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Comment by rorykoehler | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed feelings about the move of manufacturing to India. Whilst I would like Indians to be economically successful I can't ignore the ecological disaster that is happening in their country. It is absolutely terrifying. The air in Mumbai was unbreathable when I visited and it wasn't even ranking remotely near the top in the most polluted city air in India at the time (Delhi's was 3x as bad). Adding to this the much publicised water shortages, growing population putting strain on the already way over-burdened infrastructure, accelerating pace of urban development and a healthy democratic culture which doesn't instil confidence of them being able to quickly rectify these problems once Chinese style growth has been achieved I can only predict a disaster of biblical proportions for India in the not too distant future. I hope I'm wrong but I fear I'm not.

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Let's use your reasons, but look at it from the opposite side: 1) The largest contributor to the poor air quality in India is the practice of burning to clear fields, cook stoves that use wood, and the burning of cow dung [https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17316978/india-pollution-levels...].

One easy way to bring these people out of poverty is to provide them with good economic opportunities (like factory jobs!). High-tech factories would demand cleaner, more stable power (natural gas, nuclear instead of coal, wood, cow dung).

2) India's totally overpopulated, agreed. One way to decrease the population growth is to bring these people out of poverty. Every developed country has seen their birth rate decline once they move to the middle class. These guys need jobs, college, etc, and people will start having less kids!

Yes it is a timing issue. Can they do it before it's too late?

This is super accurate. Fyi - new Delhi has the most stringent vehicular regulations in India. All commercial vehicles in Delhi run on natural gas - both petrol and diesel are banned.

India's pollution levels are not industrial or vehicular - they are agriculture waste burning. And they are timed with agricultural harvesting cycles.

We have super fragmented farmlands who are really poor and this causes bad practices of disposal .

We are a service based economy - but to be able to bring the bottom of the pyramid out of poverty, we need to accelerate manufacturing and bring modernisation into agriculture. Not to mention education.

both petrol and diesel are banned. Do you have a source for this, I tried to look it up but it seems to only be for 15 years petrol and 10 years old diesel cars.

For commercial vehicles (e.g all Uber rides) petrol and diesel are banned.

15 and 10 year is for privately owned vehicles

Is that really true? Delhi has banned "registration" of such vehicles sure, but vehicles from nearby states (Haryana, Punjab, UP) and others are aplenty on the roads and allowed to fill petrol or diesel. Yes the ban has led to significant impact just pointing out that significant sources of air pollution remain.

I'd noticed that most cabs have out of state plates, and now I know why - thanks.

The three reasons you mentioned are indeed the prevalent reasons but mostly in rural part of india.

In cities like Delhi and Mumbai, none of these is major reason. Pollution from vehicles (especially diesel vehicles), crop waste burning (esp in areas around Delhi) and industrial pollution are the major reasons. These cities are too densed and yet too big.

The sad thing is that there are hundreds of laws to prevent pollution but law enforcement is not a thing in India.

Notice birth rate in India is already close to 2 kids per woman, so not far from "rich countries" averages.

I remember reading a study that said this was not caused by poverty, at least not alone. It's also cultural. There are poorer areas in the world where they don't "burn to clear fields, cook stove with wood and burn cow dung" and also open defecation. At least that's what the study said, and that people doing these weren't all particularly poor. It would require a huge cultural shift and change of habits. Something that is really hard to do unfortunately.

Agreed, this echoes Rosling's points in videos and in Factfulness about how societies actually progress.

India will have a special challenge from mosquitoes and diseases like dengue and malaria, but maybe the best approach to malaria will be turning mosquito-borne diseases into diseases of the rich. We probably can't fully appreciate the solutions a wealthy India (or wealthy Nigeria) would develop, applying new resources, the latest science, and metis to deal with the world's deadliest animal.

[0] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Factfulness#

[1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Health/Most-Lethal-Animal-Mosquit...

Yes, there's a saying that "if a couple has 10 kids in America and 1 dies, it's a tragedy. If a couple has 10 kids in India and 4 die, it's good odds." It's plausible to assume some couples might be hedging their bets however morbid that is. I'm an American that visited India for a few months and would like offer a different point of view. Buying condoms in India is still an embarrassing task since you have to stand within a line crammed full of people, look a shopkeeper in the eyes, and ask him or her to rummage around for whatever condom boxes he/she has in his/her rubbermaid containers. Lol, YC2020 could be condom vending machines in India that accept rupees >.>. Just about all of India's problems stem from the Tragedy of the Commons.

Your comment is rather patronising.

Every year that goes by where India doesn't raise its standard of living, results in millions of stunted childhoods and lives. India needs all the manufacturing growth it can get.

The equivalent to your comment would be Indians on this forum leaving gratuitious remarks about the West ruining the planet with its excessively polluting ways. Just because you cannot see it around you, doesn't mean its not happening.

So there’s the choice of malnutrition or pollution?

Nope - I don’t think there is, but the parent (to my original comment) seemed to be suggesting so

You're reading into something that isn't there. The best and most equitable way to improve quality of life is to ensure a clean environment. Pollution is a great leveler, especially air pollution, as rich and poor have to breathe it alike if they wish to go outside.

It's not patronising at all. It's the reality. They got major shit to deal with. We all do but theirs is on another scale. Pretending they don't because of some misguided fear of being seen as patronising doesn't change it one bit. Like I said I hope they are successful as I hope we all are so we emerge from this existential threat together stronger and more wise but I fear for a place like India based on what I saw more than I do Europe or the US or even SE Asia.

All the more reason to invest, industrialize the economy?

And how do you suggest India "deals with it"? Because you've discarded creating more job opportunities as a viable solution.

I didn't. I said I have mixed feelings. Damned if they do damned if they don't. From what I have read there are some great initiatives to modernise farming methods with technology in order to reduce burning. They should pursue this aggressively. India has a lot of sun. They should pursue solar electricity aggressively. One other thing that struck me was how poorly Indian cities are designed. Not walkable at all. This is a huge mistake that should be acknowledged and worked on. I know its a pipe dream but I really think India could benefit from not embracing the choas so much.

I think to answer your question the best path forward is to continue as is with economic growth targets but also on a political level to be relentless in not accepting that what exists now is remotely good enough. Bring the problems up front and centre and never stop talking about them. Cuties inertia seemed to be particularly strong in India. That said India has some of the brightest minds in the world at the moment and has developed amazing capabilities so the problem isn't insurmountable if it is acknowledged and faced head on.

I felt it was patronizing because the original article is about manufacturing progress in a country that has been notoriously behind the curve on manufacturing. Making iphones is not what one normally associates as a dirty or polluting industrial effort.

Instead of directly discussing the merit (or not) of this move by Apple, you chose to bring up an unrelated topic of general environmental problems in India.

Lets imagine the article was about Apple opening a new manufacturing facility in Texas. Would you have brought up other social/political/environmental challenges that Texas faces (oh i don't know, like racial equity, or floods)? My guess is that would be unlikely, since its kinda off-topic and would be clear you are trying to express some other gratuitous concern you may have about that region.

> Would you have brought up other social/political/environmental challenges that Texas faces (oh i don't know, like racial equity, or floods)?

Yes. For examples, look at the top comments for the top three HN articles on Foxconn in Wisconsin.

sure! lets do this exercise.

1. I did a google search of "site:news.ycombinator.com Foxconn in Wisconsin", and opened the top 3 links.

2. first link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19037625. The top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19038615) seems to be about cronyism and corruption in the terms offered to Foxconn by the Wisconsis government? I could be a bit off, i haven't followed that story closely. But, and this is important, its not about generalized corruption, its about corruption on this Foxconn deal!

3. second link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18328772. here the top comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18329445) is directly quoting the article about Foxconn getting exemptions from the environmental laws in Wisconsin. This is directly relevant to the article posted, again not about generic environmental concerns.

4. third link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19630358. This one doesn't have much commentary, but here we see irrelevant comments which are not directly tied to the article, which are much in the vein of the original comment above.

Does that help clarify my position, and why comments of this nature are not helpful? Its totally fine to bring up environmental/social/political concerns, if they are relevant. They are not in this case.

I'm afraid you are right but people in India don't seem to care. I go there every year and life there compared to 10 years ago is night and day. Even in cities that are further away from the big 4 (e.g. north of New Delhi, even in Himachal Pradesh which used to be very clean as the Himalayas start there) have an extremely visible layer of smog, especially in winters. Pollution is pretty bad and water shortage is becoming more common. But surprisingly, neither the government there or the public seem to treat this as a top national emergency. This may sound elitist, but I consider New Delhi an unlivable city.

It's a difficult tradeoff. Economic development seems to be the only parameter that matters, especially when there are so many in poverty.

Some all time top posts on r/urbanhell are from India (UNPLEASANT IMAGERY WARNING):

https://i.redd.it/n8sdntzy8bb11.jpg

https://i.redd.it/y7i3lb94b1021.jpg

(River Yamuna. This river was reasonably clean 20 years ago but now you can see this terrible foam from the pollution and intense garbage disposal into the rivers. And yes, that's people praying, as Yamuna is considered one of the holy rivers)

Why do they accept their holy rivers being polluted? Surely the religious leadership is not happy with that.

> Surely the religious leadership is not happy with that.

Hindu religion is not like Catholic Church. Unfortunately, in such issues, it is very fragmented and 'decentralized' with multiple different sects, castes, pontiffs etc.

Uttar Pradesh, where Ganga mostly flows has a lot of water heavy low-tech businesses. Leather tanneries is the first thing that comes to my mind. Illiteracy doesn't help either.

Things are changing. Ganga in Varanasi and a few other areas are much cleaner in the last couple years than they have been in the past!

The religious logic here goes like this

"Ganga is so pure, it's literally impossible to make it impure and it has capabilities to wash off all our sins, then how can it possibly be polluted by people bathing/washing their cloths in it?"

I tried making people understand, the only way we've forward is making movies which show what can happen if we don't stop these activities then it will begin making sense to people who have no education background.

Half a decade ago, I visited some very distant relatives in Delhi. I woke up at night unable to breathe properly. The next morning, when I told them about my ordeal, people boasted about their ability to breathe such air and laughed at my inability. The situation has not improved.

Western concerns imposed on developing countries is not a good idea.

Life here is safe and sound for us to think about climate change and other things. When people in India don't even have clean water or electricity they shouldn't give a shit about environment or other things.

It took the US 200 years of development before it started working about these things. And the US is / was a developed nation.

This does not make climate change less of an issue. We're at an important turning point and the developed nations just can't stop it alone.

Of course they should be doing way, way more and support ways of cleaner development financially.

Every single one of these new fangled issues was not an issue thirty years ago in the US. So...

What makes the West the arbiter of such issues for other countries?

This isn't about east and west it's about today and the past. In fact if you look at the air pollution levels in New York and Chicago in the 70s they were very high and something was done about them. Currently developed nations had the advantage of being able to externalise the environmental cost of pollution without it affecting them as much immediately during development. Developing nations today don't have that luxury. Time is running out.

> This does not make climate change less of an issue. We're at an important turning point and the developed nations just can't stop it alone.

India really isn't much of an issue on that front. The 1.3 billion people living in India produce less than half the greenhouse gas emission of the USA, which has less than 1/4 of India's population.

We all know the US is the worst offender for greenhouse gases but there's more to pollution than global warming.

Absolutely! My response was specifically adressing the climate change aspect, not pollution in general.

Not giving a shit about the environment isn't such a great way to get clean water.

If all the "developing countries" don't learn from developed countries' mistakes everyone will be poor 100 years from now, because it'll keep going to shit same as it is now.

Again a priority for the US.. Imagine if British in late 1700s had said and made sure that "we will only hand off this beautiful country to you if you abolish slavery". It took a whopping 100 years before anything happened.

These are all imagined, self-righteous concerns.

Leave a country to sort out its own misery in its own time. We have meddled and tortured enough out of these countries already.

If there is any priority or imposition, I would want to think like Bill Gates... His priorities are aligned with the well-being of the developing nations not the US.

I don't know why you're so into the United States and more importantly, I don't follow what you're saying at all. Are you implying here that country-level concerns are more important than global concerns?

Your concerns are real but not germane to the issue. The main issue with air quality in Indian cities is particulate matter, which has little to do with semiconductor manufacturing or assembly.

Everything is booming in India. I can see huge amounts of manufacturing moving there in the coming decade as countries start to fear China.

This isn't quite the truth. In fact, I'd say that everything has kind of stalled in India. Real estate development has stalled, the auto industry is in a downward spiral (8 consecutive months of negative growth; sales down almost 25% YoY), and demand for consumer electronics is dwindling. There's a credit crunch thanks to banks getting rid of non performing assets. Add to that, there's a shortage of water.

Certainly didn't feel like it in Pune. New towns are mushrooming up along the highway like there's no tomorrow.

Pune, I reckon, is one of those boom towns since so many corporates are moving there because Bengaluru and Mumbai are too overcrowded.

But the car sales slump, at least, is very well documented. There's been a drastic fall in demand and everyone is bandying about myriad reasons (fuel prices, ridesharing, etc.). I just think people don't have enough money

I always thought that the Indian population is at a disastrous proportions but I saw this website recently that compared size of a country with another country - https://www.mylifeelsewhere.com/country-size-comparison/indi...

It seems like India is 9 times the size of Japan and 10 times the population. It's high but its not unmanageably high for a fertile piece of land with good weather for significant part of the year.

All your arguments about political system incapable of fixing problems quickly still stand though.

India is clearly an outsider though, even compared to japan: https://pudding.cool/2018/10/city_3d/

Amusingly, villages in India are rapidly getting depopulated much like their Japanese counterparts. Population is mostly an issue in urban centers.

I have to hedge my tentative comments by pointing out that India is probably doing the best wildlife conservation job of any country in the world bar New Zealand. That they can faciltate such large populations of tigers and elephants in such a densely populated country speaks volumes in favour of them.

you need a lot of money to fix these problems. successful manufacturing hub will bring that money. This is a pattern. Indian booming tech sector led to a lot of improvements

Core issue in India is systemic corruption ... failure of rule of law a close second ... Until these are addressed that culture will squander it's future

Please. It is well documented that systemic corruption was introduced at scale by the East India Company and we carry a lot of arcane baggage from the erstwhile colonial power.

We are eradicating it through education and technology to the extent possible, albeit at a slower pace than we would ideally like.

I don't think anyone is arguing why there is systemic corruption. The parent was merely pointing out that it's a problem today.

If it's of any comfort - corruption is alive and well in most other countries as well, they simply have more resources per citizen and as a result, it is better disguised.

The solution seems to be to raise the standard of living of everyone involved - corruption is not going anywhere, it seems to be a deeply rooted human trait.

That might be an excessively pessimistic attitude - intolerance of corruption is also a deeply rooted human trait.

It seems to me there might be some tradeoff between having a flexible society and having a just one, the more leeway any particular actor has, the more they can use that leeway to gain personal advantage. It seems at least possible that a thorough study of the factors affecting levels of corruption could improve the overall system to have both more personal freedom and less overall corruption.

While it is a big issue, and still quite prevalent, things are changing fast thanks to digitization of much of the government workflows. There is almost no corruption in departments that have been fully digitized.

It's a long way to go, but thankfully technology seems to be solving a human problem.

I agree completely but money isn't the only parameter. Timing, rate of environmental degradation, culture, politics and future unknown curve balls (luck) will all play a large part in the development of this history.

Democratic process is slow but i am optimistic that these problems will be solved as the country grows richer. It’s chaotic but there is progress in this madness however slow.

The manufacturing site and everything was set 15 years ago in China with very little pollution consideration in mind.

I hope they have learned their lesson and these manufacturing won't bring as much pollution / unit. While I don't expect it to be zero pollution, I just hope improvement are being made, and since Foxconn is working with Apple, I believe they will surely force a few criteria.

" 1800s England, Manchester child workers were losing their hands to clean dirt from textile machine without stoping them because it can effect their productivity. Same children who has just cleaned narrow chimney. "

I think this pollution and all those sufferings are first step of industrialisation you might say what about current england or germany, I guess they suffered enough to make changes.

You may be right however I hope we can learn from the past in an effort to continuously improve.

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