Below are statistics gathered from various sources, describing India in numbers. The good news is that the number of Indian students awarded with European scholarships has gone up by 23 per cent, and that 1.52 youths have been given jobs after being trained under the Skill India Mission. The bad news is that cardiovascular diseases will be the largest cause of death and disability in India by 2020, and also that about 600 million Indians are living in extreme water stress.
Immigration rate
In the US and major countries of Western Europe, the immigration rate, or share of the population that is immigrant (foreign-born), tends to range between 10-15 per cent. In India, the immigration rate has tended to be less than 1 per cent. The number of Indian residents who were born outside the country fell from 6.2 million to 5.3 million between 2001 and 2011, taking the immigration rate down from 0.6 per cent to 0.4 per cent.
About 37,000 Indians became US citizens last year—a 19 per cent rise from 2017.
Scholarships
Indian students and staff receiving scholarships from the European Union (EU) saw a sharp uptick, with 23% more being awarded the Erasmus+ scholarship and mobility grants this year. More than 50,000 Indians are studying in the EU at any given point of time.
Out of the 450 scholars, 89 Indian students – 48 females and 41 males – have been awarded a fully-funded scholarship for Erasmus Mundus Joint Master's Degree programs, which lets students attend universities in at least two countries in Europe. India remains one of the top five third-country recipients of scholarships from EU this year as well.
Nearly 350 students and staff from Indian higher education institutions have been selected for scholarships under Erasmus' International Credit Mobility programme, under which recipients can spend between three months to a year in a European University to obtain credits, which will then become a part of their degree.
At least 60 universities in India also received funds from the EU this year for different programmes, an uptick of 13% from last year.
Skill India Mission
Out of nearly 7.2 million people trained under the Indian government’s 2015 ambitious Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana aimed at providing employable skills to the youth, 1.52 million (21 per cent) got placements by June, 2019 as part of the Skill India Mission. Telangana tops the list when it comes to placement of trained candidates. The state has reported 29 per cent placements, followed by Haryana, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh reporting 28 per cent each. Tamil Nadu reported 26 per cent, while Kerala and Maharashtra reported 10 per cent. Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of trained candidates (10,65,739), but has recorded just 20 per cent placements. The government-supported studies have estimated an incremental human resource requirement of 103.4 million during 2017-2022 across various sectors.
Govt jobs
The Indian government has claimed that there has been a reduction in number of job vacancies in its various departments as they are being filled at the earliest. According to the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Jitendra Singh, the percentage of the vacancy strength has been constantly reducing over the past five to six years. From 16.2 per cent during 2013-14, the vacancy percentage declined to 11.52 per cent during 2015-16, to 11.36 per cent in 2016-17.
Look-Out Circulars
The Indian government has informed lawmakers in the Upper House that as many as 83 Look-Out Circulars (LOCs) have been issued against promoters of companies who have defaulted on their bank loans, preventing them from leaving the country. Immigration authorities can detain as well as prevent any person, including a willful defaulter, from leaving the country against whom an LOC has been issued.
Medical tourists
Nearly 150,000 patients from all over the world travel to India every year seeking medical treatment, says a report by the Ministry of Tourism.
Pharma firms
The Indian pharmaceutical industry provides employment to 4.2 million personnel, directly and indirectly in manufacturing and ancillary sectors. Pharma companies spend 10 per cent of their turnover on research.
Communal incidents
According to India’s junior Home Minister G Kishan Reddy, the number of communal incidents in the country has come down from 823 in 2013 to 708 in 2018.
Indians’ health
The World Health Organisation estimates that cardiovascular diseases will be the largest cause of death and disability in India by 2020.
In India, one in four adults has high blood pressure. Among them, only half have been diagnosed and only 10 per cent have their blood pressure under control. As a result, a large number of people develop heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure while in their productive years of life.
About 80 per cent of India’s 1.3 billion population uses Ayurvedic medicine, partly for cost reasons.
The average Indian citizen will use only USD 33 of medicine per year compared to the US citizen’s USD 892.
Court cases
The Financial Times said India had just 18 judges for every one million people. The Subordinate judiciary has been working under a deficiency of 5,018 courtrooms because existing 15,540 court halls are insufficient to cater to the strength of 20,558 judicial officers as on 2015-end. One judge is available for an area of 157 sq. kilometres of the Indian territorial land.
According to Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, over 1,000 cases are pending in courts across the country for 50 years, while a whopping two lakh cases are pending for 25 years.
Also, out of about 9 million pending civil cases, more than 2 million are at a stage where summons have not been served yet.
Water crisis
About 600 million Indians are living in extreme water stress. Only 18 per cent of the country’s 18 million rural homes have tap water despite INR 24,000 crore spent in the past five years. Piped water reaches over half rural households in just six states. In Assam and Bihar, only 2 per cent rural homes have piped water.
Fake doctors
The health ministry has admitted that about 57.3 per cent of practising allopathic doctors in India do not have a medical degree.
Plastic waste
India generates 26,000 tonnes of plastic garbage every day.
