Giving Compass' Take:

• Roshan Kishorer at IDR writers about how the rising private wealth goes hand in hand with a deepening ecological crisis, and how both are symptomatic of the larger Indian growth story.

• In what ways can funders in India and the US provide support in this area? What role does education philanthropy play?

• Here's an article on civil society's lasting impact on India. 

In 2010, Aurangabad district in Maharashtra grabbed the headlines when it made the record books for placing the biggest bulk order for Mercedes Benz luxury cars; 65 cars worth ₹150 crore were bought in one go. Today, this district is witnessing a booming demand for a completely different kind of product: water tankers. A Hindustan Times story by How India Lives shows that the demand for water tankers between the first week of May and the third week of June in Aurangabad doubled, from 3,934 to 7,830, between 2018 and 2019. Aurangabad had the highest orders for tankers among all districts in Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai) both 2018 and 2019. The story of Aurangabad, where rising private wealth and a deepening ecological crisis have gone hand in hand, is symptomatic of the larger Indian growth story.

The conflict between economic growth and environmental destruction, of which water scarcity is now an important aspect, is often seen as a given. However, India has done much worse on this front than others.

A comparison with China using World Bank statistics proves this point. In 1962, India’s per capita GDP (in 2010 constant dollars) was almost twice that of China. India’s renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (henceforth per capita water), measured in cubic metres, was 75% of what it was for China in 1962. By 2014, the latest period for which water statistics are available, India’s per capita water had become 54% of what it was for China, even as China’s 2014 per capita GDP became 3.7 times that of India.

Read the full article about India's economic growth by Ayesha Marfatia at India Development Review (IDR).