient (outdoor) pollution in India continues unabated. The air quality in the the national capital, Delhi, routinely breaches not only WHO’s standards but also the CPCB’s (Central Pollution Control Board) which are less stringent. The tier 2 industrial cities like Kanpur, Farukkabad fare worse.

The socio-economic consequences of polluted air are pretty self-explanatory. Premature deaths caused due to medical complications, over-burdening of public healthcare facilities, reduced productivity among workers etc.

However, I would like to argue that this is inevitable. Not to say that, people dying due to pollution is a necessary sacrifice that we need to make. But historical evidence seems to say exactly this.

When Beijing hosted Olympics in 2008, there was widespread apprehension in Western media regarding its pollution levels. At that time and for a few years later, Beijing held the unenviable distinction of being the most polluted city. India in 2016/17 has nearly the same per capita GDP as China in late 2000s.

Japan, when it was rapidly industrialising in the 1960s and 1970s, suffered from Water and Industrial pollution, rather than air pollution (it’s not a resource-rich country) and new diseases like Minamata and Itai-Itai were prevalent.

Also, everyone is aware about the gruesome details of London’s notorious air quality during the Industrial Revolution. The pollution was an indicator about everything about Capitalism.

You might complain that I am cheery-picking my arguments and perhaps accuse me of selection bias. But that’s not the case. Every country that industrialises fast has to make difficult trade-offs in its pursuit of development.

Now another counter-argument is that, pollution disproportionately affects the poor more. A UN report beautifully wrote, the costs of polluting the planet and destroying ecosystems are nearly always socialised while the profits are mostly privatised. Thus, the small affluent minority benefits without suffering the costs of development while the reverse is the case for a majority of the population.

However, in the medium-to-long run, studies have shown that, as the per capita GDP levels rise, pollution is brought under control, masses climb out of poverty and lead heathy lives.

India is no exception to this. In fact, it would have been a miracle if it did not face the current pollution crisis. Also, being a subtropical country exaggerates the problem. Most of the Indian cities mentioned in the WHO report are located in North India, far away from conditioning effect of the seas.

The government seems to have taken note of this and a series of measures are in various stages of implementation. But of course, no one can deny that there is always room to improve. And constructive criticism would help us solve the problem with less effort rather than hurling wild accusations.

A gentle reminder to the bureaucrats in India from Lewis Carroll (Alice in Woderland), ‘My dear, here we must run as fast as we can just to stay in place. But if you wish to go anywhere, you must run twice as fast as that.’