Dev 360 | Pollution No Side Issue, It Tests India’s Political Will

Fun fact: Gita Gopinath’s Davos remark — that India’s toxic air drags down growth more than tariffs — was not triggered by any groundbreaking discovery. The Harvard professor and former IMF chief economist simply repeated what has been said many times before. “If you look at the impact of pollution on the Indian economy, it is far more consequential than any impact of any tariffs that have been put on India so far,” she said. Many health experts, environmental activists within and outside the country, as well as international agencies like the World Health Organisation, World Bank and global consulting firm Dalberg have long been hammering this basic truth: health crises not only make for a sickly population, they also carry devastating economic costs. Winter after winter, this resident of New Delhi, like so many others in the city, has been waking up to acrid air, feeling miserable at not being able to walk or run for weeks on end, and at seeing small children with nebulisers. It’s not just Delhi. Everyone who has lived experience of India knows this even without reading any reports. It’s our reality. The 2019 Global Burden of Disease study on the health and economic impact of air pollution in India, published in The Lancet Planetary Health (2021), detailed state-level impacts, showing pollution-linked diseases cost India lives and billions in lost productivity and healthcare. The collaborative research, a joint effort between researchers in institutions like the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), pointed out: “Air pollution is a major cause of premature death and disease, and is the largest environment health threat globally. Besides endangering health and shortening lifespans, air pollution adversely affects economic productivity,” it said. “The economic loss due to lost output from premature deaths and morbidity attributable to air pollution is high in India, equivalent to 1.36% of India’s GDP in 2019,” the report said. A further source of economic loss is the healthcare cost of treating diseases attributable to air pollution, it pointed out. “Based on National Health Accounts data, we estimated the total health-care cost in India in 2019 to be $103.7 billion. With air pollution responsible for 11.5% of the disease burden (measured as DALYs) in India in 2019, a crude estimate of the healthcare cost for air pollution-related diseases would be $11.9 billion (or 0.44% of India’s GDP),” the authors stated. DALY stands for disability-adjusted life year. One DALY represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health. It’s not just academics and NGOs who underline these key facts. Dalberg Advisers, in partnership with Clean Air Fund and Confederation of Indian Industry, noted in 2021 that air pollution costs Indian businesses about $95 billion annually –around 3% of GDP, equal to half of all tax collected or 150% of India’s healthcare budget. So why is Ms Gopinath the subject of a mass of news stories in India when she said nothing new? For one, because it was the World Economic Forum in Davos, where the global elite powwow. Many Indians framed her comment as a swipe at India. Her comments coincided with India’s winter pollution crises (Delhi-NCR smog), making her remarks timely and relatable. Clips went viral on YouTube, Instagram, X, etc, with television channels analysing or debating them. In India’s hyper-polarised milieu, the tariff-pollution comparison fuelled partisan spins — supporters saw data-driven urgency; critics viewed it as elitist or anti-India. Which brings me to the urgent need to flag the elephant in the room. Is dirty air a problem only if it is discussed in Davos and framed as an economic growth killer, but not when it is the staple of domestic headlines and our lives? For how long must one normalise dirty air, streets, water even as their link to death and disease is glaringly obvious? Is Ms Gopinath being pilloried because she brought up the issue at a gathering of the global business elite? Let us face it. Global investors are not stupid. They know all too well about India’s toxic air, especially during certain months of the year. This is not an old story. It is now. The uproar over Gita Gopinath’s remarks came because she bluntly stated at Davos 2026 that pollution is a bigger economic threat to India than tariffs, challenging the dominant political narrative that focuses more on trade wars and external pressures. The fact is health issues are rarely just about health; they are windows into politics, economics and community priorities. India’s pollution crisis — air, water, garbage — has become a prism through which political and economic priorities are being judged. It reduces productivity, raises healthcare costs, deters investment, and even undermines India’s ambitions as a sports hub, with international athletes withdrawing from tournaments due to hazardous air. That is the stark reality. It is part of the package, comes with the applause stemming from economic growth. The bigger picture is clear: air pollution reflects energy policy, transport planning and industrial regulation. Water pollution reveals infrastructure investment and governance capacity. Garbage management exposes whether waste is treated as a liability or resource. India is not the only country grappling with pollution. There was a time when Beijing and Delhi competed in the toxic air stakes. A 2007 World Bank report, Cost of Pollution in China: Economic Estimates of Physical Damages, documented how rapid growth and industrialisation came with huge hidden costs — crop damage, material damage and massive health impacts from air and water pollution. The report, collaborative research by a joint Chinese and international expert team contracted by the World Bank, pointed out that “although technological change, urbanisation, and China’s high savings rate suggest that continued rapid growth is feasible, the resources that such growth demands and the environmental pressures it brings have raised grave concerns about the long-term sustainability and hidden costs of growth. Many of these concerns are associated with the impacts of air and water pollution”. China woke up. India need not copy China, but India can learn from China’s experience. Beijing has cleaned up its air significantly. That said, it is also equally clear that while the government must treat pollution as an urgent national priority, citizens and communities also have a role. Every small action counts — do not litter, avoid driving polluting vehicles, demand and use public transport. The bottom line: In India, pollution is not a side issue — it is a hidden tax on growth and a test of political will. At stake is our collective future.



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