April Public Forum Topic Analysis | Champion Briefs
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March 26, 2014

April Public Forum Topic Analysis

By Christian Chessman

Resolved: Prioritizing economic development over environmental protection is in the best interest of the people of India.

Introduction

The April 2014 topic for Public Forum Debate deals with a perennial problem that faces the developing countries generally and the people of India specifically – the apparent tradeoff between economic development and environmental protection. Because industrial and post-industrial countries have already damaged the global environment severely during their development phases, modern developing countries face an unprecedented dilemma. These countries face a choice between the cheap, readily available forms of economic development that hurt the environment, and an impending ecological catastrophe in the form of global warming, biosphere collapse and species extinction, and toxic aerosolized and pollution. The best policy choice depends in part on determining who the policy is being designed to serve. The April 2014 topic takes a particular approach in restricting debaters to analyzing the impact of development and environmental degradation on the people of India specifically. On face, this disproportionately limits negative arguments because the effects of degradation are global in nature, while development is a primarily local phenomenon. Negatives can no longer point to many of the documented effects of global warming in other countries when weighing impacts. A topic without this restrictive wording affords the negative the ability to point to the 19,000 Japanese people killed by global warming induced super-tsunamis last year – but the April 2014 topic restricts the relevance of such impacts. As this example demonstrates, debaters that win rounds on this topic will make their impacts as specific to India as possible.

Relevant Impacts and Impact Framing

One way in which debaters can prioritize their impacts is by controlling the framework through which the judge evaluates impacts. The resolutional phrase “in the best interest” is opened to interpretation, and both affirmative and negative should interpret the phrase in their favor. Affirmative impacts are more apparent in the short term – food reduces starvation, medicine reduces illness, strengthened rule of law reduces crime – while negative impacts tend to be longer term – cleaning up pollution eventually hurts fewer people, reducing emissions eventually leads to slower warming, filtering water eventually solves water-borne health concerns. For that reason, affirmative debaters should frame short term risks as the most important, while negatives should frame long-term risks as the most important. The affirmative could argue that long-term crises are reversible, while short term impacts are not. In other words, the people that die of hunger will never be brought back to life, while it is possible to take a variety of steps to fix the environment even after it has been damaged through increased technology1. The affirmative could also argue that long-term risks are less certain and less probable because predictions become exponentially more complex as they predict farther into the future, because we cannot anticipate all the possible changes that might affect the impact in question2. In contrast, negative debaters should frame long-term impacts as the most important, and can do this best by emphasizing the question of magnitude. While the affirmative may save hundreds of lives – or even thousands of lives –global warming and environmental degradation threaten death tolls in the billions. Even if the affirmative may save a few in the short term, more lives are eventually lost as a result of degradation – and if all lives have equal moral value, then the choice that saves the most lives is the best choice even if it is a hard one. When arguing for their framework, debaters ought to make two types of argument – first, that their framework is the best framework and second, even if their opponent’s framework is better, their case has impacts there as well. For example, a negative debater reading a global warming case could argue that long-term threats are more important, but additionally argue that preventing water pollution leads to less water-borne disease in the short term. That way the negative debater gives the judge the ability to vote for them regardless of which framework they use to evaluate impacts.

Defining Development and Getting Kinky3

Development as a concept is somewhat indeterminate, and may refer to different practices or indicators in different pieces of evidence – a fact debaters can take advantage of when pointing out a disconnect between various studies cited in their opponent’s case. The dominant definition in the field is established by the United Nations, which defines development as: “an inclusive four-fold transformation towards a more prosperous and productive economy, a more capable state, a more responsive polity, and fairer and more just societies”4. This definition is a good starting point, but extremely broad – if development is anything that makes “a more capable state” then almost any policy can be called development. Broad definitions of development give the affirmative an advantage by allowing them to designate almost anything as development. Even many pro-environment policies could reasonably fall within the rubric of development, taking away core negative arguments. The negative should attempt to pin the affirmative to a limited vision of development – perhaps by forcing them to advocate for policies specifically targeted at improving indicators of development, which are also listed by the United Nations5 or by limiting affirmatives to policies which meet all four prongs of the definition listed in the definition above. Development as a practice can meaningfully be divided into two types: symmetric and asymmetric. Symmetric development occurs when the entire country in question grows at an approximately equal level. Growth is not localized but rather occurs across the board and at approximately the same rate. In contrast, asymmetric growth occurs when the total wealth of a country increases, but that wealth remains concentrated in the hands of a few. Taking India’s case as an example, urban cities experience enormous economic booms but their rural population does not. The wealth in those urban cities is also not evenly distributed, instead being owned by the upper level management of the multinational corporations which are driving much of India’s development. Understanding types of development helps to debate the topic – if development is asymmetric, it only benefits a few people and is not in the best interest of most of the people of India. That’s why GPD and GDP per capita can be misleading – they reflect averages. For example, a GPD per capita of $100 is the result of each of the following population distributions:

  • two people, one with $99 and the other with $1
  • two people, one with $50 and the other with $50
  • two people, one with $60 and the other with $40.
  • six people, one with $90 and five with $2.

    • Negative debaters can argue that development tends to be asymmetric and ignores rural or poor areas because they present less profitable markets – poor people have less purchasing power. As a result, increasing growth may and often does disproportionately benefit an insular few.

    Defining Prioritization

    Prioritization is a difficult concept to define on this topic because the environment and the economy are mutually interactive phenomena – helping the environment often helps the economy, and vice versa. Many policies which focus on development are also policies which clean the environment, focus on sustainability, and similar anti-pollution goals. To create a meaningful distinction between the affirmative and negative, prioritizing development can best be defined as choosing development when it is in conflict with environmental preservation. Under this definition, affirmatives must show that development is good even when it conflicts with environmental protection – other examples of good development do not prove the resolution because they do not show prioritization should occur, they merely show that development may be conceptually desirable. This definition clearly favors the negative because it is strategic for the affirmative to argue that development encompasses environmental protection (which means the affirmative captures the benefits of the negative). Affirmatives could propose an alternative measure of prioritization by arguing that prioritization is reflected in funding priorities – that development should receive more funding than the environment. This minimizes the conflict between the environment and the affirmative because it permits the affirmative to argue for green development policies.

    The Affirmative – Development, Death, and Solving the Crisis of Poverty

    The majority of rhetorically powerful affirmative evidence on this topic is statistical because of the scope of poverty in India. The gratuitous, unfathomable depths of extreme poverty consume the country and can be effective in representing the urgency of development solutions. This section will analyze a variety of modular problems which development can address, which can be combined in any measure by debaters. For example, debaters may choose to focus exclusively on food insecurity; or they may choose to analyze food insecurity and health outcomes; or any combination of these and other areas. Because development can conceptually reach almost any sector and problem of society, the affirmative’s statistical evidence is potentially limitless – from energy access to information technology to childhood education to HIV/AIDS treatment. This topic analysis focuses on the problems most often invoked in support of development which are the most likely to be discussed in debate.

    Food Insecurity

    One prominent area which development advocates use to justify development advocacy is food insecurity. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, “60 million children in India are underweight and malnourished, while 21 percent of the population as a whole general is malnourished”6. 21% of India’s population is a staggering number – 259.8 million people who are at risk of food insecurity. Development has been and can continue to be a solution to food insecurity. During India’s first major development boom in the 1960’s, the “Green Revolution” saw “national wheat production increasing from 10 million tonnes in 1960, to almost 95 million tonnes in 2012”7. Development increases food production in a variety of ways, especially in rural communities:

    Rural communities require information inter alia on supply of inputs, new technologies, early warning systems (drought, pests, diseases), credit, market prices and their competitors. The success of the Green Revolution in Asia and the Near East indicates that giving rural communities access to knowledge, technology and services will contribute to expanding and energizing agriculture.

    This sector’s focus on rural communities is especially strategic because it pre-empts the possible negative argument that rural communities tend to be ignored by development policies. Development addresses food insecurity not only by making India produce more food, but making that food more accessible to people who need it most. Based on a study by Nobel Prize in Economics winner Amartya Sen, it can be concluded that “famine [in India] was rarely the result of a lack of food, but rather the result of intervening economic factors, such as unemployment, declining wages, and, as is often the case in India, poor food distribution systems”8. These poor distribution systems magnify the danger of food insecurity throughout India. William Thompson, a research assistant at the United States Naval War College, conducted a study of Indian food supplies and found that “inefficiencies in the downstream segments of the food supply chain are still rampant, and threaten to undermine self-sufficiency and perpetuate malnutrition”9. He gives the example of one crop to illustrate his point, noting that “inefficiency in the tomato business, according to the editor of the Wall Street Journal Asia, results in as much as 20 percent of tomatoes rotting in transit, while the price for consumers is marked up by as much as 60 percent”10. By increasing the effectiveness of food transportation, development increases the supply of fresh food that does not rot during transportation. That supply is important not only because it represents an absolute increase in the amount of food available, but also because increased supply decreases prices, making food more accessible to those who need it most.

    Public Health

    The state of public health in India leaves much to be desired. Every year:
  • 500,000 people die from preventable tuberculosis, while also infecting three other people (1.5 million new cases, annually)11.
  • 300,000 die from treatable cancer12.
  • 40 million suffer from heart disease13.
  • 17.4 million die from heart attacks annually14.
  • 12.5 million are blind from preventable cataracts15.
  • 60 million suffer from endemic goiter (potentially lethal inflamed thyroid)16 which I have included because the disease is wholly caused by an iodine deficiency – simply taking a pill is sufficient to eliminate it entirely.

    • Development addresses the primary reasons that these diseases endure. First, development brings both an increased quantity and quality of medical professional to areas which otherwise lack access to doctors. As the National Center for Biotechnology Information notes, “one of the major problems in delivering health care” is “a shortage” of “doctors and paramedical workers”. This occurs in part because rural areas lack the medical infrastructure to train professionals who can treat disease, and in part because doctors trained in urban areas “are reluctant to work in backward tribal areas”17 where markets and funding are limited. Development increases the incentive for doctors to treat rural areas as well as increasing the capacity of those areas to treat themselves. Development itself is a necessary component in providing public health, because the economic boom that it produces is what finances technological and infrastructural innovation in the Indian medical field. The director of the Indian government’s National Institute of Health and Family Welfare summarized the relationship between development and healthcare effectively: “[t]here cannot be health without simultaneous social and economic development”18.

    Development Holistically

    While it is possible to analyze the specific subsets of development which can be addressed and solved, it is also important to analyze the holistic effect of development on India. According to a longitudinal study of the Indian people, the presence of development in an area increased the average lifespan of that area by two to three full years19. The magnitude of the impact this increase becomes more apparent when properly explained. In 2004, the World Health Organization created a metric called DALY, or “disability-adjusted life years”. This metric indicates, among other things, the amount of years lost by premature death and “can be thought of as a measurement of the gap between current health status and an ideal health situation where the entire population lives to an advanced age, free of disease and disability”20. Based on the most recent Indian census, 833 million people live in undeveloped or underdeveloped areas21. That number – when combined with the average increase of 2-3 years in lifespan – means that full development will add fully 2,499,000,000 (2.49 billion) DALY years of life to the people of India22. Though it is important to note that full development is not immediate, 2.49 billion years of life is still a staggering number.

    The Negative – Go Big or Go Home

    Though the affirmative has powerful statistics at their disposal, the negative is not without powerful impacts of their own. The negative arguably has wider latitude in terms of impact type, because they have the ability to cite to quick timeframe impacts as well as longer term impacts whereas most affirmative impact arguments take a moderate amount of time to achieve. The best negatives on this topic will attempt to establish a framework for examining “the best interest” of the people of India that favors their case’s evaluation of the topic. Negatives should also emphasize that development is an extremely long, arduous process that happens over the course of decades and is imperfectly implemented. Corruption, mistakes, greed, accidents and the infinite complexities of socio-economic engineering mean that development is an ideal that can only be achieved in the far, far future – if ever. Disrupting the affirmative’s uncomplicated, optimistic portrayal of development is both rhetorically powerful and tactically beneficial.

    Asymmetric Development and the Illusion of Progress

    India is not unfamiliar with development. The last five decades have been a massive experiment in development, with two boom periods: the “Green Revolution” in the 1960s, and in the 1990s, when India drastically restructured its economy from state-controlled to predominantly unregulated market. The harms that affirmative debaters note then seem to contain a contradictory element; if development is truly a panacea that can solve India’s problems, why has it failed to do so for the last fifty years? One of the best answers is that Indian development is not evenly distributed. Instead, development occurs selectively and at the discretion of the powerful Multi-National Corporations (MNCs) that fund the majority of India’s development23. These corporations do not have the best interest of India’s people as their primary goal – instead, their goal is to extract wealth from India’s resources24. As a result, development in India is asymmetric and concentrated selectively to maximize profit. This is evidence by “[t]he ratio between the top and bottom ten per cents of wage distribution” which “has doubled since the early 1990s, when India opened up its economy”25. In fact, the international Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development found that “the doubling of income inequality over the last 20 years has made India one of the worst performers in the category of emerging economies”26. Despite decades of development, over “42 per cent of 1.2 billion live on less than $1.25 per day, the highest number of poor in the world”27. Development is structurally unlikely in these places because poorer areas do not function as markets that are inconsistent with the demand for explosive development. These areas lack the capital and infrastructure to incentivize investment, resulting in the consistent neglect of the parts of India which most need development. In fact, India’s current experience with development suggests that development does not simply ignore the poor – it takes a severe toll on their standard of living. Professor C.M. Lakshmana of Karnataka, India’s Institute for Social and Economic Change presented a study at the 2012 European Population which found that development projects were uprooting families from their homes in order to make room for industrialization28. It found that “more than 21 million people are internally displaced populations (IDPs) due to development projects in India”29. This displacement disproportionately affects the most vulnerable populations. As Dr. Lakshmana found, though “the tribal population only makes up eight percent of the total population, more than 40 percent of the development induced displaced are tribal peoples in India”30. That’s especially true because the governance structures in India complicate the ability of displaced peoples to remedy their situation. As Dr. Lakshmana found, “[t]he difficulties faced by IDPs are numerous but distinct. Their right to participate and contest in the political processes is difficult”31. Both the history of development and its present trends suggest that the vast majority of India’s population – the rural poor – are severely disadvantaged by development.

    The Problem of Pollution

    An article titled “India’s Air the World’s Unhealthiest, Study Says” succinctly summarizes the problem of India’s air pollution. It goes on to note that according to an annual collaborative study between environmental research centers at Cornell and Yale, “India ranks dead last in the ‘Air (effects on human health)’ ranking” on the “132 countries whose environments were surveyed”32. Air pollution in India has an effect on mortality rates both directly and indirectly. Directly, air pollution causes approximately 116,500 deaths every single year33 – a number which increases as the concentration of pollution also increases. Indirectly, air pollution increases the risk of disease both by weakening the respiratory system, and through disease caused by the particulates that are inhaled. That amounts to approximately 48,000 cases of bronchitis annually34, as well as 370,000 “annual hospitalizations due to pollution”35 and finally 7,300,000 “emergency room visits”36.

    Those impacts are summarized effectively by a table prepared by the World Bank, South Asia Region. It found, among other things, that air pollution alone costs India approximately 2 million DALY years every single year, and creates almost 4 billion cases of respiratory distress every year.

    The problem of pollution cannot be understated.

    Into the Fold or Folding Into Itself? Sustainable Development

    Development advocates often emphasizing the significance of bringing India “into the fold”, a phrase which typically indicates inclusion into the group of nations considered largely or wholly “developed”. But the path to full development is not as uncomplicated as its advocates would portray, and the benefits of development are not as easily achieved as its supporters claim. Instead, both India’s experience with development and the global experience with development generally suggest that development that proceeds without regard for the environment is unsustainable not only in environmental terms, but in economic terms as well. Such development is likely to collapse into itself and create a net worse economic situation for the people of India. Economic development that hurts the environment expends and eliminates the already scare resources upon which development relies. Oxfam International, an organization studying poverty in over 90 countries, examined the effect that industrial agriculture, pesticide, and chemical fertilizer have had on food production. They found that “farming is fast becoming a non-viable activity. Further scope for increase in net sown area is limited. Land degradation in the form of depletion of soil fertility, erosion, and water logging has increased”37. India’s development simultaneously creates an increased demand for resources (including but not limited to food) and a decreased capacity to produce them. As that disparity increasingly grows and resources become scarce, India will be less and less able to develop. As such, environmental conscientiousness is a pre-requisite to sustainable economic development. Industrial agriculture not only decreases the land available, it also rapidly depletes India’s water table and groundwater through the use of water-intensive crops. A study conducted by NASA “found that groundwater levels are falling by four centimetres a year, and about 110 cubic kilometres of groundwater have been lost over the six-year study period”38. India’s current development rate – even if not increased – will create “severe water shortages” that are directly linked to agricultural water expenditure39. Matthew Rodell, a NASA hydrologist, explains that depleting the water supply exposes the people of India to severe risks. He writes that40:

    Groundwater is extremely valuable as a resource which stores water during the wet years and makes it available in the dry years, so that people and farmers can survive droughts, whether part of the natural variability or related to climate change. However, groundwater must be managed sustainably, or in time this capability could be lost.

    Degradation itself takes an economic toll on India. By producing negative externalities – such net health reductions and net productivity reductions – environmental degradation in India costs “about 3.75 trillion rupees (US$80 billion) annually, equivalent to 5.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2009, which is the reference year for most of the damage estimates”41.

    The Big Guns: Global Warming

    The thesis of this argument is relatively simple – Indian development contributes to global warming, and global warming is the biggest threat to the Indian people’s wellbeing. Executing that argument in a round is substantially more complicated because of the intuitive objections to such an argument, which primarily focus on the effectiveness of India lowering its pollutant levels without corresponding reductions in other nations. There are two ways to win this argument – the first is to win modeling arguments and the second is to reframe the debate. I think debaters running this argument should do both. The first argument – modeling – argues that if India changes its environmental practices, other countries will – for a variety of reasons – follow its example and do the same. The main impetus behind modeling arguments recognizes that there is a collective failure to act first to solve warming, since no country wants to be uniquely put at an economic disadvantage. This stalemate is called a collective action problem, and mirrors the commonly understood logic of an arms race, where both countries desire de-escalation but neither is willing to initiate the process. The Economist argues that if India were to initiate global emissions decreases as a developing country, it would not only break the stalemate on international environmentalism, but also make India into an example for the developing world42. Decreasing environmental emissions also makes Indian international environmental demands credible, allowing them to “push rich countries to make more environmental compromises”43. The second way to win the warming argument is to reframe the way the judge evaluates the warming debate by arguing that India is a necessary component of reducing global warming, if insufficient to stop global warming alone. The argument made by the negative is thus not that India can solve warming alone – in fact, it’s unlikely that any country can single-handedly stop global warming which makes that way of thinking ineffective. Rather, the negative should argue that it is impossible to stop global warming without India, which is why their participation is so important. In that sense, India’s contribution – or lack thereof – is a determinative factor in stopping global warming. Once the negative has won either argument – or both arguments – the next argument to win is that global warming is the most important threat. There are a variety of reasons why global warming is the most significant impact, which vary from the existential threat posed by rising temperatures to the unique vulnerability of coastal countries like India to high sea levels and extreme weather patterns. Debaters should tailor their impact arguments both to the affirmative they’re facing and to the type of judging that they’ll have – some judges find existential threat arguments intuitively unappealing, which means that debaters should focus on specific Indian vulnerabilities instead of the general existential threat posed by warming. The final argument to win – and the least complicated argument to win – is that India is a substantial contributor to global warming. The Economist notes that India’s rapid development has made it one of the biggest contributors to warming, arguing that “Europe and America are becoming supporting actors in the world’s climate-change drama” where India is a “lead player”44. Examining the period from 2000 to 2011, it found that India “accounted for 83% of the worldwide increase in carbon emissions”45. As a result, “global warming began with industrialized countries it must end—if it is to end—through actions in developing ones”46. To do so, India must slow its development and prioritize the environment. Because India is “obsessed with growth” it is “building ever more coal-fired power stations” and other pollutant forms of energy47. To curb its emissions, India must first curb its appetite for fossil fuels and other pollutants.

    Works Cited

    1. For example, carbon sequestration affirmatively removes CO2 from the air and puts it into storage. http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ccs/index.html
    2. Posner, Richard A. Catastrophe: Risk and Response. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
    3. An…odd…choice by the United Nations is to describe the symmetry of development as “kink” and to describe even, symmetric development as “kinky”. The search term “kinky” is a legitimate search term the queues a substantial part of the United Nations literature on even development. I still wouldn’t Google it at school. See http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/Pritchett_Kenny_md-ideals_wcvr.pdf as an example.
    4. Ibid.
    5. United Nations. "Human Development Reports." Human Development Index (HDI). The United Nations, no date given. Web. .
    6. Thomson, William. "India's Food Security Problem." The Diplomat. N.p., 2 Apr. 2012. Web. .
    7. Kaur, Amarjeet. "The Cost of India's Green Revolution." World Development Movement. N.p., 31 July 2013. Web. .
    8. Thomson, William. "India's Food Security Problem." The Diplomat. N.p., 2 Apr. 2012. Web. .
    9. Ibid.
    10. Ibid.
    11. Kapilashrami, M. C. "REVIEW OF THE PRESENT HEALTH STATUS OF INDIA, EMERGING HEALTH PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS." Indian Journal of Health and Population. E National Conference of the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, n.d. Web. Feb. 2000. .
    12. Ibid.
    13. Ibid.
    14. Ibid.
    15. Ibid.
    16. Ibid.
    17. Ibid.
    18. Ibid.
    19. Ibid.
    20. World Health Organization. "Metrics: Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY)." WHO. The United Nations, no date given. Web. .
    21. The Hindu. "About 70 per Cent Indians Live in Rural Areas: Census Report." The Hindu National News. N.p., 15 July 2011. Web. .
    22. Kapilashrami, M. C. "REVIEW OF THE PRESENT HEALTH STATUS OF INDIA, EMERGING HEALTH PROBLEMS AND THEIR SOLUTIONS." Indian Journal of Health and Population. E National Conference of the Indian Association of Preventive and Social Medicine, n.d. Web. Feb. 2000. .
    23. Todhunter, Colin. "Globalization and Social Destruction: Stealing Wealth and Health in India."Global Research. Center for Research on Globalization, 7 Feb. 2013. Web. .
    24. Ahmed, Waquar. "Neoliberalism, Corporations, and Power: Enron in India." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100.3 (2010): 621-39. Web. .
    25. Todhunter, Colin. "Globalizatione and Social Destruction: Stealing Wealth and Health in India."Global Research. Center for Research on Globalization, 7 Feb. 2013. Web. .
    26. OECD, as cited in Ibid.
    27. Ibid.
    28. Lakshmana, C. M. "Regional Issues of Population, Development and Environment in India: An Overview." Princeton's European Population Conference. Princeton University, 13 June 2012. Web. .
    29. Ibid.
    30. Ibid.
    31. Ibid.
    32. Timmons, Heather, and Malavika Vyawahare. "India’s Air the World’s Unhealthiest, Study Says." New York Times: India. New York Times, 1 Feb. 2012. Web. .
    33. Mani, Muthukumara. "An Analysis of Physical and Monetary Losses of Environmental Health and Natural Resources in India." Policy Research Working Papers: Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change. World Bank South Asia Region, Oct. 2012. Web. .
    34. Ibid.
    35. Ibid.
    36. Ibid.
    37. Sharma, Alakh. "Food Security in India: Performance, Challenges and Policies." Oxfam International: India, Sept. 2010. Web. .
    38. "Thirsty Indian Farming Depleting Water Resources." Thirsty Indian Farming Depleting Water Resources - SciDev.Net. Science and Development Network, 13 Oct. 2009. Web. .
    39. Ibid.
    40. Ibid.
    41. Mani, Muthukumara. "An Analysis of Physical and Monetary Losses of Environmental Health and Natural Resources in India." Policy Research Working Papers: Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change. World Bank South Asia Region, Oct. 2012. Web. .
    42. The Economist. "Take the Lead." The Economist Book Reviews. N.p., 02 Feb. 2013. Web. .
    43. Ibid.
    44. Ibid.
    45. Ibid.
    46. Ibid.
    47. Ibid.