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In the interplay between emission management and monetary returns, cost-effectiveness is a critical issue in the metric of a transport system.

On this World Environment Day, we revisit the imperative to balance the rising transportation needs of a growing population in the capital city of Delhi with the mandate to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) vehicular emissions to contain the skyrocketing pollution levels in the city. The instrumental role played by an efficient transport system in the growth of a city is indisputable, as it is one of the key defining features of an agglomeration economy. If the city is taken as a metaphor for life, its transport network is the blood that keeps this life running. In this context, the public transport system in Delhi has frequently come under the scanner. The fact that its residents spend a large part of their daily lives on its congested and polluted roads while commuting between their homes and workplaces does little to assuage this concern. The public transport in the metropolis includes the Delhi Metro, buses, three-wheelers, cycle-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, and taxis. Among these, the Delhi Metro, since its inception over 25 years ago, has proved to be one of the most popular and viable means of transport in the city. While easing travel and reducing traffic on the roads, it has also significantly helped curb pollution in the capital. It is estimated that every commuter who chooses the Delhi Metro over an on-road vehicle contributes to an emission reduction of about 100 mg of carbon dioxide for an average trip of 10Km.

However, in the complex interplay between emission management and actual monetary returns, cost-effectiveness is a critical issue in the overall efficiency metric of a transport system. And the Delhi Metro has some ground to cover on this metric. Comparisons with other cities show that, for its size, the Delhi Metro carries far fewer riders than almost any other city’s system. According to data collated just before the pandemic, it had a daily rider average of 2.8 million travelling on a 314-km track. Compare this with corresponding figures for other cities—the smaller metro system of 286 km in China’s Shenzhen city was carrying 60 per cent more riders, at 4.5 million. The even smaller metro system of Mexico City, with a track of 226 km, too carried more than 4 million riders daily. And Singapore, with less than two-thirds of Delhi’s track length at that time, at 199 km, accounted for a ridership of 3.1 million, 10 per cent higher than that of Delhi. Despite its efficiency in terms of man and time management, the low passenger track ratio of the Delhi Metro is, therefore, a puzzle that needs to be solved. One reason could be its relatively high fares, which may be beyond the means of a low-income commuter. A recent Centre for Science and Environment study revealed that among leading Metros across the world, the Delhi Metro remains the second-most unaffordable system in terms of the percentage of income spent for using it. Thus, an unskilled daily-wage labourer in Delhi spends an average of 8 per cent of his income by travelling on a non-AC bus, 14 per cent on an AC bus, and 22 per cent on the Delhi Metro. Such a situation underscores the need for developing other modes of green public travel in the city, and electric vehicles (EVs) are ostensibly stepping in to bridge this gap. With their promise of zero emissions, cleaner production techniques, and use of eco-friendly materials, EVs offer hope of controlling both air and noise pollution. According to the Indian Network on Climate Change Assessment (INCCA), India is the third largest emitter of CO2 in the world.

Official data on automobile sales shows that they accounted for 55 per cent of all such vehicles registered in Delhi since January 2023. The bulk of these EVs are two-wheelers, with as many as 1,745 electric two-wheelers having been registered, as of 14 March 2023. And therein lies another puzzle. One of the biggest challenges in the use of e-scooters pertains to their transportation and recharging system. The dockless e-scooters have to be dispatched to and collected from the charging spots using trucks, which will continue to emit CO2. How can we then strike a balance between meeting the increased transportation needs of Delhi while curtailing environmental pollution? The answer may perhaps lie in traversing the middle path, such as the adoption of principles of the Mission Lifestyle for Environment (LiFE), announced by Prime Minister Modi at the 2021 Glasgow UN Climate Change Conference. Mission LiFE is based on the concept of ushering in behavioural change, supported by policy measures and infrastructural development. The Government would also do well to prevent cluttering Delhi’s roads with EVs before putting in place a fully functional infrastructure for shifting from fossil to renewable energy sources. Only such a cohesive balance between the use of multiple modes of transport can usher in a green and lean transit system in the national capital.

(Anupma Mehta is Editor and Sanjib Pohit is Professor at NCAER. Views are personal.)

This involves accounting for both environmentally beneficial and harmful products, and doing the required data-gathering.

Growing environmental concerns have resulted in the demand for green national accounts that highlight the stock of environmental wealth, and its use and depletion by a society in its conventional national accounts. Incorporation of green accounts in conventional GDP requires expansion of the definition of production, consumption, and wealth. Both environmentally beneficial and harmful products must be accounted for in the national accounts. The social value of such products must be integrated with related economic activities.

In production it would amount to including environmentally beneficial/harmful goods and services. Final consumption would be segregated based on zero carbon generating, less environmentally degrading, and major environment depleting products.

The investment vector would then have zero carbon and conventional carbon generating technologies as categories. And financial services would need to show advances to both these technologies. As for human capital, bifurcation of jobs in conservation and conventional sectors would be needed. Factor payments advanced to human capital would then be split as green and conventional technology salaries.

Income of the government would need to illustrate taxes levied on and subsidies advanced to polluting sectors, environment-conservating technologies and efficient technologies.

The structure of production, costs of production and incomes generated by factors of production, flows of goods and services within the domestic economy and with the rest of the world are accounted in the ‘Supply and Use’ tables of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

Green national accounts
The formation of green national accounts, therefore, amounts to splitting of each good and service in the Supply and Use tables into at least two sectors (green and non-green). Green accounts should include activities that directly serve an environmental purpose and those that do not aim at zero emissions but help in reducing emissions. Such a compilation requires primary survey on environmental activities/ producers/ products as units engaged in environmental activity may also produce non-environmental products or vice-versa. It might be easier to describe the whole economic structure in terms of products as it is easier to capture products than activities. In this approach, products would be classified as pure-environmental, environmentally-cleaner or ‘normal/conventional’.

In case industries, instead of products, are used to describe the economy, producers will have to be segregated as primary, secondary and ancillary producers of environmental products. Inclusion of ancillary activities could help track and monitor emissions more efficiently. The treatment of ancillary products in the accounts will differ based on whether industry or product approach is used.

A green concordance table stating the correspondence between pure-environmental skills, cleaner skills and normal skills to products/ activities would also be required to classify the salaries made against each type of skill per product/activity. At the heart of its construct lies in estimating jobs in each and every type of production process with the help of a primary survey. This would also help in estimating direct and indirect employment linkages.

Though details of production, consumption, investment, employment, taxation and subsidies of sectors could be at different levels (depending on data availability), ideally they should be mutually consistent, as in describing the social value of each in monetary terms. The resultant green GDP would evaluate inter-generational well-being.

The writer is a consultant at NCAER.

The country is under pressure to alter its definition of unemployment to an international benchmark. Its once-vaunted statistical system is at a low ebb.

Our faith in India’s once-vaunted statistical system is at such a low ebb that it is hard to trust its judgment, even when it is based on a sound rationale. How to define and measure employment is one such example. The Indian definition of employment does not meet international standards. This has resulted in strong recommendations from international bodies to revise India’s definition of who is employed and who is not. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has urged India to follow the standards laid down by the 19th International Conference of Labour Statisticians (ICLS-19), held in 2013.

The question is: Are these recommendations appropriate for a transitional economy, in which a large proportion of the population continues to engage in agriculture, often supplemented by casual wage work? To evaluate this, we first need to understand the recommendations made by ICLS-19 and then examine them within the Indian context. Two major recommendations of ICLS-19 are: (1) Employment data should rely on short-term measures of employment, in most cases, a 7-day measure, capturing employment during the preceding week; (2) it should measure all types of work, including unpaid work, but define a person as being employed only if he or she engaged in producing goods or services for pay or profit. This distinction between work and employment may have critical implications for the measurement of progress towards SDGs.

The global recession of 2008 profoundly affected high-income countries and cast its shadow on countries and sectors closely linked to the global economy. In this context, international labour statisticians urged countries to obtain employment statistics that would examine and monitor “conditions of work” and construct measurements “useful for labour-management negotiations”. This required good estimates of underemployment resulting in advocacy for a short measurement period to reduce recall bias and limiting focus on activities for pay or profit. Exclusion of production of goods or services for own use was possibly put in place due to a conviction that countries were inflating employment rates for excluded groups, particularly women, by counting distress work instead of providing paying jobs.

But does this really make sense for countries with a large informal sector and subsistence farming? An interesting paper by Isis Gaddis from the World Bank and her colleagues shows that the adoption of this definition would lead to a large reduction in the proportion of the population considered employed in rural Nigeria and Malawi. This would reduce the proportion of individuals defined as being employed by as much as 50 per cent in some conditions.

This could also be the case with India. My calculations based on the India Human Development Survey, conducted by the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research in 2011-12, show that nearly half the households that undertake cultivation do not sell their produce that year. Often this is because farms are small and barely produce enough for family consumption. However, many small and marginal farmers also work as wage labourers or salaried workers, and the impact of this restriction is relatively minor: Over 90 per cent of the individuals who worked at any time over one year in farming, as wage labour, in animal care, or business will be classified as employed according to the ICLS-19 definition of work for pay or profit if we take a year-long perspective. However, this masks substantial gender differences. As much as 95 per cent of men and only 85 per cent of women who are currently considered employed would be counted as being employed if the pay or profit limitation is placed. This would considerably reduce the already low estimates of women’s employment.

The recommendation to rely on a one-week reference period is even more likely to affect this classification. While a short reference period would reduce measurement error, it would be akin to looking for keys under a streetlight. A vast proportion of rural Indians engage in multiple activities combining farm work with work in construction, MGNREGS work, or other work in nearby towns. However, when it is time to sow or harvest, they devote all their time to farming. When surveys occur during this period, many individuals would be classified as farmers, and based on IHDS estimates, 45 per cent may be classified as producing only for home consumption. Thus, they would not be counted as employed even if they are engaged in income-producing activities during other parts of the year.

Changing definitions would underestimate the strength of the Indian economy and not serve any policy purpose. Despite this potential for an artificial decline in employment, the advocacy from international bodies for adopting ICLS-19 recommendations remains strong. Yet, surprisingly few cautionary voices are being heard outside the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), and even MOSPI has yet to articulate its viewpoint persuasively. This points to a bigger tragedy. India’s once-strong statistical system has suffered a severe reputational loss in recent years, brought about by MOSPI’s disavowal of its own poverty data and failure to invest in its analytical capacity. Unless the statistical system develops the self-confidence to assertively engage with international organisations, is willing to adopt global best practices where it makes sense and resists pressure to do so when it does not serve policy needs, it will continue to be held in low esteem nationally and internationally.

The writer is Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, and professor and centre director, NCAER National Data Innovation Centre. Views are personal