Sanitation and public health is one of the major concerns of any urban local body. In fact, it would not be incorrect to state that sanitation is the most immediate priority of any Municipal Corporation. Vijayawada, spread over 60 sqkm and a population of 1.1 m, has about 4000 public health workers involved in collection and transportation of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). However, the Corporation is the target of repeated complaints and negative press coverage about how its sanitation staff neglects the slums and panders to the well off areas. At the risk of being politically incorrect, I have a different take on this issue.
Like any similar City, Vijayawada too has its own distinct upper-middle and upper class localities and slums. Apart from the size of houses and the wider road layouts, there are a few other distinguishing characteristics of the two areas. The one which is the subject of this post relates to cleanliness and why the posher areas look cleaner than slums. My contention is that well off areas look cleaner because of inherent personal dispositions of its residents, when compared to those of slum residents.
We need to control some parameters before we draw our conclusions. Let us assume that both localities have sewerage and water lines, roads and side drains. Let also assume that same number of workers are working in these areas. However in practice, the slum areas, due to their greater vulnerability to unhygenic conditions and epidemics, has more staff, higher materials consumption, and gets much more attention and supervision than the richer localities.
If more resources are spent on slums than the richer areas, why are the slums not proportionately cleaner? My contention is that the more well off people attach greater premium to cleanliness in their neighbourhood, than the less well off. A little bit of economics will help clarify it. The Marginal Social Benefit (MSB) to an individual or a community from any activity, is the benefit accrued to them due to an additional unit of that activity. Similarly, the Marginal Social Cost (MSC) to an individual or community from any activity, is the extra cost inflicted on them due to an additional unit of activity.
The MSC of keeping a locality clean increases, as the degree of cleanliness demanded increases. It is fairly easy, through the municipal sanitation workers, to keep an area reasonably clean. But the efforts of sanitation staff can only get you so far. Keeping an area very clean requires a much higher level of concerted effort from each resident, individually and collectively. In fact, the Marginal Cost of every additional unit of cleanliness keeps increasing, irrespective of the economic status of the residents of the area.
But the MSB of cleanliness is much higher for richer people when compared to slum residents. (Why the richer people attach greater premium to cleanliness shall be a subject for another post) Therefore, the residents of the richer areas have a greater incentive to maintaining their areas clean, and in the process even incur the additional opportunity cost for achieving the same. It follows that the richer people attach greater premium to keeping their neighbourhood clean, by both maintaining their personal surroundings clean and by being more demanding on the services of the Municipal sanitation staff.
This logic is similar to that underlying the concept of carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol. Under the Protocol, lower cost polluters (those who can control their pollution at lower cost) can sell their carbon credits accumulated by adopting energy efficient technologies, to higher cost polluters (whose cost of reducing pollution is higher). More infamously Larry Summers, when he was with the World Bank, advocated shifting of polluting industries from developed countries to developing countries, where the marginal cost of every additional unit of pollution is lesser.
This logic can also be extended to explain as to why environmental and labour standards are immediate issues of public concern in the developed countries than in the developing countries. The MSB associated with progress in these issues are much higher in the former than the latter.
4 comments:
"If more resources are spent on slums than the richer areas.."
You really think so, don't you? Take any infrastructure parameter, roads, electricity, sweepers, etc., the richer areas are disproportionately grabbing more resources than the slums. The state also reacts much quicker if the rich people complains about something. And of course, education helps.
I have seen people in many posh areas who throw their litter anywhere other than in the bins. The attitude is that its the sweeper's job to clean it up, which he invariably does. There is much greater civic sense among the poor than among the rich.
Thank you so much, I really appreciate this comment. All my comments are made based on fairly hands on personal experience of the reality in Vijayawada Municipal Corporation, and also a reasonable understanding of the situation in similar urban contexts in India. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I will argue that the reality can be different from perceived wisdom, and is so in this case.
Yes, the rich grab much more resources than the poor. In fact the poorer areas are more poor by way of infrastructure deficit than income deficit, and both feed each other! Fortunately, this is changing in an ironical manner. With all the richer areas having been covered with sewerage and water supply networks, most of the investments in these basic services now (For example, under JNNURM in Vijayawada, we are spending about Rs 1000 Cr, of which more than Rs 750 Cr are being spent in the poorer areas. And this is true of many other cities) are being made in the poorer areas and slums.
To the more specific issue of richer areas being cleaner than poorer areas, my contention is reiterated. The richer areas are cleaner than poorer areas not because the rich have more civic sense and responsibility. It is so because the there are certain inherent characteristics of the richer people and their areas (more time to concentrate on civic issues, willing to pay more to keep their areas clean, have more logistics to maintain cleanliness in their own houses, slum roads are much narrower and drains smaller etc) that keeps them cleaner.
We have spent nearly two years intensively promoting the concept of Resident's Welfare Associations (RWAs) in Vijayawada. We started with 4 or 5 active RWAs. Today there are more than 220 active RWAs, covering all the major middle class and above residential localities. But despite specifically focussing on the slums, we have had limited success. It is not because the poor have less civic sense than the rich that we have not succeeded, but because the poor have less time and resources, and hence the incentive to be active participants in the RWAs. Education, as you say, certainly adds to the incentive.
Further, thanks to the ubiquitous media coverage of sanitation and the much greater potential for sanitation related problems, we generally spend much greater resources (personnel and physical) on sanitation in the slums. For example, in the VMC we have a ratio of 1:2 for workers per household in slums than in richer areas, anti-malaria activities are much more intensively done in slums.
And yes, I have also spent more than two years administering tribal areas and readily acknowledge that they keep their surroundings much more cleaner than city residents. But we may comparing apples and oranges here, given the totally different contexts. These tribals are much frugal and do not employ or use many of the products and activities that contribute towards creating unhygenic and insanitary conditions in our cities.
I again reiterate that my comments are based purely on factual and objective (even academically curious) observations of the reality, which have often surprised me as much as it would have shocked many of the readers!
I disagree. You seem to be using tautological logic to suggest something like: "poorer areas are less hygienic, less cleaner, ill-maintained as compared to the richer areas, not because they are poorer areas, but rather because the poor don't have as many resources as the rich!" Or to quote you:
"It is not because the poor have less civic sense than the rich that we have not succeeded, but because the poor have less time and resources"
It's like saying the poorer areas are unclean not on account of being poorer areas but because they have an element of poorness.
Besides, "let us assume that both localities have sewerage and water lines, roads and side drains. Let also assume that same number of workers are working in these areas. However in practice, the slum areas, due to their greater vulnerability to unhygenic conditions and epidemics, has more staff, higher materials consumption, and gets much more attention and supervision than the richer localities."
That's really making a lot of convenient assumptions, whereas in truth, economically marginalised areas are given lesser attention by civic bodies. Any such structure tends to profit the economically privileged class over the poorer sections in society. Education (which, at least, you seem to admit) being one such tool to do so.
thanks again for the comment. No tautology here, but only a comment based on observed reality. And no convenient assumptions. There are also a few slums, with people having different livelihoods, which have as good civic infrastructure in place as the richer areas (though it is true that there are many more which do not have). I referred to such slums to make a more meaningful comparison of areas, so as to highlight the contrast in demand side responses.
Let me reconstruct the logic, with regard to sanitation.
1. The quality of sanitation in any area consists of both supply-side and demand-side resources and efforts.
2. Both rich and poor areas have atleast the same proportion of staff working and materials deployed. Despite all the bias inherent in Government systems for the rich and their areas (it is more a bias for the rich, than against the poor), administrative issues are generally free from such biases. The supply side resources and efforts are therefore more or less same.
3. The time and effort spent by the residents of richer areas, as a group or collective, in maintaining cleanliness of their areas is much more than what poorer people can afford.
4. The demand side deficit is therefore higher for the poorer areas, and this translates into less cleanliness in these areas.
With all the righteous indignation against the pro-rich bias in Government systems and academic curiosity, for over two years in Vijayawada we have consciously spent more resources and effort/time on sanitation in the poorer areas. As mentioned before, we have tried to bring in active citizen participation by promoting RWAs. Despite these, the demand side response that play a significant part in cleanliness in residential localities, has been found to be weaker in poorer areas than richer areas. I think the sample is fairly large (a city of 1.1 million pop, and over 3.5 lakhs in slums) and the time frame (2 years) long enough to draw the afore-mentioned conclusions.
In recent years, thanks to among other things, greater vigilance by other stakeholders, Government responsiveness to civic concerns in poorer areas have improved significantly.
The purpose of this post was only to highlight an observation, which needs to be accounted for in our policy responses to issues like sanitation in urban areas. There is a school of thought which maintains very vehemently that greater civic participation can be the single-pill solution to our sanitation and other problems (like maintaining quality of works, responsiveness of employees etc) in poorer areas. Yes, civic participation is important and definitely the only sustainable long-term management solution to the issue(s). But till then we need to have other policy responses in place. (Like slowly decoupling from such activites in richer areas by encouraging and strengthening RWAs, and then focussing the scarce resources and efforts on the poorer areas so as to build up capacity) Simply handing over sanitation to the residents and RWAs in slums will not work!
Post a Comment