Bad Sanitation Causes India’s GDP Growth to Drop by 300 Thousand Crore Annually

While the economic survey tabled by the Union Finance Minister predicts a GDP growth of 8 to 10 percent in 2016-17, experts at the 3rd business show in Shillong revealed that bad sanitation is causing a drop in the country’s GDP rate by 2.5 percent annually costing the country a loss of 300 thousand crore every year.

“India has a very big sanitation problem. The World bank has estimated that water borne diseases caused by mosquitoes breeding, stagnant water is causing India’s GDP to go down by 2.5 percent and that is something in the order of 300 thousand crore every year,” said Sanjay Deshpande, Executive Director and Head of operations of Canada based Clearford Water system Inc.

Elaborating more Deshpande explained that the bad sanitation system in the country is paving way for water borne diseases to flourish and the worst sufferers are the remote villagers.

“The worst sufferers are the rural lot. In remote villages if somebody falls sick they have to travel 30-40 kms to get to the nearest government hospitals tending to the sickness and losing out on making money,” he said adding that getting control of this is very important for India as it allows people to use that money to improve their own standard of life.

Commenting on the situation of the North East region, Deshpande observed that the region has a lot of remote villages and is highly vulnerable to the risk of contamination if sanitation is not handled properly.

“NE has a lot of Public Service Unit’s and corporate investing if their CSR funds can be utilised instead of building toilets but total sanitation so that there is no contaminated water going to the ground or rivers and there is no chance of children or people coming in contact with the sewage,” he suggested.

“If we can deal with this, there is huge potential for raising the standards of life across this entire area by huge amount,” he added.

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Taxonomy

• Disease
• Sanitation