If you are reading this on your laptop/desktop/smartphone, you have arrived and a member of privileged lot, upper middle class or upper class in India. Which is good and be happy about. When it comes to India as a nation, if you were like me, you will be confused trying to know how India is doing, have we made progress or regressed. Irrespective of which newspapers you read, news channels you watch, magazines you read, one invariably ends up with a negative message, we are in deep mess, poverty is high, health and education systems not working, future is doomed. Democracy is not for us and need a dictator for next 20 years to become a developed country. Ruling party blames the opposition, and vice versa. They keep swapping their roles every election. Then there are fear mongering stories like Muslims population will continue to grow since they don’t believe in family planning, have more children, and will take over. It becomes hard to get a handle on the progress we have made, and where we are now. Listening to ruling party, it feels like most of India didn’t have electricity till yesterday, and this party is going to get us 100% electrified. I was getting tired of this. I know we still have good amount of progress to make / road to cover /, but I do believe that we have done a good job, made decent progress post-independence but my data was piecemeal. Invariably in my discussions with my friends and relatives it ends up with good number saying “we need a dictator”, “need majority of this or that party”, “coalition doesn’t work”, “population is the issue”, “welfare needs to be stopped”, etc. I always end up on the minority opinion side that we have done well so far, and we will continue on that track as long as we keep an eye on few key things. I was missing data to back up my case in a constructive way.

Thanks to Hans Rosling, his book Factfulness gave me the direction I was looking for, World bank data. I decided to spend some time browsing through WB (World bank) data. Now, here I am with my take on India Growth story and what I would focus on moving ahead. All the data presented here is from WB database. I was completely bowled over by the WB site, it is JUST AWESOME. A big thanks to them since it is not just the data but they have put together a great visualization tool to slice various indicators/vectors. Single country, multiple countries, regions, etc. Be prepared though since it is going to break few myths about countries, religion, and gender.

Sources:

1. Word bank: https://data.worldbank.org/country/india 
2. Gender Data Report: http://datatopics.worldbank.org/gender/country/india
3. Poverty and equity Report: http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/country/IND
4. Gapminder Dollar Street: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street/matrix (Don’t forget to visit Hans Rosling’s Gapminder web site and take a tour of Dollar Street. Get a glimpse of how different income groups live across the world. An Eye opener)

Initially I planned to look at GDP, but decided against it post reviewing the indicators, since to me it doesn’t make sense since good % of population still require enablement and access. To me GDP is an outcome, lagging indicator. I kept the focus on health, education, and gender parity related indicators.

Reviewing the data, as a summary, we have come a long way from 1947. This is something we need to give credit to all those committed people involved in it, starting from last mile delivery persons to bureaucracy, and social & welfare programs. It is a not a 100% success story yet, we still have a long way to go, good deal of road to cover, but the takeaway is that our state of the country is NOT AS BAD AS we think or we have been made to believe. One look at the data, and you will be amazed how this itself got accomplished in the first place, considering where we were. This, I would say, gives the required boost. Also, there is enough data to guide us on what we need to focus on moving ahead. Aside: If I can think about it spending less than a week, our bureaucracy can do wonders. I included few other selected countries for comparison plus also to break some myths.

Let’s start with indicators related to health. Under health, there are multiple indicators, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, immunization coverage, fertility rate, spending on health, etc. I will be covering few of those starting with Life Expectancy. Longevity (Life expectancy at birth, total years) in simple terms, is how long a newborn infant is expected to live given the prevailing patterns of mortality at the time of its birth. This is one of key indicators that shows health of a country at a macroscopic level. Indirectly it points to availability of basic health services like Primary Healthcare Centers (PHC), less infectious diseases, immunization reach, hospitals, etc. in the country.

 Source: The World Bank: Health, Nutrition, Population: Health at a Glance