Lucky 30% of India: Urban India far ahead of rural India in offering basic amenities to citizens
The author has posted comments on this articleAvinash Celestine, ET Bureau | May 13, 2012, 10.56AM IST
The 'India Story' has taken quite a bit of drubbing in the past few months, what with weak economic numbers, non-existent reforms, and the odd scam. But for a real bucket of cold water, it's been hard to beat the census data released recently, which showed that while two out of three households in the country have a mobile phone, well over half don't have access to a toilet 'on
premises' ie in their house.
More households in India have cellphones than they have toilets at home. And 49% of Indian households still use the Great Wide Open to relieve themselves.
Experts have barely begun to dissect the fascinating data coming out of census 2011. One such piece of data is about the basics -households which have access to drinking water and latrines at home, and a power connection. In fact the census has data on which households have all three.
Call it the DWEL (for drinking water, electricity and loos) indicator. According to the census, only 30% of households have all three amenities available at home, up from 21% of households a decade ago.
What's worrying though is that the urban-rural divide has deepened. Around 64% of urban India has access to these amenities, up from 55% a decade ago. In comparison, only 14% of rural households have access to the basics, up from about 9% a decade ago.
India's biggest cities have actually done quite well. Much is made, for instance, of Mumbai's creaking public infrastructure, but on DWEL at least, it has galloped ahead, though it still remains behind the big cities, including Kolkata.
Among the states, the best performers have been the smaller ones such as Daman and Diu and Goa (not shown in the table), but one state is a big surprise - Haryana, where 53% of households report having all three basic amenities, up from 30% a decade earlier.
And while much is made of the transformations wrought by Nitish Kumar, Bihar remains a laggard, where even now, only one in 10 households has access to all three facilities.
Districts which perform poorly on DWEL, tend not to do well in other aspects as well (though interestingly, that's not always the case). Longleng in Nagaland is at the bottom of the ranking of districts, with only 1% of households having access to basic facilities.
In this district 57% of households do not have any of the assets specified in the census form (radio or TV, a vehicle or cycle, or even a phone). And a whopping 86% of the population in the district does not access banking services.
Dindori in Madhya Pradesh on the other hand, another low ranker on DWEL, seems to be relatively well-banked, with only 31% of households reporting no form of access to a bank. What access to a bank for Dindori's poor means in practice though, is another question altogether.
<Words>
Drubbing : if someone gets a drubbing they are defeated easily
Premises : a piece of land together with its buildings, esp considered as a place of business
Dissect : If someone dissects something such as a theory, a situation, or a piece of writing, they consider and talk about each detail of it.
Latrine : A latrine is a structure, usually consisting of a hole in the ground, that is used as a toilet
Creaking public infrastructure
Gallop : If something such as a process gallops, it develops very quickly and is often difficult to control.
Laggard : If you describe a country, company, or product as a laggard, you mean that it is not performing as well as its competitors.
Whopping : If you describe an amount as whopping, you are emphasizing that it is large.
