When rivers meet the ocean, coastlines tend to bend outward, forming a delta. These deltas when looked from space present multifarious patterns.
Nile Delta
Nile: Formed in Northern part of Egypt where the Nile spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean, this is one the world’s largest river deltas.The delta is classified as an arcuate river delta which features many active, short distributaries that carry sediment to the oceanic mouths. As the sediment exits through many mouths, the waves push it back, making the coastline very smooth. The coastline extends from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east and covers 240 kilometers of the Mediterranean coastline. A very rich agricultural region, from north to south the delta is approximately 160 kilometers in length.
Sunderban Delta
Sundarban: Measuring about 40,000 sq km our very own Sundarban forms the largest river delta in the world, and is formed by the coalescing of two very large rivers – the Ganga and the Brahmaputra.This is an also arcuate river delta which features many active, short distributaries pushing heavy sediments to their mouths.There is a cluster of low-lying islands in the Bay of Bengal, spread across India and Bangladesh, famous for its unique mangrove forests and thriving wildlife.
Mississippi Delta
Mississippi: The river forms a bird-foot delta as it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. As the name suggest this delta is in the shape of a bird’s foot and tend to have one or a very few major distributaries near their mouths. The receiving basin has currents that carry the sediment away as it exits the distributaries mouth. There is a broad, shallow shelf that deepens abruptly, so the trend is to grow long and thin like a bird’s toe. The Mississippi delta is the seventh largest delta on earth and is an important coastal region for the United States, containing more than 2.7 million acres of coastal wetlands.
Tiber
Tiber: This Italian river forms cuspate delta before emptying into the Tyrrhenian Sea of the Mediterranean. This type of river delta, usually have one distributary emptying into a flat coastline with wave action hitting it head-on. This tends to push the sediment back on both sides of the mouth, with a ‘tooth’ growing out onto the shelf. Hence it is named cuspate. The Tiber Delta stretches over some 25 km and includes a delta plain region and a submerged fan. This Delta plain, located some 25 km west of Rome, is an area of great interest that enables the study of the relationships between natural environmental changes and human activity.
Seine
Seine: This river is the third-longest river in France, which emerges from the earth in a remote spot called Source-Seine, in the Burgundy wine region of northeastern France and forms a stark estuarine river delta that drains into the English Channel.
Endnote : River deltas are found almost everywhere in the world, wherever a sediment rich river empties its water into the sea. These river deltas not only supports a rich biodiversity but also adds up to the beauty of our earth.
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.