tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29699417673541920332024-02-20T11:36:12.329+05:30In Pursuit Of TruthThe Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-18667094413746608862016-11-13T18:20:00.003+05:302016-11-14T09:57:26.997+05:30Did the Currency Ban leak lead to spike in Bank Deposits?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The recent currency ban by the Govt has attracted feedback both positive and negative. As expected, the opposition largely slammed the move either from the very beginning (Mamta Banerjee tweeted all in caps, terming this a draconian move) or after waiting for a couple of days (Congress lent cautious support in the beginning, and then changed tone looking to capitalise on inconvenience being faced by common citizens)</div>
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These don't matter. Traditional parties (including BJP) oppose almost every Govt decision while in opposition, even if they take similar decision when in power (Eg. GST)</div>
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However, when AAP alleges a huge scam, I generally dig deeper since they have occasionally brought out genuine issues based on good data analysis. Kejriwal, in a recent press conference, cited a supposedly huge spike in deposits prior to the Currency-ban announcement by the Govt, and accused Govt of leaking the news to its "friends", who then deposited their black cash stash before the ban (causing the spike), and hence somehow converted their back to white. On social media, a graph (reproduced below) was also shared by a user quantifying this allegation, showing spike in Sep-16 deposits compared to Aug-16, whereas no such spike was seen in 2015. Slam dunk case for the assertion on deposit spike, it would seem. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh86KbjdympN8Nc2JZtAS6lOmAYpgt6RwAzxg9F8DkShlOuQIDhJaLzRwwZLD5yw7qGe_tO57cW4V4XU_6tw-jdZ3pMy3VO-AwtQogA04ThrixAoXlWQUnkNx-XZ2a_BVpCPlt0Z9NHV6Ct/s1600/14993401_505145125172_4387526777554996775_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh86KbjdympN8Nc2JZtAS6lOmAYpgt6RwAzxg9F8DkShlOuQIDhJaLzRwwZLD5yw7qGe_tO57cW4V4XU_6tw-jdZ3pMy3VO-AwtQogA04ThrixAoXlWQUnkNx-XZ2a_BVpCPlt0Z9NHV6Ct/s1600/14993401_505145125172_4387526777554996775_n.jpg" /></a></div>
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Source: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/gauravshukla85" target="_blank">Gaurav Shukla</a><br />
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This post is to discredit this assertion.</div>
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But let me first let me dispute the inference that such Deposit spike (assuming the assertion is correct) prior to the PM announcement has helped the deposit-holder launder the money. Incorrect. If someone deposits money in the bank, it has to be white, irrespective whether it was deposited before or after the announcement. If black money is deposited in the bank, again irrespective of whether the deposit was done before or after the announcement, IT department can easily come after you. All deposits >50k are tagged by Pan Card, and in any case almost all banking accounts are KYC-compliant. And even if someone laundered black money before the announcement by aggregating multiple individuals (thereby each single deposit will be of small value which IT dept shall evade), he can do that even now, there is a 50 day time window to deposit old notes through the time-tested money-laundering techniques.</div>
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So even if "Friends of BJP" were warned beforehand, and they deposited their black cash stash in the banks before PM announcement on Currency Ban, they would be caught. And if it is white money cash that was deposited, it could very easily be deposited after the announcement. And if it is black money deposited by aggregating thousands of individuals, even that is possible after the announcement given the 50-day time window. </div>
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So now let me come back to data on Deposits showing a spike before the PM announcement. Whoever made this graph consciously or unconsciously left out October data - RBI publishes data in multiple places and not everything is synced. Below table presents the same. I have also shown Demand Deposits separately, because that is what I believe leads to the overall spike (as per hypothesis I shall pose later)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9IhRG8BTY_VwA-DdljbHNC7CLPoeGlgbzD47t8GpvW5KbM35gVMm1kdSWaA_epIFDKvmjX9_J7WSC5cg2UuNMdFT8hzboGYPks6wn68TH_JAqJZttorBQlmFIJVA0gkXdoaTapDTSMQaA/s1600/dep+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9IhRG8BTY_VwA-DdljbHNC7CLPoeGlgbzD47t8GpvW5KbM35gVMm1kdSWaA_epIFDKvmjX9_J7WSC5cg2UuNMdFT8hzboGYPks6wn68TH_JAqJZttorBQlmFIJVA0gkXdoaTapDTSMQaA/s1600/dep+5.png" /></a></div>
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Note: My numbers are slightly different from the graph above. I have excluded inter-bank deposits which is the right way to look at the data. But the growth rates are similar</div>
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As evident from table above, there is a de-growth of 2.2% in deposits in Oct-16 compared to Sep-16. In fact, demand deposits de-grew by 11% in Oct-16! If indeed "Friends of BJP" were forewarned and they scrambled to deposit their black cash (which anyways wont have helped them escape IT dept as pointed out earlier), naturally deposits (and demand deposits) should have continued to increase in Oct-16 as well. So the assertion, when looking at complete data, doesn't stand true </div>
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But still, the spike seen in Sep-16 is interesting, and needs to be explained. For that, first one needs to understand the data construct. This data is sourced from RBI (you can source it yourself by following directions provided at the end of this post), and represents deposits as on the last working Friday of that month, which might or might not be the last working day of that month. So the numbers we see in the graph (as being widely circulated on SM and reproduced above) and the table above are not for month-end. Oct-16 means 28th Oct, Sep-16 means as of 30th Sep and Aug-16 means as of 26th Aug. This is important. Banks are commercial organisations and almost all of them are listed, and their employees have quarter-end targets as is the case for most other listed companies. In case of banks, deposit base "miraculously" increases significantly on the last working day wherein branch managers "request" their corporate / SME customers to deposit as much money as possible in the bank in their current account (and that is why I have included the demand deposits in my analysis above) on the last working day, just to be withdrawn the next working day. I have seen it happen first-hand in multiple banks where my professional experience has allowed me to have an inside peek. In most cases, these last-day deposits are nothing but money drawn from a working capital account that the corporate / sme customer has with the same/different bank, which also leads to a spike in bank credit (more on that later).</div>
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The Sep-16 data in the above table is as of 30th Sep 2016 (the last working Friday of that month), which also happens to be the <u>last working day of that quarter</u>. Hence, I am not surprised by the 5% spike from previous month (and 15% in Demand Deposits), the entire bank machinery works overtime to achieve the quarter-end targets. To validate this hypothesis, I looked at monthly deposits data for last ~8 years (Jan-09 onward) and calculated avg growth rate on a month-on-month basis (94 instances, pretty decent sample size). I found 8 such instances when the last working Friday also happened to be the last working day of that quarter, the below table shows monthly deposit growth rate (and demand deposit growth rate) for these 8 instances.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVNVc-bJfTzVnskw4U7GtYViDaeH3MY76E0qV8NwcXtF_rBAiaLHAWknP8JZjHYcbQFcOUE2qcqBH9fdEr9EbACbIgieQfskMxM217pEcmySSN4q6AZNMqH-ELX6rlRCdMOq5fX5BcSTbp/s1600/Dep+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVNVc-bJfTzVnskw4U7GtYViDaeH3MY76E0qV8NwcXtF_rBAiaLHAWknP8JZjHYcbQFcOUE2qcqBH9fdEr9EbACbIgieQfskMxM217pEcmySSN4q6AZNMqH-ELX6rlRCdMOq5fX5BcSTbp/s1600/Dep+2.png" /></a></div>
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So, the last time it happened, it was 29th march 2013 when the last working Friday was also the last working day of that quarter, and deposits spiked by 5.6% (demand deposits by 21.7%). On an average, deposits grew by 3.9% over these 8 instances (demand deposits by 15.2%), so a deposits growth of 4.9% (and demand deposits growth of 15.5%) for Sep-16 is nowhere out of the ordinary. To be fair, even Saturdays used to be working earlier but then it used to be a half-working day, and many corporate/sme customers from which these last minute deposits were sourced were also closed on Saturday, so it would be fair to assume that most of such deposit mobilisation was completed on Friday. I would have loved to have Saturday data here, but we don't have it. </div>
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To complete the analysis, the below table compares these 8 instances (last working friday = last working day) with 23 other quarter-end instances (last working friday <> last working day), as well the 63 remaining month-end instances which were not quarter-end in terms of the monthly deposit (and demand deposit) growth rates. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAINeIjchfJ4i6sf9beYxoeTK9IhPFpJMs9FPPkHL330L4gO_HMZPlOG_YpD8rGdYzvKcPd7N3n46wOjuciMDOeX2zDt-8BLqKmmY3d6k7mLYM96WdYWcxGYTEPJDDk7fCCur1mPSqCWr/s1600/Dep+3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAINeIjchfJ4i6sf9beYxoeTK9IhPFpJMs9FPPkHL330L4gO_HMZPlOG_YpD8rGdYzvKcPd7N3n46wOjuciMDOeX2zDt-8BLqKmmY3d6k7mLYM96WdYWcxGYTEPJDDk7fCCur1mPSqCWr/s1600/Dep+3.png" /></a></div>
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As the table above shows, for the 8 instances of quarter-end where last working Friday was also the last working day of that quarter, deposits grew by an average of 3.9% (demand deposits by 15.2%) as compared an average of 1.0% avg deposit growth rate (and 3.7% avg demand deposit growth rate) for the 23 other instances of quarter-end where last working Friday was not the last working day of that quarter.</div>
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Another way to validate this hypothesis is to also check the bank credit growth rate, which should also exhibit similarly different growth rates depending on whether the last working Friday is the last working day or not. Turns out, it does! See the table below (I have included the Deposits growth rate from previous table for comparison).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGyGH-U8Gs8HQu6pyhz2dpMyVOPKv7EH8qKQ7qHS00JOjxaRUFa-IBzbmZht6SWyo3rJGoa40v7v56YuEC0CwSOz43SCQMZoZKIHcODS-7vz_Mm3Ls8IiViv4sr6kS1qKHhK2UNH6Y7jq/s1600/dep+4.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGyGH-U8Gs8HQu6pyhz2dpMyVOPKv7EH8qKQ7qHS00JOjxaRUFa-IBzbmZht6SWyo3rJGoa40v7v56YuEC0CwSOz43SCQMZoZKIHcODS-7vz_Mm3Ls8IiViv4sr6kS1qKHhK2UNH6Y7jq/s1600/dep+4.png" /></a></div>
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Hence, for the 8 instances of quarter-end where last working Friday was also the last working day of that quarter, bank credit grew by an average of 4.4% as compared an average of 1.9% for the 23 other instances of quarter-end where last working Friday was not the last working day of that quarter. </div>
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I would have loved to compare only the working capital credit growth rate (and not the overall bank credit) with the demand deposit growth rate, since that it where the real spike happens. But we do not have that data.</div>
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Finally, I also need to state that bank deposits is not equal to currency in circulation, i.e. the increase in deposits does not mean fresh currency earlier residing as cash has been now deposited in the bank. Total currency in circulation in India is less than Rs 20 tn, whereas the deposits are well above Rs 100 tn. This similar to GDP multiplier effect, which people interested in macro-economics can research on their own. But very briefly (and crudely), if you deposit Rs 100 in the bank, the bank lends that to a business who uses it to generate output which, partially, gets converted to cash in the hands of the business as well as its employees, which in turn will again deposit the same in bank. So original Rs 100 deposit leads to a much larger deposit in the bank. So the Rs 5 tn increase in bank deposits in Sep-15 doesn't mean Rs 5 tn currency has been taken out of circulation and deposited in the banks. This is not exactly how it happens, but you get the gist. </div>
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Directions to source data used for above analysis: </div>
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1. Goto https://dbie.rbi.org.in/DBIE/dbie.rbi?site=home</div>
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2. Click on "Business of Scheduled Banks" on left side</div>
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3. Export data in excel by clicking on the relevant button at the top of the table</div>
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4. In the excel file downloaded, use "2.1) Aggregate deposits", "2.1.1) Demand deposits" and "7) Bank credit" for the three data series used in the above analysis. </div>
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"In God we trust, rest all must have data"<br />
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Edit: There seems to be an explanation for Sep-16 deposit spike that 7th Pay Commission arrears were released on 31st Aug which caused the spike. News search suggests that number to be Rs 346 bn, far less than the spike of ~Rs 5 tn, so that doesn't seem to explain this. Unless the number of Rs 346 bn is wrong. I still think the last working Friday being the last working day of that quarter is the correct underlying reason. Further, added credit for the first graph.<br />
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-31773953506798651962014-04-17T14:26:00.003+05:302014-04-17T14:31:11.683+05:30India and Literacy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As we argued in the previous article: In a non-communist economic set-up we can't rely on averages to assess whether the wealth creation has flown through to the masses or has it been concentrated in the hands of a few. We would have to gauge the improvement in standard of living of the society as a whole by looking at several socio-economic metrics at a disaggregated level, and not as an average. </div>
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Education perhaps is the most important tool that an older generation can give to the younger generation. Education of course opens up many avenues of job opportunities, directly improving economic condition of an individual - that connection is of course too obvious and well known. However, it is not merely about the technical / quantitative / science knowledge - education also makes a person more aware; more aware in terms of evolution of the society he lives in, lessons mankind should have learnt from the past, as well as it moulds him as a person better fit in the civilized world of tomorrow. Schools do often impart some of the first lessons on morality and ethics as well, that education of course best starts at home. Folklore is rich with tales of college drop-outs making fortunes (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are oft-quoted examples), that shouldn't be used to trivialize basic school education. College comes much later, <i>ABCD pehle aata hai</i> (Alphabet comes first).</div>
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In our assessment of economic upliftment of the Indian masses over the last decade, as well as benchmarking various states with each other, we have looked at availability of basic essential commodities such as <b><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/04/water-water-everywhere-not-drop-to-drink.html" target="_blank">Water</a></b>, <b><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/the-most-power-full-states.html" target="_blank">Electricity</a></b> and <b><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/04/how-we-really-live.html" target="_blank">Cooking Fuel </a></b>at a household level in previous posts. We also looked at <b><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/04/how-we-really-live.html" target="_blank">availability of toilet and kitchen </a></b>facilities to the general Indian populace across states. There are several other metrics on which socio-economic improvement of society should be gauged at a disaggregated level as had been mentioned - literacy being a key indicator of those, and hence being picked up for this exercise. This article would look at literacy levels prevalent in India, and would attempt a benchmarking of various states with each other as well as with themselves over a timeline.</div>
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(We endeavour to base our analyses on reliable, 3rd party, public data as well as ensure completeness of the data. Devil lies in the detail, and we do not hesitate to get our hands dirty while digging in our pursuit for truth. We explain this in more detail <b><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/why-are-we-here.html" target="_blank">here</a></b>)</div>
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Census does a wonderful job of capturing data at an individual level. We like it since it doesn't rely on samples and hence is largely immune to data collection methodology issues. It is conducted once every decade, and hence provides very good data to compare the state of our country over every 10 years. We have used it for several past analyses, and would be using it for this piece as well. The graph below compares the literacy rates of India as well as top 12 states, both in 2001 and 2011. (We use top 12 states for ease and relevance, these states cover 83% of Indian population.)</div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u>Population Growth and Literacy rate (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOkfCNmVcZ-6SoDqgYB5lqd8ZCSHzA4Oc0d0AI-8HAA8SSjn2SO1LlnPtKTxCx91R1zrGyUP6Li36ENbt-wwcGiW4NCONFwhKURjBKhXZ1jyuYvzq4D2AgpVv-5DcdthkyJpx8hVLel5eC/s1600/literacy+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOkfCNmVcZ-6SoDqgYB5lqd8ZCSHzA4Oc0d0AI-8HAA8SSjn2SO1LlnPtKTxCx91R1zrGyUP6Li36ENbt-wwcGiW4NCONFwhKURjBKhXZ1jyuYvzq4D2AgpVv-5DcdthkyJpx8hVLel5eC/s1600/literacy+1.png" /></a></div>
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<i>Note: Pop Growth for population of 7 years and above, rationale explained below</i><br />
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<i>Source: Census 2001 and 2011</i></div>
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It would be pertinent to note the definition of literacy here.</div>
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"A person aged 7 years and above who can both read and write with understanding in any language has been taken as literate. ...All children of age 6 years or less, even if going to school and have picked up reading and writing, are treated as illiterate." Source: <a href="http://censusindia.gov.in/Metadata/Metada.htm" target="_blank">Census Website</a> (Please see point 9 and point 20). Hence, to calculate literacy rate, we have taken the number of literates as reported by Census, divided by total population after subtracting child population (age 0 - 6), also reported by Census. Based on this, India improved its literacy by 8.1% points (73.0% in 2011 vs. 64.8% in 2001). A few states in our inference have delivered better goods than the Indian average, which are highlighted in the table itself, and are discussed below:</div>
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<b>1. UP</b> & <b>Bihar</b>: These two states have delivered highest increase in literacy rates (11-15% points). Both these states start from a very inferior position in 2001 (56% and 47% respectively, compared to India average 65%). Hence, while the small base effect needs t be considered, it is hearty to see these states are trying to catch up now. Still, more needs to be done - their literacy rates in 2011 (62-68%) is still somewhat same as where India was 10 years back in 2001. More needs to be done.</div>
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<b>2. Gujarat, Odisha and Karnataka: </b>All these three states deliver 9-10% points improvement in literacy rates over 2001-11. Gujarat started off with the highest base in 2001 than Karnataka, and delivered similar improvement. Odisha starts off with a lower base and delivers slightly higher improvement.</div>
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<b>3. </b>A special mention to <b>Kerala, </b>which improved its very high literacy rate of 91% in 2001 to 94% in 2011, a commendable achievement. However, it needs to be noted that Kerala also didn't have to contend with a high population growth rate [~7% pop (7+years) growth during 2001-11 compared to 21% all-India avg] </div>
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The remaining states post either average or below-average performance. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh especially need to up their game.</div>
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We need to further check whether such literacy rate improvement is benefiting both the male and female section of the society. As a famous saying goes, "<u>You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation</u>."<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> </span></span>The table below splits the literacy rate and compares just that.<br />
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u>Literacy rate by sex (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvWdfe54PYWRCqyIkuWi-s8emrZ37si7_Rccb13byTBe8baIOVYopHLjYt54yEDABpfWlIWVvu8KryCyddJGA0UzYoNrJqyzqftbo53Snlg8PX6urACqygTrpwCnIwB47KXk9YqYTZ0q_/s1600/literacy+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvWdfe54PYWRCqyIkuWi-s8emrZ37si7_Rccb13byTBe8baIOVYopHLjYt54yEDABpfWlIWVvu8KryCyddJGA0UzYoNrJqyzqftbo53Snlg8PX6urACqygTrpwCnIwB47KXk9YqYTZ0q_/s1600/literacy+2.png" /></a><br />
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<i>Source: Census 2001 and Census 2011</i><br />
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Both UP and Bihar seem to be getting it right, with improvement on women literacy much more than men literacy improvement, which is required give the low levels of female literacy prevalent in our country, especially in these two states. Similarly, Gujarat, Odisha and Karanataka which were noted earlier to be delivering good performance overall are also improving more on female literacy. The effect is more pronounced in Odisha and Gujarat.<br />
<br />
Further, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra deserve a mention since despite high female literacy rates in 2001, these states still manage to post 9 - 11% points improvement. Kerala remains an example for all other states to follow, be it overall literacy or just the female literacy.<br />
<br />
<b><u>Overall conclusions</u>:</b></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<ol>
<li><b><b>Kerala </b><span style="font-weight: normal;">remains an outlier with 90%+ literacy rates and still improving! </span></b></li>
<li><b>UP and Bihar </b>seem to be catching up, having delivered double digit % points improvement over 2001-11, but there is still a long road ahead of both states and they still lag other states by 10-15 years.</li>
<li><b>Gujarat and Odisha </b>outperform, closely followed by <b>Karnataka. </b>These states delivered higher-than average improvement in literacy rates (9-10% points), across both the male and female population. However, differences in performance for these states versus other states isn't as stark as we have seen in benchmarking exercise done on other metrics</li>
<li><b>Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Maharashtra </b>post an average performance, though impress on female literacy rate improvement given the high base that these states had in 2001. </li>
<li><b>Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh </b>are clear under-performers, and remain at the bottom.</li>
</ol>
</div>
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As always, this analysis stops at 2011, there might be further improvements beyond 2011, hopefully significant. Mahatma Gandhi famously said: "<u>Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever</u><i>.</i>"<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-77480039060214293472014-04-13T18:39:00.001+05:302014-04-17T14:30:27.050+05:30How we "live"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As often argued by capitalists, economic improvement of a society requires a section of it to lead the quest; that section who can channel accumulated capital, has risk
appetite and / or possess requisite skills. Consequently, such section of
society garners a more-than-proportionate share of resultant wealth creation in a capitalist society. What
about the society at large...often asks the left. Indicators as avg GDP
growth etc. are usually thrown as a reply. However, t</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">here is always a genuine case to
be made that these metrics fail to explain if such wealth creation has been concentrated in only a small section of the society or has flown through to the
masses at large. Not to suggest that income distribution be exactly
equal (that would be the theoretical leftist argument, which in practice means no income improvement), rather that most
sections of society should benefit to a respectable extent, of which some would
be above average, others would be lower but not significantly and should score
a healthy improvement.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Long story short, we would have to gauge the improvement in standard of living for various states by looking at several metrics at a disaggregated level, and not as an average.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We chanced upon looking at a few astonishing numbers, which prompted us to write this article in the above context: numbers which struck us as unbelievably disappointing as well. Sample these: two-thirds of Indian population has no toilet within premises, and hence is forced to defecate in open fields every morning (privacy, hygiene anyone?). Every two out of five Indian households have no kitchen within premises - they cook in open in makeshift <i>chulhas</i>. Again, two-thirds of Indians use wood/cowdung/crop-residue for cooking (no LPG or kerosene), just imagine the levels of smoke to be endured. Astonishing, astonishing numbers. This, when it has been 65+ years of independence with stable governments for the most time, poverty-eradication being the battle-cry for every political party, and we Indians been fed stories of India Shining and Bharat Nirman first in 2004 and now in 2014. Begs the question, are we in Africa?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While economic prosperity takes many forms, safe, discreet and hygienic facilities as a toilet and a kitchen are perhaps two of the most basic needs, there is no denying that. It would be fair to hypothesise that any economic upliftment of poor should immediately reflect in terms of improvement in availability of such facilities. There are other measures of economic upliftment as well, sure - f</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">or example, we looked at access and availability of basic commodities such as </span><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/04/water-water-everywhere-not-drop-to-drink.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank"><b><span style="color: blue;">water </span></b></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">and </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/the-most-power-full-states.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">electricity</span></a><span style="color: cyan;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">previously on this blog</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">; we need to further look at cooking fuel to complete that piece. There would be literacy, healthcare, employment metrics to look at.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For now, we would be looking at the condition of the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">two</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">aforementioned basic facilities that should be available in every household: the Toilet and the Kitchen. Given a large part of our population has neither, we will try examining if the performance has been different across various Indian states relative to each other - having better access to a kitchen / toilet denotes social and economic upliftment of the marginalized lower-middle / poorer sections. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before we proceed, it would be
worthwhile to mention this: The attempt is to see how various states have improved
/ deteriorated over the last 10-15 years on these metrics, so as to <b>conduct a relative benchmarking of states </b>vis-a-vis each other, as well as with themselves over the timeline, and not to compare states as they stand today (UP,
Bihar etc would otherwise be always the last in general). We would also look
for </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/why-are-we-here.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">reliable 3<sup>rd</sup> party data sources</span></a> </span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">for any such research</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and hence this analysis would use Census data almost exclusively. Finally, we believe everyone has a bias which
colours his narrative and as such readers should be </span><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/we-are-human-beings-basket-of.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank"><b>aware of that of the author</b></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b> </b>and make their own inferences based on the analysis presented.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>So let’s first start looking at
the toilet facilities</u></b>, perhaps the most important household amenity since it doesn't just addresses convenience and privacy needs, but also has a large angle of hygiene to
it. No wonder prominent leaders from both UPA and NDA made the toilet-before-temple
remark, albeit to much public outrage </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">subsequently</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">. The chart below compares India and top 12 states by
type of toilet facilities used by their population, both in 2001 and 2011. (We
use top 12 states for ease and relevance, these states cover 83% of Indian population.)</span></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u>%Households by usage of toilet facilities (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-difJYd3mEbbM0m_GjKeUL-rvH_VaAOd0Qnuwtqb4RsjS6-sQFCQ8VAquqwSZjTy4aE1WUHQMWPgCiodpjbJ8AHS9xLIpu_MMCWIqybznN8SAOUf88GKfLBnGQks3XrLKx8QTJ1j9LKVc/s1600/toilet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-difJYd3mEbbM0m_GjKeUL-rvH_VaAOd0Qnuwtqb4RsjS6-sQFCQ8VAquqwSZjTy4aE1WUHQMWPgCiodpjbJ8AHS9xLIpu_MMCWIqybznN8SAOUf88GKfLBnGQks3XrLKx8QTJ1j9LKVc/s1600/toilet.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Note: All of us would know what a flush toilet is. One can read more about a pit toilet on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_toilet" target="_blank">wiki</a>, it's essentially a dry toilet which often requires manual scavenging. Other toilets include even worse kind of dry toilets. Of course, a large number of households do not have an in-premises toilet at all, and mostly dependent on open space (fields).</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: Census 2001 and 2011</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
chart above goes a long way to demonstrate the general condition Indian population lives
in. We, the town-dwellers, of course know India is a poor country, but surely the statistic of 53% of its population having to use open fields for
excretion would surprise many. An apt moment to murmur (with tune, no less) “India
Shining” and “Bharat Nirman”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I digress. The objective here is also to compare states relative to each other. One way to look at the data is in
terms of usage levels of flush toilet, the most hygiene & convenient form of toilet facility.
</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Andhra Pradesh</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> improved such usage of flush toilet in its population by 25% points over the 10 year
period, 2001-11. Some benefit of low base effect (18% in 2001) is applicable, it is still a very good performance relative to other states.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Further </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gujarat, Maharashtra and UP</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> all improved such access by 22% points. Gujarat delivered such performance over a much higher base of 31% in
2001 and is now only the 2</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">nd</sup><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> state with 50%+ households using a flush
toilet. Law of diminishing returns: it requires more efforts
to deliver a 22% points improvement from a starting position of 31% (Gujarat) than 22%
(Maharashtra).</span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kerala</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> deserves a special mention, 2/3</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">rd</sup><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> of its
population has access to a flush toilet within premises, but there is no noticeable
improvement over 2001-11.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Another way to analyze the data
is reduction in % households using an open-field toilet, i.e. no toilet within
premises.</span><br />
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</div>
<ul>
<li><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Andhra Pradesh & Maharashtra</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> lead, with a reduction of 17-18% points.
However both have the benefit of much larger base in 2001 (65%+) to begin with.</span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">West Bengal and Gujarat</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> on the other hand had a relatively smaller
base (55%) and were able to reduce it further by 15% and 13% points respectively.</span></li>
<li><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Karnataka and Tamil Nadu</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> follow, with a 13-14% points reduction in a
relatively higher base of 63-65%.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Combining the two, </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Andhra Pradesh</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> & </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Gujarat</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> stand out, perhaps followed by </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Maharashtra</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> and </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Tamil Nadu</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">. There is a lot more work to be done, a lot more, before we start announcing prizes here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Let’s next look at the kitchen</u></b>. Women
constitute 49% of our population and a very large part of it plays the role of
housewife. As such, the existence of an in-premises kitchen and the type of
cooking fuel plays a very large role in determining quality of life for our womenfolk. The table below provide information on # households in each state in
2001 and 2011, and how many of those households have a kitchen within the house.</span></div>
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<o:p><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u>%Households by type of kitchen facilities (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2JqEkqjwPGtVxVO4ZpWWC7r-eCSdZ1W2bR1IdCQ1zxNz4gelrJvQpkai2hbJ4Aatv-qDefbvCed4XsDp9fkGryhFtH3aOykzf_5vefVRULD8WfE_UAzvO_wLFDmK7v9fBsC_vu1oybh_/s1600/Kitchen.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2JqEkqjwPGtVxVO4ZpWWC7r-eCSdZ1W2bR1IdCQ1zxNz4gelrJvQpkai2hbJ4Aatv-qDefbvCed4XsDp9fkGryhFtH3aOykzf_5vefVRULD8WfE_UAzvO_wLFDmK7v9fBsC_vu1oybh_/s1600/Kitchen.png" height="351" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Source: Census 2001 and 2011</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As the table above points out, for India as a whole, only 61%
households have some sort of a kitchen within their premises, the rest are cooking in open, either within their house or out on the
streets. The surprising number is that we as a country have worsened on this
metric – a decline of 3%. Ever growing population and decrease in household
size means we need many more houses with kitchens, and we simply don’t have the wealth stock or income flow to build them. Time to hum "India Shining" and "Bharat Nirman" again, folks.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Since the overall country shows a
deteriorating performance on this metric, it would be worthwhile to look at
states which have shown a positive performance. The right-most column computes
such improvement, it should be looked at in conjunction with the
growth in number of households in the respective state, also provided in the table. There are five such states which record an improvement, as are highlighted in the table.</span></div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The most commendable performance (relatively) is perhaps by </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Tamil Nadu</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Karnataka</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">: Both start from a relatively
high base of 67% and 82% respectively in 2001, and have delivered an
improvement of 7-9% points on such high base during 2001-2011.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Then come </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Gujarat</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> and </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Kerala</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, both
having delivered ~4% points improvement. While Kerala has delivered on much higher
base compared to Gujarat, it had to deal with a lower household growth compared
to Gujarat (17% vs 26%).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Finally, </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Andhra Pradesh</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> delivered a 5% points improvement on a much smaller base of
50%.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The only other state that
deserves a mention is </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Odisha</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> which
has stood its ground during the decade despite having a 23% increase in number
of households.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">UP, MP and Maharashtra are the worst
performing states, perhaps followed by West Bengal. Bihar and Rajasthan are somewhere
in the middle.</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Finally we also need to look at type of cooking fuel used by the population in these states. The table below compares Indian and top 12 states by distribution of households by primary cooking fuel, in 2001 and 2011. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<o:p><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u>%Households by primary cooking fuel (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4mvUz7OQzEwUgB-7tqWJG-EHBaR07xZ90FyGwsiberwmMxI0m-UZz4tOpfHPEBVC8gpDdGR9Aezwy4-P6Y0jwPxUR9q7eeb5ml5-3wlIlen_kzjiqnrNwrzvxn2QCSyIZJRwg77g__m2/s1600/Cooking+fuel.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr4mvUz7OQzEwUgB-7tqWJG-EHBaR07xZ90FyGwsiberwmMxI0m-UZz4tOpfHPEBVC8gpDdGR9Aezwy4-P6Y0jwPxUR9q7eeb5ml5-3wlIlen_kzjiqnrNwrzvxn2QCSyIZJRwg77g__m2/s1600/Cooking+fuel.png" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Source: Census 2001 and Census 2011</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While LPG is assumed default in urban India, one might be surprised to see that almost half of Indian population uses wood to burn <i>chulhas </i>and cook their daily meals. Multiply that by three and you would get a sense of what half of housewives in India have to put up. Worse, another 17% use biomass (crop residue and cowdung), which produces even more harmful gases and poses serious health risk to the housewife. Usage of kerosene, a healthier option for cooking, has come down, which might imply less subsidy burden on the state (reality may be different due to "leakage"). Less than 30% households use LPG, the desired option.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Come to think of it, the decision to reduce subsidized LPG cylinders by UPA Govt was probably one of the most debated+protested issue by political parties. I wonder why nobody is talking about those who </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">burn wood or cowdung to feed their children, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">suffering from the resultant smoke. Maybe such sections of society don't have a TV as well, and hence no point in political sound-bytes </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on them when </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in front of the camera. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The above table is another illustration of how LPG subsidy is not reaching the poor anyway, and perhaps how <u>any blanket subsidy</u> never really reaches the poor; in fact it even hinders infrastructure expansion and improvement - so much so that the poor never even becomes a part of the distribution system to benefit from it. In thi case, LPG subsidy means refineries have less incentive to produce LPG. The oil marketing companies (OMCs) invest less in LPG bottling plant infrastructure and distribution technology. Of course the subsidy by Govt is supposed to negate it, but such subsidies are always inadequate and never timely. We saw that in electricity</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, and we now see it in LPG. Blanket subsidies are good for short term gains, they always come with long term pains. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">PSU OMCs struggle to maintain their credit ratings necessary for them to import crude, while struggling to improve LPG penetration beyond the urban rich and middle class.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">States which have shown relatively better performance are highlighted for the respective metric in the table above. Inferences for such better performing states are below:</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>All four southern states </b>have shown significant movement of households from firewood to LPG, with Tamil Nadu delivering the best performance followed by Kerala, AP and Karnataka in that order. TN also reduced reliance on kerosene significantly.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Maharashtra </b>follows, having moved 14% of its households to LPG, largely from Kerosene (9%), followed by Firewood (4%)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Gujarat </b>also puts up a good performance on a relative basis, moving 10% of its households to LPG, almost equally from biomass and kerosene.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Other states who deserve a mention: <b>UP </b>has reduced % households using biomass by 9%, most of which have switched to LPG. <b>Bihar </b>also reduced reliance on biomass by 8%, but most of these households seem to be using firewood now instead, hence not much of improvement as the numbers suggest. Promising signs of <b>West Bengal </b>reducing % households using coal, moving a large part to LPG.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Next time one of us bickers about our bathrooms being small, or the extra Rs 400 it costs from 7th LPG cylinder onwards, perhaps some re-think is in order.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In this country where all political parties fight to recognize certain sections of society as down-trodden </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">on the lines of caste, region and religion,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> tus justifying demands for </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">more reservations and welfare schemes for such sections, we often forget the most backward and discriminated-against community - the Women of India. Both the above issues affect this section of our society in an order of magnitude higher then the Indian men. Yet, we don't talk about it much. Perhaps CNN-IBN, in its much publicized women empowerment drive "The Power of 49", might do well to prioritize the above issues. (They did talk about women sanitation </span><a href="http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/456503/power-of-49-womens-health-and-sanitation.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">, but it ain't enough)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Keeping the cynicism aside, there are a few states, especially the four southern states, Gujarat and Maharashtra who seem to be improving on a faster pace than other states. While it is not sufficient, there are signs of hope from these states. And as always, the analysis stops at 2011, situation might have improved post 2011. Here's wishing to a better India in 2021, when the next census will tell us where we stand.</span><br />
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-49241700319378597772014-04-06T23:41:00.000+05:302014-04-17T14:31:05.360+05:30Water water everywhere, not a drop to drink...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I come from a very small town in one of the so-called bimaru states of India. Being born and brought up in a relatively less well-off middle class household, I recall several memories of my childhood where my parents struggled with day-to-day chores due to the generally low standard of living prevalent in Indian towns and villages at large. None of those memories stand out more than those related to water - one of those commodities most essential for survival . So little justice done to it as well - the old Hindi proverb of <i>Roti, Kapda aur Makaan</i> (Bread, Cloth and House) was probably coined during the good old days when wells were aplenty in small Indian villages, and fetching a pale of water or two was a welcome gossip time for the Indian housewife. (The office water cooler gossip is no different for us the corporate slaves). </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Water was trivial then, but not today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I remember dry taps in my house for days running when I was a child. I remember my mother having to wake up every night at 2AM to fill two buckets of water as that was the only time when taps had any water for an hour or so. I remember fetching water in small 3-litre utensils (when I was too young to manage a bucket) from the single hand-pump that served our entire <i>mohalla </i>of ~100 households, slowly graduating to small buckets and then the large ones as I grew older (I felt a sense of accomplishment when my mother smiled each time I got some water home). A more painful memory is several of my family members and neighbours getting sick (hepatitis) due to polluted water from the hand-pump. We could afford to install a water purifier by then; many of my neighbours could not afford it, or were simply not aware enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When I read about the water mafia in Delhi, I felt the same pain. A mighty river Yamuna flows through that tiny state which houses the capital of India, and still a large segment of society is forced to depend on tanker water supplied by unreliable private enterprises (the tanker mafias) who charge exorbitant rates - far higher than municipal rates. This was just not done - I cheered AAP as it advocated free water up to a minimum level and making available water connections throughout the city so as to put the tanker mafia out of business. The AAP govt came and went, and apart from announcing free water up to a certain limit, could not do anything substantial and sustainable against the water mafia due to its very short tenure.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">At the same time, there were questions raised on water availability in Gujarat related to raising the height of a dam, leading to several debates on SM whether the development claims by Gujarat are indeed true when it comes to water? While water doesn't figure prominently in promise-speeches by politicians in general (exception being AAP in Delhi), I decided to analyse where does India as a whole stands on making available water to its citizens, how has the situation improved over the years, and perhaps most importantly whether some states have been able to out-perform others or is it the same dismal story everywhere.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(Here on this blog, we try finding, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We do so by relying solely on reliable public data, and hence reject cherry-picking of facts, incomplete information, opinions expressed by so-called experts and media houses, propaganda by political parties and so on. Please read <a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/why-are-we-here.html" target="_blank">this post </a>where we explain this in detail.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Before we move forward to the analysis, a quick note: Performance evaluation of any person / organization / government needs to be based on two key principles, among others:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Before-and-after</u></b>: What is the starting point on any performance metric, what is the end point, and hence the increase/decrease in performance over a relevant time period. Only an end-point doesn't suffice. A new coach should be judged by his increase in his team's winning ratio since the day he took the job till the time he left. Merely quoting a 70% win ratio in his last year of coaching is meaningless, what if the team had an 80% win ratio before the new coach?</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>With-and-without</u></b>: How does the performance of person/entity in question stack up against a relevant peer set? If someone score 90% marks, where does he figure in his class room - is he 1st or 10th in a class of 25 students? Plain stat of 90% marks doesn't tell the full story. When one claims to outperform, he or she needs to be assessed and benchmarked relative to a relevant set of peer persons - such pressure test is necessary to identify real out-performers.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="text-align: justify;">A previous post </span><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/the-most-power-full-states.html" style="text-align: justify;" target="_blank">"The Most 'Power'-full States"</a><span style="text-align: justify;"> attempted a similar benchmarking of Indian states on power distribution. As noted there as well, Census data provides very good insight into relative performance of Indian states over the ten-year period 2001-11, which fits well with this analysis as Gujarat came under Mr. Modi's leadership in October 2001. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So here we go. The graph below compares all major states (Top 12 states by population, cover 83%+ of total households as of 2011) on location of the primary source of drinking water, as of 2001 and 2011. Smaller states and UTs are excluded for ease and relevance.</span><br />
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">%Households by Location of Drinking Water Source (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</span></u></b><br />
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTIB1kxj8dUemcwYmKjhEa7Op5KBlvQY0kw6qZfWjzy7Mxs7UJr_fqwLgJdrw2k5bWL2hmbKE36ckkU6PrmTFNl4snEsIt1hnIloMAd_p88sXJh3BPF1YfYHkmkwonGSgONpHr511IdpQ_/s1600/Water+Source.png" /></span></div>
<i style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Source: Census 2001 and Census 2011</span></i><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Very clear insights from the above graph as summarized below:</span></span><br />
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<li><b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;">Gujarat </b><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;">is the leading state on improving within-premises access to drinking water between 2001-11: from ~46% households in 2001, now ~64% households draw drinking water from within their premises: that implies an ~18% points jump - a commendable achievement which puts Gujarat ahead of all other states.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;"><b>Karnataka </b>and <b>Andhra Pradesh </b>also improved by 12-13% points over 2001-11, compared to the highest of 18% recorded by Gujarat. One can argue that both states start from a low base of ~32% in 2001 (lower than all-India average of 39%), and hence needed to have done more, I would still categorize this as a good performance - this is a relative benchmarking exercise, and you don't many governance models who deliver in excess of the average. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;">Kerala </b><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;">needs a special mention. 72% households over there already had a drinking water source within premises back in 2001, when the 2nd best state of that time, Maharashtra, could only boast of 53%. One such high base, Kerala added another 6% points to take the tally up to 78% in 2011. 78%!!! -It's a hit-it-out-of-the-park performance by Kerala, but we refrain from slotting it as numero uno for reasons which would unfold in analyses below</span></span></span></span></li>
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;">It needs mentioning that a water connection within premises indicates a combination of Govt initiative (laying down water pipelines in ever-remote areas) as well as economic well-being at household level (spending on the last leg of water-pipes and taps etc).</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;">What's also important is the actual source of drinking water, and not just its location. A water tap and a tube well are better options, as compared to other sources such as a water-well / handpump / river / canal etc: A water tap provides treated water from municipality and hence expected to be safer than other sources, while a tube well given its depth (30 metre +) is far better than shallow sources as handpump, or surface sources as river which run a much higher risk of pollution. The graph below compares, for all major states, % of households using water tap or tube-well as its primary source of drinking water in 2001 and 2011.</span></span></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">%Households with Tap or Tube-well as primary source of Drinking Water (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</span></u></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtIL5-Piu7UOLAYPMpcgkkp5LKZRCz4aZcWE-agOeaUIdsTVvfklEXVhn5Dut4hQ61S54dib3cpYVGUKOQ5FkhSzsygj6w6IYPx_XzAtFei0KzwoPdLdbtVLQSqgBRqjVwLahx8KE3i_H/s1600/Water+TapTwell.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtIL5-Piu7UOLAYPMpcgkkp5LKZRCz4aZcWE-agOeaUIdsTVvfklEXVhn5Dut4hQ61S54dib3cpYVGUKOQ5FkhSzsygj6w6IYPx_XzAtFei0KzwoPdLdbtVLQSqgBRqjVwLahx8KE3i_H/s1600/Water+TapTwell.png" /></a></div>
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<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;">Source: Census 2001 and Census 2011</i></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quick observations:</span></u></b></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Andhra Pradesh </b>and <b>Tamil Nadu </b>were most successful in improving access to drinking water through tap or tube-well: an increase of 20%+ points during 2001-11. Clear out-performers compared to all other major states. Well-done!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Gujarat </b>and <b>Karnataka </b>are 2nd, both of them improved such drinking water access by 11-14% points. I am slotting Gujarat with Karnataka since 11% points improvement for Gujarat is much more through water tap penetration compared to Karnataka who has a better performance on tube-well. Good performance, but not the best on this metric</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Kerala, </b>which had scored very high in the first analysis, has a very peculiar result to show here. 60% + households draw water from sources other than tap-water or a tube-well. Actually, almost of these households use a water-well as its primary source - it seems most households in Kerala have a well within their premises! Any kerala-ite would throw more light on this?</span></li>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px;">The Kerala phenomenon made us look deeper into the wells (pun intended). Census 2011 provides further information on whether these wells are covered or un-covered (Census 2001 provides no such data). Needless to say, while a well is not a preferred source of water compared to a water-tab or a tube-well, an un-covered water well considerably increases risk of pollution compared to a covered well. The graphs below compare these states on this metric.</span></span></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><u><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">%Households (India & Top 12 states, as of 2011)</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: blue;">Blue vertical bar</span></b><span style="color: #333333;">: </span></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">% Households using water well as primary source of Drinking Water </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Red line graph</span></b><span style="color: #333333;">: Of the above households, % households using a covered water-well</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Eg: For India as a whole, 11% of its households use a water-well as the primary source of drinking water, of which only 15% use a covered water-well (the remaining 85% use an uncovered water-well).</span></div>
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<i style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;">Source: Census 2011</i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14.44444465637207px; line-height: 23.10000228881836px; text-align: left;"><b>Two quick insights:</b></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">While <b>Gujarat </b>has only 7% of its households dependent on water-wells, 32% of these households use a covered water-well. Not a very high number, but still better than others, the second-best states being Kerala and Tamil Nadu (24%) . Probably wells are in general un-covered, perhaps an area all state Govts should look into.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The <b>Kerala </b>story loses steam when viewed from this angle. A VERY high proportion, 62% households, is dependent on wells for drinking water, and three-fourth of them rely on uncovered wells. Mitigating factor: these wells seem to be within premises of these households, and hence should be much safer than public water-wells. It might be a data-reporting issue as well.</span></li>
</ol>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We do not have above data on covered/uncovered well from census 2001, and hence cant make a relative comparison over a timeline.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So to sum it up, <u><b>Gujarat </b>has a good story to tell on improving access to safe drinking water to its populace during </u></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u>the last decade</u></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">. An improvement of 18% points on providing drinking water access within premises (46% in 2001, 64% in 2011) is best in class. It is also among top 3-4 states on providing drinking water through safer sources, with 79% of its residents drawing water from water tap and tube well in 2011 compared to 67% in 2001. Finally, a small segment of population (</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">7%) depends on water-well for drinking water, of which almost a third uses a covered well, a better-than-other states performance but not a significant number to write home about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u>One should also commend <b>Andhra Pradesh</b>, it matches Gujarat step-to-step</u>. A 12% ponts improvement on providing drinking water access within premises, which is among top 3 states. It posts best performance when considering improvement in access to drinking water through safer sources (water-tap / tube-well), a 24% points improvement is no mean feat! Still, scope for improvement remains in continuous improvement in providing drinking water access within premises, and covering those un-covered wells.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Other states that also post impressive performance in some metrics but not across the board: Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Somehow, the southern states keep demonstrating impressive performance.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">As always, when using census data, need to point out that this analysis stops at March-2011. It has been three years since then, and relative positioning amongst states might have changed to some extent. We hope all states have improved significantly in these three years.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">India as a whole though, needs to do much more to catch up. We have refrained from pointing out states with bad-performance, but it should be clear from analyses above which states have lagged far behind. While some states have structural challenges unique to them, clearly much more needs to be done and should have been done. As a popular Cameroon proverb goes, "Rain does not fall on one roof alone."</span></div>
</div>
</div>
The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-15121080174212919592014-04-06T17:11:00.000+05:302014-04-15T01:10:57.902+05:30Lies and Lives<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">“All’s fair in love and war”,
goes an old saying. The current political discourse in our country has perhaps moved much closer to a war-like situation than it has ever been and hence it
is but natural for political opponents to rake up non-issues, spin-doctor them
and then present them as gospel truth as they wage this war upon their political opponents. One can view such episodes with a general mistrust of all politicians,
but given the 24*7 media (including social media) attention, every such move gets
wide-spread publicity and ends up influencing a section
of the electorate. The truth, often, gets lost somewhere in the din.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Politicians would continue doing
this to score brownie points. None other that Mr. Vajpayee told this, in 1991,
to the then finance minister Mr. Manmohan Singh. (Apparently Mr Singh,
a newly-turned politician, took opposition’s criticism of his first budget to
heart and communicated to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">PM Mr. Narsimha Rao</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> his desire to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">resign. PM Rao mentioned this to
Mr. Vajpayee, and the latter shared the above wisdom with him and requested not to resign on this issue). </span></div>
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We as a country celebrate <i>kootneeti</i>, the assortment of political tricks-of-trade that “grants” certain leeways to the politicians in
their public utterances and private deeds. We gave this world Chanakya. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However, there’s always a line to
be drawn somewhere. Much of the past few months have been spent in politicians crying
crocodile tears at the current status of farmers. Allegations and
counter-allegations have ensued. The most public spat on this came when Gujarat
Govt. was accused of being responsible for hundreds / thousands of farmer suicides (funny
numbers, as we would see later), and the state govt. in question released a
counter-claim that only one farmer committed suicide due to crop failure (even
funnier).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Playing politics over lives of
the largest down-trodden segment of the society is disgusting. Especially when it
is suicide – the most gruesome result when the alternative usually is living
a life of utter humiliation or penury. On top of it: cherry-picking of facts,
selective accusations and gross generalizations for short term political gains.
This was enough persuasion for this blog to explore what’s what, and so here it
goes.</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">AAP website, in its <a href="http://www.aamaadmiparty.org/gujarat-govts-lie-exposed-on-gas-pricing" target="_blank">chargesheet-equivalent against Gujarat Govt</a>, published farmer suicide numbers as evidence of the
Gujarat Govt’s mismanagement and lies, when it comes to farmers. It’s well known that AAP
is gunning after Modi, since Modi seems to have himself become the agenda of these
elections. It’s only fair (and welcome) that an opposition party asks tough
questions to someone who is openly campaigning for the top job and seems to be in strong position to succeed as well. AAP quoted
numbers from a reliable 3<sup>rd</sup> party in this chargesheet - conclusive
evidence, one would think so, but turns out it’s not the case.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We, on this blog, in our pursuit
of truth and the complete truth, rely on objective and comprehensive analysis
to draw on any conclusions. We strive to base such analysis on reliable public
information from non-conflicted sources. We did this in our last analysis <a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/the-most-power-full-states.html" target="_blank">The Most "Power"-full States</a>, when
assessing the claim of 24*7 electricity in Gujarat and the counter-claims; we
would attempt to do something similar here to the extent data permits.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-align: left;">(I recomme</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-align: left;">nd reading <a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/why-are-we-here.html" target="_blank">this introductory piece</a> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20.790000915527344px; text-align: left;">before moving forward.)</span></span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In its charge-sheet, AAP quotes suicide
numbers from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a part of Ministry of Home Affairs
under Central Govt of India. A research of their website seems to confirm their
numbers would broadly pass the reliability test we hold dear. The below graph summarizes the
number of farmer suicides for the year 2012 by state, using the same data. We have considered all 17 states with
population of 2.5 crore or more (as of March-11), and have excluded very small states and UTs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Number of farmer suicides by state, in 2012</u></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjbfh_sZi1hdBsLJKt8I3ICcP5s7NGC4gpig71dkrabSOAKC2VWK48njqaVItZzs_arhNkCgVqW4ux-qMcKZ7H_naDdcAV9OsVGVAUCb7XeizuKC6OP_hvf2IVyb0YLm9VoAxvuQXgzppF/s1600/farmer+suicide.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjbfh_sZi1hdBsLJKt8I3ICcP5s7NGC4gpig71dkrabSOAKC2VWK48njqaVItZzs_arhNkCgVqW4ux-qMcKZ7H_naDdcAV9OsVGVAUCb7XeizuKC6OP_hvf2IVyb0YLm9VoAxvuQXgzppF/s1600/farmer+suicide.png" /></a></div>
<i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Notes: </span></o:p></i></div>
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<i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1.</span></o:p></i><i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"> NCRB reports n</span></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">umber of suicides victims by profession. The suicide numbers reported under profession: self-employed - farming/agriculture, have been taken as equivalent of farmers. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2. For W. Bengal, data for </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2011 taken, since </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">2012 unavailable. The same is added to NCRB reported overall number of suicides for India for 2012</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. For Chhattisgarh, data for 2010 used since 2011, 2012 is reported as nil & four suicides respectively, which is very low as compared to 1000+ suicides as seen every year from 2002 to 2010: seemingly data reporting issue. The 2010 suicide data for the state has also been </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">added to NCRB reported overall number of suicides for India for 2012. However if </span></i><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">indeed the reported data for 2011 and 2012 for Chhattisgarh is correct data then our apologies & heartiest congratulations to the state Govt.</span></i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Source: <a href="http://ncrb.nic.in/" target="_blank">NCRB website</a>. Exact link of the pdf file <a href="http://ncrb.nic.in/CD-ADSI-2012/table-2.11.pdf" target="_blank">here</a></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As evident from the graph, six states
have dismal performance to show – with 1000+ farmer suicides in year 2012. Gujarat
isn’t one of these six states, in fact Gujarat is 9<sup>th</sup> in the list. This
table is important to showcase why cherry-picking as done by AAP is just not done. On a standalone basis, 500-600 farmer suicides in Gujarat and Tamil
Nadu seem terrible. However, on a relative basis compared to other states, not
so much. We need to see this, as with any other human indicator, in the
perspective of whole of India and other comparable states. Indeed, when almost
all states show farmer suicides in hundreds and thousands (India, at the end of
the day, still remains a poor country where farmers still rely on rainfall for irrigation and don't have reliable access to credit from formal banking channels. These numbers sadly remind us of the same.), it’s important to benchmark states on a
relative basis to each other. When someone singles out a state CM (Modi for
Gujarat, for eg), its only fair the state’s performance be compared to other
states. While state governments need to be pulled up for even one farmer
suicide, it’s equally foolish to debunk the entire economic model of such
states based on such absolute numbers alone without any perspective or relative benchmarking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, the above graph also does not tell us the whole story. As common sense will tell you, we need to further probe
the above data on two more fronts:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ul>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: -18pt;">How
have states performed in terms of suicide rate (i.e. no. of farmer suicides per
1 lac farmers). Clearly, large state would have somewhat higher suicides than
smaller states, even if everything else is equal in these two states.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-indent: -18pt;">How
has the performance been over the past decade. A state might be performing very
bad 10 years back, but if it has improved over the last decade, credit needs to
be given.</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">The table below attempts to answer
both the above questions. We have divided the farmer suicide numbers by number
of farmers (as per Census 2011) to arrive at </span><u style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"><b>farmer suicide rate </b></u><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">for last several years, and then taken a 3-year average of the
same beginning of the decade (2002/03/04) and ending of the decade (2010/11/12)
for comparison.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Comparison of Farmer Suicide Rate by state (Now vs. 10 years back)</u></b></span></div>
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<br />
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ZWKRMh_LDannFc_mv3CrECTK1DOyRLEPnmM0ZfWHNE0k2VEnnl1bRkEDlBsT0bumQjHiMDPHvjIL2loACoFbCJZIiNaYuxEF5sVBAeFIHxRsHoJWBV9LrPfdM4m5nl16WY-8Qpwv7phM/s1600/Farmer+Suicide+rate.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ZWKRMh_LDannFc_mv3CrECTK1DOyRLEPnmM0ZfWHNE0k2VEnnl1bRkEDlBsT0bumQjHiMDPHvjIL2loACoFbCJZIiNaYuxEF5sVBAeFIHxRsHoJWBV9LrPfdM4m5nl16WY-8Qpwv7phM/s1600/Farmer+Suicide+rate.png" height="366" width="400" /></a></div>
<i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Notes: </span></o:p></i><i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1. Farmer Suicide rate = No. of farmer suicides per one lac farmers. </span></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2. </span></o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Farmer Suicides data is as per the previous graph, and comments for West Bengal and Chhatisgarh as noted in that graph apply here as well. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">3. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Number of farmers is taken to be all such workers are categorized as "Cultivators" or "Agricultural Labourers" under Census 2001 and Census 2011. 2011 data was used for 2010-12 3-yr-avg, a linear extrapolation from 2001 to 2011 was used to estimate number of farmers as of 2003 which was used for 2002-04 3-y- avg. </span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">4. Three year averages are taken to smoothen year-on-year variations.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><br /></i></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<o:p><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Source: NCRB, as in the above graph, for farmer suicides. Census 2011 for number of farmers.</i></span></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I have divided these 17 states
into 6 categories based on their performance:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<ol>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Bihar/Jharkhand/UP/Punjab/Assam</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">: <u>This category states have far less suicide rate </u>compared to other states. These states also have the benefit of large rivers (Ganga/Yamuna/Brahamputra) flowing through
them, which provide ample irrigation water, thereby reducing chances of crop failure. Still, nothing to take away from these states, except that the performance has deteriorated over the last decade. Not good signs, but still ok by and large even today. Not
many farmers are committing suicide over there, except Assam where the suicide rates were not as low to begin with as compared to other states in this category.</span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Karnataka
/ Maharashtra / Andhra Pradesh / Chhattisgarh / Kerala</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">: <u>These category states have far higher suicide rate compared to other states</u>, historically and recently as well. Suicide rates are in double digits (10%+) which is in
far excess of the all India average of 5-6%. Worse, the suicide rates are not declining rapidly, which should be the goal given such high suicide rates to begin with; in fact for Andhra Pradesh the suicide
rate has worsened over the decade. Governments in these states need to prioritize
this area and reduce this <i>shame</i>. Kerala seems to have the highest farmer suicide, much higher than any other state - we don't rule out data mis-recording in this case since Kerala is otherwise known to be economically much better-off than other states. </span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Haryana</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">: A separate category was required for this small state which had a low-to-mid suicide rate a decade back, and has deteriorated very significantly ~82%). It should be safely assumed that this state enjoys adequate river+rain-water for irrigation (same as category 1), but shows post worse performance than those states.</span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">West
Bengal / Madhya Pradesh: </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><u>This category states have performance similar/slightly better than national average</u>. </span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">Both</span><b style="text-indent: -18pt;"> </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">states
are large, and have farmer suicide rate closer to all-India average 10 years
back as well as today. Hence, the 25-30% decline in the farmer suicide rate as
seen these 2 states is also not significantly better than the national average of 20%. I would
categorize this as a good performance, especially considering both states are weak
on the overall economic front: having moved slightly better than all-India average is a good
achievement for these states.</span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Tamil
Nadu / Rajasthan / Odisha: </b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><u>This category </u></span><span style="text-indent: -18pt;"><u>states have the performance record</u>, which would bring a smile
to your face. Slightly high (Tamil Nadu) / Low (Rajasthan/Odisha) farmer suicide
rates to begin with a decade back, and today all these three states have a
suicide rate far lower than the national average. Improvement levels of ~60%
are commendable achievements.</span></span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b style="text-indent: -18pt;">Gujarat:</b><span style="text-indent: -18pt;">
And then we have Gujarat. It doesn't fit any of the above categories. A state which has a ~33% lower suicide rate to begin with
a decade back as compared to all-India average (5.0 vs 7.4), and the 9% improvement it posts is lesser than national average of 20%, albeit on a smaller base. This is not a best-in-class performance as we have seen in water and electricity, this isn’t a performance that
warrants opening the champagne. Having said that, the condition is much better than most other states to begin with, and is not deteriorating thankfully unlike many other states. There
is definitely a scope for improvement, as the states in category 5 have
showcased. However, it is also not a case where the state government should be singularly castigated and the opposition bays for blood.</span></span></li>
</ol>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">So there you go folks, </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Lies and Lives</b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">. Our politicians don’t care much for the latter in their pursuit of spreading the former. We would strive to discredit the former in our pursuit of the opposite, the truth. </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Job well done - we would say to TN, Rajasthan and Odisha, </b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">need to continue doing the good work till suicide rates are brought even lower. </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Gujarat ain't a demon when it comes to farmer suicides </b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">- </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">it's suicide rate is lower than national average and the condition is not worsening, unlike many many other states. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Still, more needs to be done, and should have been done. Gujarat is probably the 5th or 6th best state amongst the 17 states we have considered in this analysis. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">So next time you hear someone screaming at the top of his head on how his political opponent doesn't care about the farmers, you know where to look. Don't forget to speak out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">P.S. The final piece of the puzzle, however, remains missing. The above analysis is for overall farmer suicides, and no further categorization on underlying cause of suicide is available. Indeed, while crop failure and resultant inability to pay debt and/or feed stomach is expected to be a primary cause, there would be farmer suicides which have nothing do with the occupation: family disputes, marital tensions, mental health etc. There are sample based primary research studies available which try to answer these questions, however only for a few states and at very defined time-points, and their methodologies don't give us much confidence. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Update 1</b>: </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">NCRB has the data on underlying cause of suicide by state, however doesn't provide the same for farmers separately. RTI?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Update 2</b>: Further research reveals that the above-mentioned data on underlying cause of suicide (it would have been insightful to see, at a state level, how many farmer suicides are </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">happening due to crop failure and not just absolute numbers) is not very useful - different states adopt different terminologies while recording such </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">causes of suicides, and hence any such data (even if obtained through RTI from NCRB) would be not generate reasonably accurate insights incremental to what we already have.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Update 3</b>: </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">For calculation of suicide rate for the two time periods of 3 years, i.e. 2002-04 and 2010-11, the total number of farmers (denominator) was taken as of 2011 in both </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">cases. It was disclosed in a reply to one of the comments as well. While this approximation is ok for calculation of average suicide rate over 2010-2012 (2011 being </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the mid year), the same is not accurate for 2002-2004, where ideally number of farmers as of 2003 should have been taken. The reasons the approximation was done were </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a) the number of farmers data is taken from census, and there was no census on 2003, the closest census was done was in 2001 b) the census 2001 data on number of </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">farmers was not available with the author at the time of analysis, and c) given the objective was to do a relative benchmarking of states with each other and with the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">same states themselves over a time-period, 80-20 rule was applied and 2011 data on number of farmers was taken as denominator for the period 2002-04 as well.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a furore over the same, and the article being called biased/incomplete/inaccurate, the author has managed to get hands on 2001 data on number of farmers. Using </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">this data as of 2001, along with 2011 data on number of farmers, a linear extrapolation was done to estimate number of farmers as of 2003 for each state (as is now </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">included in the table above). The whole analysis was refreshed using this data - the graphs, tables as well as numbers quoted in the language were updated. As had been </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">maintained by the author, while this refinement helped updating the numbers on an "absolute" basis, the inferences drawn from the analysis remain exactly the same. The </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">performance based categorization of the sates remains the same: The states of TN, Rajasthan and Odisha were seen to be doing an excellent job earlier, and are still </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">doing the same based on the updated analysis as well. Gujarat earlier was showing an improvement of 1% relative to all-India improvement of 18%, now this state is </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">showing 9% improvement relative to all-India improvement of 20%, it still is a separate category in itself. The states seen to be doing bad earlier, are still in the </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">same bucket. To repeat: absolute numbers have changed, relative positioning of states vis-a-vis each other as well as over a timeline remains the same. The 80-20 rule </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">is often abused by statisticians to hide more than to show, however when used honestly and appropriately this rule helps arrive at insights in a much faster manner when </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">the perfect data is not available. That said, the author concedes this irrelevant debate could have been avoided altogether by striving more to get hands on 2001 data.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Update 4</b>: The number of farmer suicides data for overall India has been updated for 2011 and 2012: West Bengal didn't report 2012 farmer suicides numbers and hence </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">while 2011 data for the same was used when benchmarking WB relative to other states, the overall number of suicides for India wasn't corrected, which has now been </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">done. Similarly Chattisgarh was showing nil and four suicides in 2011 and 2012, whereas it had historically recorded 1000+ suicides for 8 years during 2002-2010. As </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">such, the 2011 and 2012 data seemed erroneous and hence 2010 data for Chhattisgarh has been added to overall India farmer suicides for 2011 and 2012.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>Update 5</b>: Kerala was inadvertently omitted in the table of suicide rates earlier, it has been included now - it falls in category 2, probably the worst category to be </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">in for a state. However, as noted earlier, Kerala data might not be accurate due to such negative-outlier performance by a state which otherwise is known to be economically and socially well-off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b>Update 6</b>: Punjab, Jharkhand and Assam were moved from Category 3 to Category 1, it seems they better fit there. Cosmetic re-categorization, doesn't affect the overall inferences</span></div>
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-77774085640970492232014-03-10T22:08:00.001+05:302014-04-17T14:30:45.038+05:30The Most "Power"-full States<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Electricity, perhaps, is the one of the most important commodities, yet significantly under-valued. Don't get me wrong - everyone hates power cuts; but its true value is not fully appreciated. Electricity just doesn't run television at home, it also provides </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a few hours of daily family entertainment</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> to </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">lower-middle / poor class, for whom otherwise no real, affordable alternatives exist. Industries are large beneficiaries as well - higher uptime results in efficient utilization of resources (including labour), higher output and value creation, and economic well-being for human factors. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After a much </span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">publicized visit of Arvind Kejriwal to Gujarat, there are debates on SM whether Gujarat is really as advanced on electricity front as is often claimed by its long-serving CM Mr. Narendra Modi. Dubious claims are made by both sides on this issue. I believe this can be satisfactorily analysed and concluded based on <b>reliable data available in public domain</b>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">(I recommend reading </span><a href="http://treeofbodhi.blogspot.in/2014/03/why-are-we-here.html" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">this introductory piece </a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">before moving forward)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Census, a periodic primary research done in our country, provides insights at a very granular level for several socio-economic indicators. It's remarkable since it doesn't involve samples - entire population of the country is covered. While it is conducted only once every 10 years, fortunately in this case this</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"> fits well on the timeline: Census 2001 was done somewhere over March-September 2001, coinciding well with Mr Modi starting his tenure as CM of Gujarat in Oct 2001. Comparing Census 2001 to Census 2011 should give us a very good insight into what Mr Modi's government was able to achieve in these 10 years in Gujarat both on absolute and relative basis. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Point to note: Mr. Modi has been CM for more than two years even after Census 2011, hence any inferences drawn from comparison of Census 2001 to Census 2011 should also be augmented by analysis of data beyond 2011 till today, to the extent available.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">So let's come to the analysis: Census collects data on "Primary Source of Lighting" at a household level: whether it is electricity, kerosene or something else (solar / other oil etc). This, in my experience, is the closest proxy of how many households are truly electrified. I reject data on how many villages electrified (definition of "village electrified" is unclear, prone to inconsistency across villages / states, a village can be partially electrified etc, more on this later). I also reject data such as number of new electricity connections sanctioned (its merit depends on size of the state, starting position etc). Slight nuance: While a household might technically be electrified but due to very extreme power outages (such that electricity is practically just not available), the household might not be counted under electricity as primary source of lighting. It's acceptable - just having a wire connection with little to no power should not count.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">The graphs below compare states on their relative performance on being able to migrate their population from kerosene to electricity (by electrification of their houses) between 2001 to 2011. For eg. India as a country moved from 56% electrified households (in 2001) to 67% households (in 2011), as illustrated by the first horizontal bar. For ease and relevance, only top 12 states by population are considered (cover 83.4% households of India in 2011): Gujarat being a mid size state would make for an unfair comparison with much smaller / less populous states/UTs.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"><b><u>%Households by Primary Source of Lighting (India & Top 12 states, 2001-11)</u></b></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVY09okh9XRdk7gVln3l84tL3WE0Ug6iKC-tLi40aylVGcLO18NFKcqMaPY-3Te2WCHAFcMYAEol2TrW-e7x7IBsDws09m4UeinW_9V-lSY1vq7lBRC0jvS0os-FbGYzRqemhyphenhyphen1FNdL0aT/s1600/elec+table+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVY09okh9XRdk7gVln3l84tL3WE0Ug6iKC-tLi40aylVGcLO18NFKcqMaPY-3Te2WCHAFcMYAEol2TrW-e7x7IBsDws09m4UeinW_9V-lSY1vq7lBRC0jvS0os-FbGYzRqemhyphenhyphen1FNdL0aT/s1600/elec+table+2.jpg" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Note: Others includes solar, other oil and no lighting</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Source: Census 2001 and 2011 data, sourced from <a href="http://censusindia.gov.in/" target="_blank">Census website</a></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">My inferences are as below:</span></div>
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gujarat was able to improve from a strong starting position of 80% household electrification in 2001 to 90% household electrification in 2011, a commendable performance.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However, Gujarat is not the best performer: All four southern states start from a weaker position in 2001 relative to Gujarat (esp. Kerala and Andhra Pradesh) and all these states close 2011 at 90%+, a good 1-4% above Gujarat.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since above analysis stops at 2011, Gujarat might have improved beyond 90% in 2012/2013, but so could have other states as well. We don't know further through census data alone.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unrelated to Gujarat, but West Bengal deserves special mention for improving access to electricity from 37% to 55% households. Mr. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was CM for almost the entire period of 2001-11 - he, despite being from a left party, is widely regarded as a reformist responsible for significant economic liberalization of West Bengal (and often criticised by his party for such reform policies).</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Odisha also delivered significant improvement from 27% household electrification in 2001 to 43% in 2011, same should be attributed to Mr Naveen Patnaik who has been running the ship over there since 2000. However, a lot still needs to be done in both WB and Odisha, both had a very weak starting position (2001).</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">UP and Bihar languish at the bottom of the table, marred by bad governance under multiple political parties as far as the power situation is considered. Have a re-look at Bihar: only 16% households in the state use electricity as prime source of lighting. It is extraordinarily low. This is when on paper, 90%+ villages are "electrified" in Bihar as of 2013 (as suggested by multiple google searches, however could not locate authentic link). <a href="http://ir.ide.go.jp/dspace/bitstream/2344/1130/1/ARRIDE_Discussion_No.333_oda.pdf" target="_blank">This</a> discussion paper provides some perspective around definitions and challenges in Bihar pertaining to rural electrification (pages 12-15). There are serious questions that need to be answered by both Mr. Nitish Kumar and Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav who have been in power during 2000-2011 for considerable time periods.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">However, above analysis is not not sufficient to conclude that Gujarat is among top states when it comes to improving access to electricity during the time period 2001-11. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Ask any woman managing daily household chores, or a businessman running a small manufacturing unit - consistent, predictable 24*7 availability of power is extremely important. So let's see where does Gujarat stand when it comes to meeting electricity demand by providing adequate electricity. Data for the table below is sourced from Annual Report of Central Electricity Authority, Ministry of Power, Government of India (2012-13). This table provides info on electricity demand and supply (and hence surplus/deficit) overall as well as during peak hours. As one can see, India as a whole had a power deficit of 8.7% on average and 9.0% during peak demand hours. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(The states are ordered in the same performance order as in the above graph for easy comparison). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><u>Electricity demand and supply for major states in 2012-13</u></b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4nvzA2_LweVK6kznYoAbpTx3XRHPj5u8UOmr3uKG83UvFnz1Y2O_e9fW2JolbQ5gKK80xpvJolQMIq6xbhwoZGAhFwLHXfu5Z01tPmU5Gu7PJRkIHMHwsT6IC6cfMd7aYbNPIBV5QMTF6/s1600/Elec+table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4nvzA2_LweVK6kznYoAbpTx3XRHPj5u8UOmr3uKG83UvFnz1Y2O_e9fW2JolbQ5gKK80xpvJolQMIq6xbhwoZGAhFwLHXfu5Z01tPmU5Gu7PJRkIHMHwsT6IC6cfMd7aYbNPIBV5QMTF6/s1600/Elec+table.jpg" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Note: BU means billion units, 1 unit = 1kwh</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Source: <a href="http://www.cea.nic.in/reports/yearly/annual_rep/2012-13/ar_12_13.pdf" target="_blank">CEA Annual Report 2012-13</a></span><span style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">, </span></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">page 169</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">The picture can't be clearer: all four southern states which earlier seemed to be out-performing Gujarat in the first analysis are completely failing on this metric. Peak stage deficits of 10-20% in these souther states as well as in UP & Bihar is horrible, to say the very least. Such power deficits force load shedding, which is never uniform within a state; semi-urban and rural centres face maximum power cuts. 10-12 hours of power cuts are not unheard of in these states.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Gujarat, on the other hand, has a power deficit of a mere 0.2%-0.3%, even during peak hours. That's commendable, and clearly the best performance among all 12 major states. This directly implies 24 hours power availability every day of the week - well, 23 hours 57 minutes 7 seconds daily to be exact.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">If there is any other state that deserves a mention, it's West Bengal. While WB still lags far behind on electrification (55% households electrified as of 2011, see previous graph), it runs a power deficit of just ~1% during peak hours. Goes to say more about how Buddhadeb was an odd man out in his party.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Finally one must also explore as to how Gujarat has been able to achieve the above, and whether the model is sustainable or prone to breakdown under pressure? The table below compares financial performance of the state electricity distribution companies for all 12 major states over three fiscal years. The data is sourced from performance report published by Power Finance Corporation, a GoI undertaking and "a </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Financial Institution (FI) dedicated to Power Sector financing and committed to the integrated development of the power and associated sectors". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Cash profit (excluding Subsidies received) for distribution companies for 12 major states</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Note: (Cash profit - Subsidies received) is used as a measure of financial health of state's distribution companies. In my opinion, that's the best representation as it doesn't consider any subsidy received from government (since subsidy is not a sustainable manner of operating) as well as also removes any amount booked as revenue in the P&L statement but lies as incremental receivables in the Balancesheet (i.e. not collected as cash). Experts in power sector & accounting will tell you that any increase in receivables in a utility business are better written off - they would mostly never be realized as cash.</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Source: <a href="http://www.pfcindia.com/Content/PerformanceReport.aspx" target="_blank">Performance section on PFC website</a></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">(Click on the link "</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Performance Report of State Power Utilities")</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"><i><a href="http://www.pfcindia.com/writereaddata/userfiles/file/ResearchReport/Report%20on%20the%20Performance%20of%20State%20Power%20Utilites%20for%20the%20years%202009-10%20to%202011-12.pdf" target="_blank">Exact link of pdf file</a>, </i></span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">(Pages 70-75)</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">As the table above demonstrates, the four states of Gujarat, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">West Bengal, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Kerala, and Karnataka (</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">highlighted in the table above)</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"> are able to conduct distribution operations without operating losses even before any government subsidy kicks in. This is not to suggest state government doesnt provide subsidy to its distribution companies, but these that distribution companies are financially healthy on their own. What's remarkable is that at least for Gujarat, all four distribution companies are 100% government owned - Mr. Modi got it done using the state resources alone!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">All other major states (especially Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan) present a very sorry state of affairs. Result: massive government subsidies and/or losses on balancesheet, no money / delayed payments to pay to power generating companies, load-shedding...</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Indeed, working capital cycles in Tamil Nadu have often been mentioned to be in the range of 9-12 months.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;"> </span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">The verdict: </b><br />
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<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">90</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">%+ households in Gujarat have access to electricity (as of 2011) which is in close range of the best performing states - Kerela, AP, TN and Karnataka. Still, a small gap remains, efforts should be made to close the remaining 10% as well. All other major states lag behind significantly, though WB and Odisha made very significant progress during 2001-11.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Gujarat, (with West Bengal a close 2nd), is </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">far, FAR ahead of all other major states on providing adequate electricity to its electrified households as per demand: 24*7 electricity to all households with an electricity connection to be precise (for financial year 2012-13). Negligible deficit ratios of (~0.2% in Gujarat, ~1% in West Bengal) are commendable achievements.</span></li>
<li style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: left;">Gujarat power distribution model seems sustainable: state distribution companies are financially sound, as is the case with three other states (Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal). This is in stark contrast to all other major states, where distribution companies are in financial doldrums.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If one has to pick a winner, it would be extremely hard to chose from Gujarat and West Bengal, maybe the former has a very slight edge - but one should also consider the huge disadvantage West Bengal started off with in 2000 before Mr. Buddhadeb came along. Quite deservedly, Mr Modi needs to be given credit for this fairytale story when most other states struggle. It is very hard to pick a state for the third spot - rather, it is safe to say that the difference in performance of these two top states of Gujarat and West Bengal and that of all other major states is very, very significant. One should give credit where due.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Specific measures taken by the state government in Gujarat under Mr. Modi which has resulted in the above performance is not a subject of research of this article, the same is easily <i>google-able</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b><u>Food for thought</u>: Free power in short run means no power in long run.</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[Update: In the first graph, corrected column labeling of # households from 2011 to 2001, and added actual 2011 household numbers as well.]</span></div>
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-43929226089236360862014-03-09T20:27:00.001+05:302014-04-14T00:23:31.063+05:30The Missing Link<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the advent of Social Media (SM), there are far more debates on politics and governance happening in the country, opening up space for public participation on an unprecedented magnitude. However, such discourse is also prone to 5-minute-Google based argumentation, made-up-facts, and outright lies + propaganda. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Often, most of the audience being innocent bystanders gets influenced by </span><b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">statistics presented as gospel truth, but really are cherry-picked / twisted facts, opinions or worse, falsehoods. </b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Some argue that the latter is often more pronounced - the frontyard of SM is littered with sponsored bots.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is dangerous, since such incorrect statistics not just influences public opinion, but also translate into potentially ill-informed electoral choices on a wide scale.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Here we would occasionally attempt fact-based research of contemporary topics related to politics, economics and governance- questions which are answerable based on <u>reliable data available in public domain</u>, but remain unsettled in SM due to the aforementioned issues. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In this quest, we would continuously strive to keep the <b>definition of reliable data </b>as tight as possible. To that end, the below is important.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Census, central regulators publications, standard statistics by GoI where no scope for manipulation exists are reliable data (eg: GDP absolute numbers are ok as they present an amount value, poverty rate decline is not ok as GoI can change the definition of poverty year-on-year).</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Sample based analyses (eg surveys, opinion polls) need to be viewed with suspicion - sample collection technique, questionnaire design and methodology for synthesis needs to be analyzed before using output from such studies - even then they need to be supplemented with other data sources. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Primary analysis by experts, if based on non-public data, to be taken as supporting proof if hygiene conditions (rigour of analysis, availability of all relevant data, and non-conflicted position of the expert) are met. If such analysis is based on public data, it would be replicated here.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Views and opinions expressed by experts should at best be taken as starting guidance, but not as reliable data.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">News articles and wikipedia pages at best provide initial hypothesis, they do not constitute hard facts and would not be used. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Data provided by conflicted parties needs to be summarily rejected in entirety.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Occasionally, falsehood-based propaganda by public figures (journalists / politicians / anyone with potential to attract significant public attention) would also find special mention.</span></div>
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2969941767354192033.post-68775307688389215082014-03-09T19:35:00.004+05:302014-04-06T23:57:20.749+05:30A Necessary Evil<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We are human beings, a basket of imperfections. A common imperfection (I believe this is universal), is to see the world through a lens coloured with our own biases, orientation, and often expectations. One can't take this lens off. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hence, when someone claims a narrative / analysis to be 100% neutral, I reject that premise at face value. However, I do believe that such imperfection(s) can be largely addressed by upfront disclosing contours of the lens one is wearing. The other party in general should be able to correct the narrative off such biases / orientation of the narrator, if the same are disclosed upfront. In public discourse, such disclosure should not be left to discretion, rather it becomes a necessity. Hence, the below.</span><br />
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As ideologies go, I find myself at a slight discomfort with absolute right-wing ideology (the apparent cornerstone of saffron outfit). To accept permanent social / economic inequality in some form or manner as a given used to make me very disillusioned. However, I also agree that for the society to improve its standard of living as a whole, a section of it needs to lead and hence be rewarded more, such section would do the needful only in anticipation of such higher award - its a virtuous cycle. There is no way around it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I am still ok with centre-moderate approach. However, in my opinion, those political parties who talk about embracing (and hence expected to walk along) </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">such </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">ideology are delusional - they don't have an ideology in reality, and continue to resort to opportunism. Still, a few individual leaders stand out in such political parties who continue to work along such ideology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I am extremely opposed to the leftist ideology as the primary governance model. I just don't see it working in any part of the world, and wherever it has been truly practised results in under-supply and rampant corruption. However, I do advocate a limited redistribution of wealth in a capitalist society, for reasons which don't warrant explanation here.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Given that by and large most political parties do not follow the ideology they publicly advocate and hence are supposed to follow (moderates leading the pack), I have come to cultivate a significant belief in individualistic capability of specific leaders as well.</span><br />
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The Explorer http://www.blogger.com/profile/05115024521421073219noreply@blogger.com0