India Stats

India Today published a special issue titled "Transforming India Great Ideas.Great Minds" in October. It has thought provoking articles by India's best minds on ideas than can transform India and how they can be implemented.

The articles contained some statistics about India - some interesting, some extremely shocking. Sample this -

• 72 was India’s rank in the 2007 transparency international’s global corruption perception index.
  
• Rs 883 cr - the amount of bribes paid by poor families in 2007 to access 11 public services, says a TII-CMS report.
  
• 69 per cent is the reservation in educational institutions in Tamil Nadu, the highest among all Indian states.
  
• 120 MPs in the Lok Sabha face criminal charges, though the law says that anyone sentenced to two years or more in jail is disqualified from contesting elections.
  
• 126 policemen per 1 lakh population. That is India’s manpower deficit compared to western ratios of 250-500 per 1 lakh.
  
• 8 - is the number of communal riots independent India has seen in which more than 500 people have been killed.
  
• 2 per cent of the country’s population is covered under pension benefits, compared to 21.1 per cent in China.
  
• 25% of the world's total skilled work force will be Indians by 2020.
  
• 9.1 is the percentage of women national legislators in India; compared to a global average of 18 per cent.
  
• $45 billion is what India spends on research and development, a patch of China's expenditure of $216 billion.
  
• 302 - number of individual and team gold medals on offer at the Beijing Olympics. India won just one.
  
• 300 mn the number of Indians who don’t have access to safe drinking water. Yet an average of 1,000 cubic metres is used by every Indian per year.
  
• 1.6 per cent of Indian wage earners invest in mutual funds, while less then 10 per cent of households have insurance.
  
• India has 4600 large dams built across the country. But not more than 6 to 15 per cent of agricultural land in each state is irrigated by any of these projects.
  
• 1.2 million  - the number of NGOs in India, though less than 1 per cent of them have professional fund-raisers
  
• 31,000 graduates are produced every year by India’s 271 medical institutions.
  
• 19 per cent of the gross budgetary expenditure has been earmarked for education in the 11th five year plan, up from 7.7% in the 10th plan.
  
• 39,600 vehicles have gone off the road after phase one of the Delhi metro, saving Rs 288 cr on maintaining roads and managing traffic.
  

Numbers tell a story.