Axes of Sustainable Development and Growth in India

As the intensity of discussion on energy transition across the globe has increased recently, we will most likely see a rapid transition away from thermal generation play out in India for the first time in this decade. In the past few years, the policy regime has been very deep in variable renewable technologies that certainly were successful in amassing 77 GW of solar and wind in a short space of time. However, they also manifested several unwarranted impacts, including financial stress on the thermal sector and distribution companies/customers, even without possibly the policy target being fully met by 2022. More importantly, the recently announced policy package has a far deeper 450 GW renewable energy target by 2030. This strategy may call for at least half a trillion dollars in new investment, mostly in solar and wind projects that will dry up investment in other forms of generation and distribution system upgrades. It will also almost inevitably deepen the crisis in the thermal sector and may potentially drive several state distribution companies to bankruptcy. It is important to objectively assess these issues and explore an alternative market-driven path to induce renewables on their merit and let coal and other thermal projects also exit.

Higher economic growth would require higher agricultural growth and higher energy production coupled with urbanization. There are four major sources of demand for water. These are from (1) Agriculture, (2) Residential, (3) Industry, (4) Power Generation. However, Agriculture and Power are major water-using sectors. To understand the competing demands for water from various sectors and the water deficit that may appear in the future and economic growth increases an input–output dynamic optimisation model for a consistent projection of water demand and supply. Total water demand in 2015 is estimated to be at 868 bcm. Water demand increases by nearly 30–40% by 2030 and is almost double by 2050 compared to the levels in 2015. Low carbon policies reduce water demand by 1 billion cubic metre and 7 billion cubic metre in 2050 through INDC and Ambitious policies, respectively. The demand for water from Power of course decreases as we assume MOEFCC guidelines for water conservation in power plants are adhered to. In the scenario of a policy failure, water withdrawal demand from power sector would be nearly 12 times in 2030 and nearly 20 times in 2050.

There was a time, in India and likely in all countries, when electrification was started on a large scale for all its citizens. The only issue was to get electricity across to all its citizens, never mind the quality and reliability. Once that step was accomplished, then came the stage of quality and reliability, where the unification of the national grid was started, adequate generation capacity was planned, where redundancy in transmission and distribution system was introduced along with the n-1 transmission planning criteria, ring mains for the distribution system, installation of switchable capacitors, etc. This was followed by efficiency in generation, transmission, distribution and utilization. Alongside, countries have also started getting into the optimization of operation of the power system as a whole.

BIMSTECis a group of seven member governments that make up the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multisectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand).

India has a massive Renewable Capacity addition program and the pace of renewable addition has prompted justifiable concerns about grid balancing and stability. An influential study commissioned by India’s Ministry of Power finds that the 175 (NERL, https://​www.​nrel.​gov/​analysis/​india-renewable-integration-study.​html) GW renewable capacity target could be met with ‘all generating stations exploiting their inherent ramping abilities’ and hydropower being repositioned to satisfy peak demand, after the sun sets.

Women in India undertake around 80% of farm work. They are mostly engaged in farm work that is labour intensive and non-mechanized. In rural landowning households, only 16% of women own land (Agarwal et al., Which women own land in India? Between divergent data sets, measures and laws (GDI Working Paper 2020-043). Manchester: The University of Manchester, 2020). The absence of land ownership affects the economic empowerment of women in agriculture. An increase in women's access to economic resources results in higher investment in human capital. Empowerment of women through land and ownership rights can improve children's nutritional status, especially for children under-5. This study aims at understanding the effects of women's land ownership rights on women's empowerment and maternal and child health outcomes in rural India using NFHS-4 data. The results demonstrate a positive relationship between women's land ownership and women's autonomy. It is shown that joint ownership of land for women is insufficient to improve empowerment, and it is only in the case of sole ownership that women's autonomy and decision-making powers improve. A direct positive relationship between women's land ownership and women's health outcome was found. However, no direct association between women's land ownership and children's nutritional status measured by stunting and underweight was observed.

Access to reliable, affordable, and adequate clean cooking energy is critical for social well-being and essential for women's quality of life. This study carried out an extensive survey on cooking energy consumption and related attributes of 810 households in India—Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. The study finds that biomass is a dominant source of cooking energy and women have skewed fuel management and cooking burden. The finding indicates that the abundance of locally available biomass and existing cooking practices may affect cooking fuel choice. Switching to LPG benefits women in several ways, e.g. reduced cooking and utensils cleaning time, reduced drudgery and hardship associated with biomass collection and processing. The finding suggests that the PMUY scheme had helped improve the use of LPG for cooking in beneficiary households. However, cushioning LPG price through refill subsidy remains an important aspect of promoting clean cooking.

Multiple specialised national oil companies (NOCs) operate in the Indian petroleum industry, which is contrary to the dominance of vertically integrated private and NOCs in the global petroleum industry. The recent restructuring decisions by the Indian government of selling its stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and the privatisation of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) are a departure from the past efforts at vertical integration and privatisation of NOCs. However, no study has evaluated whether the current option is the best among the other possible options to restructure the Indian NOCs. In this paper, we compute the structural efficiency of the Indian NOCs under the data envelopment analysis framework and evaluate the various restructuring options available to the Indian NOCs. We create hypothetical integrated firms through mergers between specialised upstream and downstream companies and compare their efficiency with integrated firms to assess the potential of Indian NOCs to improve their technical efficiency. We assemble a novel database of 96 companies comprising of specialised, integrated, private, and NOCs from 30 countries for the year 2018 to compute efficiency. Our results indicate that the merger of ONGC and IOCL and the privatisation of BPCL would have the maximum potential to improve the efficiency of Indian NOCs. We conclude that the government has alternative restructuring options to further improve the efficiency of Indian NOCs.

Cities are at the forefront of global socio-economic change, and rapid urbanisation is the phenomenon of the current century. This has significant implications for economic, environmental and social sustainability. Given this, the present study investigates whether the present pattern of urbanisation in India in creating megacities is sustainable and what can be learnt from the experiences of global megacities. This has been done by comparing two Indian cities, viz., Mumbai and Bangalore, with selected megacities of the world (Shanghai, London and Singapore) using an indicator-based approach under a sustainability framework. Firstly, a hierarchical sustainability framework is developed with a prioritised set of quantifiable indicators under three dimensions of sustainability―economic, social and environmental. Secondly, these indicators are quantified using data from secondary sources and then used for constructing urban sustainability indices (USIs) for selected megacities. Finally, these megacities are evaluated by benchmarking them with a hypothetical sustainable megacity, which has been created using best indicator values realised across cities of the world, and thus sustainability gaps are identified. These gaps essentially represent the targets for achieving sustainable urbanisation. The results indicate that, compared to benchmark index values, both Mumbai and Bangalore have large gaps to bridge concerning economic sustainability but are relatively better placed with respect to social and environmental sustainability. Among the five cities, Singapore emerged at the top with a high USI valued Bangalore and Mumbai occupy the bottom two positions. We believe that the indicator-based approach represents a primary tool to guide policy makers to assist in decision-making and to monitor local strategies/plans. The outcome of the study will contribute to the design of policies, tools, and approaches essential for planning to attain the goal of sustainable urban development.

OECD estimates that global infrastructure investment of USD 95 trillion is needed between 2016 and 2030, even if no further action is taken on climate change. India committed to reducing its emissions by 33% to 35% from 2005 levels to fight back against climate change. This calls for accelerated investments in green infrastructure projects, with more capital expected to come from the private sector. With limited budgets and resources, governments and their agencies are often struggling to meet the demands of infrastructure service delivery. Public–Private Partnership (PPP) arrangements are perceived as compelling alternatives to bridge this infrastructure gap. An exploratory comparison of PPP projects from India indicates that features of green infrastructure projects differ substantially from those of other infrastructure sectors. Green sector PPP projects have smaller project sizes, are predominantly implemented at the state and local level, have modalities that indicate greater risk transfer to the private sector, and are expected to be financially freestanding. This research provides a pathway to re-look at the design of green sector PPP projects to match the business expectations of the private sector and augment the institutional capacities of the project proponents.

The global economic, social, and environmental landscape has transformed radically over the last two decades, fundamentally changing the scope of development in the twenty-first century. It is now well-recognized among development professionals that GDP is a poor measure of a country’s progress and does not necessarily reflect its economic well-being under the circumstances prevailing today (Haddad et al. in Growth is dead, long live growth: The quality of economic growth and why it matters, JICA Research Institute, 2015; Stiglitz in Scientific American, 2020). Many developing countries have transformed from low- to middle-income status in a remarkably short time but continue to face persistent poverty, rising income inequalities, perpetual gender disparities, environmental degradation, and already visible impacts of climate change.

India’s human development scenario presents a paradox. While per capita income has grown rapidly over the last twenty years, pushing up the human development indicator (HDI), lack of progress, or rather slow progress, health and education have held back the rise in HDI. Of the three components of HDI, health has been the worst-performing component, while education has been performing moderately. But above all, income has been the key driver of HDI improvements. In this article, I discuss some of the primary and secondary education problems, where there are many promises, but there are also some serious challenges. The academic research reported here, especially the recent ones that have used randomised controlled trial techniques, provides great insights into what policies can be helpful and what bigger challenges lie ahead in implementing the New Education Policy.