Hmmm, have the flies, mosquitos, gnats, etc. been surpressed in smoky areas or have the little beasts adapted?
Somebody could get a grant tostudy that.
“have the flies, mosquitos, gnats, etc. been surpressed in smoky areas or have the little beasts adapted?”
Not to worry - they are among the last species to die.
But seriously, India is changing pretty quickly. It just has a lot more people than anywhere else, and is starting from rock bottom on sanitation. Rapidly growing pollution from industrialization and wider car ownership contribute, but biological waste is what makes India so special.
Richer parts of the country are much cleaner, and in many rural areas, people area spread out.
Delhi has a pretty nice metro train system, with good air conditioning for example, but when you get off, you might see some wild monkeys attack a legless leper to steal his food.
In Delhi you just have to turn the corner from the glitzy Hilton to find someone (many) in squalor, but in newer IT havens like Bangalore or Hyderbad down South, there are broad sweeps of relatively upscale new construction. In the agriculturally prosperous areas in the Northwest which are predominantly Sikh, cities like Chandigarh have nice wide clean streets. Most Indians will point you to Goa in the Southwest as a particularly nice place. Up North in Ladakh the air is quite clean.
But when it is bad, as it mostly is, it is world-class bad.
Really, the place is coming along quickly, but it is still one of the most shocking places for Westerners to visit, and second only to Central Africa for the concentration of disease.