14.8.10

India Stats


Sixty-three years after Independence, India has grown large enough to figure in most of the world’s top-10 lists wherever national aggregates are the sole basis of comparison. However, if you choose to look at things on a per capita basis rather than in aggregates, India figures just as prominently in the bottom-10 lists across sectors. Here’s a collection of the best and the worst of this land of contrasts and extremes:

ECONOMY With a GDP of $3,526 billion in purchasing power parity terms and averaging at about 8.5% growth for the last five years, India is the world’s fourth largest economy and the second-fastest growing among the major economies.

INFRASTRUCTURE Although the most recent data indicates that nearly half of India’s roads are still not surfaced, the road network of 3.3 billion kms is nevertheless the third largest in the world after the US and China. The 64,000-odd kms of railway routes is the fourth largest in the world after the US, Russia and China.

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION While maintaining the world's largest postal network with about 1.55 lakh operational post offices, India is also a world leader in modern communications. India’s 635.5 million cell phone subscribers and 36.2 million land line connections at the end of June means it has the second largest telecom subscriber base in the world after China. The 10 operational remote sensing satellites of the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) are the world’s largest such satellite constellation for civilian use.

AGRICULTURE AND ANIMAL
HUSBANDRY India is the world’s largest producer of bananas, mangoes, guavas, lemons and limes, papayas, okra, betel nut, ginger, millet, dry beans, chick peas, pigeon peas, lentils, dry peppers, jute and licit opium for the pharmaceutical use. Apart from this, the 18.5 crore cattle and the production of 104.9 million tons of milk makes India the country with the largest livestock population as well as the world leader in milk production.

INDUSTRIAL GOODS, MINERALS Selling over 10 million two-wheelers and producing about 2.6 million motor vehicles (cars and commercial vehicles), India is the world’s second largest two
wheeler market after China and the seventh largest producer of motor vehicles after China, Japan, the US, Germany, South Korea and Brazil. It’s also the world’s second largest producer of bicycles after China manufacturing over 10 million units annually. The country is also the world’s largest producer of mica blocks and the third largest producer of chromite, coal and barytes.

FILMS With the production of over 1,000 feature length films, the Indian film industry leads the world by miles producing more than double the number of films made in the US, the second largest film producing country. Among the major film markets of the world, India is also the only country where Hollywood blockbusters have so far failed to have a dominant presence in the top 10 films by box office collections.

SPORTS Currently the world number one in the Test cricket rankings, India has a handful of sports accomplishments to boast of. Leaving aside individual sportspersons like Viswanathan Anand (World Chess Champion since 2007), Saina Nehwal (currently ranked number 2 in women's badminton), Leander Paes
and Mahesh Bhupathi (world number 1 tennis doubles combination in 99), India constantly figures at the bottom of most sports rankings. If we consider the world’s two largest sporting events, India has the lowest Olympic medal to population ratio (0.003 medals per million population) and its 132nd position in the FIFA ranking rules out any near possibility of making it to the football World Cup finals.

DISEASES India is the diabetes and TB capital of the world with 50.8 million diabetic cases and 21% of world’s TB patients living in the country. Two persons die from TB every three minutes. Various estimates also state that 2.31 million people in the country are HIV positive making India the world’s third worst-hit country in terms of the absolute number of people living with AIDS/HIV.

DEVELOPMENT RANKINGS In most of the world rankings, India is always placed far below other comparable economies. It is ranked 134th in the UNDP’s Human development Index, 84th in the corruption perception index, 133rd in ease of doing business and 114th in the global gender gap index.

MALNUTRITION AND POVERTY According to estimates of various international agencies, India is home to about 400 million of the world's poor, which is one-third of the world's poor, making India the country inhabited by easily the largest number of poor people. The world’s second fastest growing major economy is ranked 128 in per capita GDP-PPP and half of its rural households are still deprived of pucca structure and electricity connections. According to the National Family Health Survey, nearly 55.3% of women aged 15-49 years are anaemic and 46% of children are malnourished.

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