We have little hope of “halving the proportion of population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015”, as the government has optimistically claimed, and that brings up the fourth big concern. At present, only 18 per cent of rural India and 58 per cent of urban India have sanitation. Only 70 of 300 Class-1 cities have partial sewerage coverage.

What emerges from these discrete figures is that MDGs, if they are to be of any relevance, require to be seen as inter-locking concerns rather than as fixed sectoral targets. You cannot, for instance, bring down the level of maternal mortality, without at the same time fighting malaria and addressing gender equality; or address child mortality without tackling sanitation. And undergirding all these goals is, of course, the foundational issue of poverty eradication. This calls for holistic approaches to human development, not atomised intentions that translate into mere shibboleths.