Below are statistics gathered from various sources, describing India in numbers. The number of super-rich Indians has gone up in the past three years, and the country has the world’s highest population of tigers.
Indians in Australia
The Indian population in Australia has exponentially grown in the last two years. There were 592,000 Indians living in Australia as of June 2018.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics report said that this was a 30 per cent jump compared to Census 2016 figures which recorded 455,389 Indians living Down Under. India with 592,000 people moved into third place dropping the New Zealand-born (568,000) down to the fourth place. After England and China, India ranks third on the list of residents born overseas.
India now accounts for 2.4% of the Australian population and the median age of an Indian migrant is revealed to be 34 years, same as those born in Australia.
Over 7 million migrants were living in Australia as of June 2018, with people born in England continuing to be the largest group of overseas-born residents. China ranked second on this list with 651,000 people born in China residing in Australia today.
The super-rich
The number of Indians having a minimum wealth of Rs1,000 crore has grown by 100 per cent since 2016 to a record level of 831. The average wealth of these super-rich Indians is Rs. 5,900 crore, according to the Barclays Hurun India Rich List, 2018.
Gujarat has set the most impressive trend of generating wealthy entrepreneurs. Traditionally, Maharashtra tops the list, headed by Mumbai-based Mukesh Ambani. But, now Gujarat is fast catching up. As of last year, there were 58 billionaires In Gujarat. Gautam Adani tops the Gujarat billionaires’ list, followed by Cadila Healthcare’s Pankaj Patel.
Ahmedabad is home to 84 percent of Gujarat’s 58 billionaires. Karsanbhai Patel is the fourth richest in the state with wealth of Rs9,600 crore. Two brothers of Torrent Pharmaceuticals — Samir and Sudhir Mehta — are next, each having Rs8,300 crore. Of the total Gujarat billionaires, 49 are based in Ahmedabad, five in Rajkot, three in Surat and one in Vadodara.
Tiger population
The All-India Tigers Estimation Report 2018 has revealed that India has emerged as one of the biggest and safest tiger habitats in the world with the big cat’s population growing from 1,411 in 2006 to 2,967 in 2019.
Madhya Pradesh led the table with 526 tigers and Karnataka followed with 524 of the majestic predators. Uttarakhand came in third with 442 tigers, registering an excellent tiger population growth in the past 13 years over a relatively smaller area.
The country is home to 75 per cent of the global tiger population, the remaining 25 per cent found in Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Thailand Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Foreign studies
Australia, Canada and New Zealand are seeing a steady increase in the number of Indian students pursuing higher studies, but the US continues to be the most preferred destination.
If Rohit Sethi, Director, ESS Global, an overseas education consulting firm is to be believed, the number of Indian students going abroad for higher education is increasing at 15 -20 per cent every year.
Engineering courses are by far the biggest attraction for Indian students who go to abroad for higher education followed by business (which includes management etc).
Pharma research
India’s Rs 650-billion pharmaceutical industry, which supplies medicines to 200 countries, provides employment to 4.2 million people, directly and indirectly, in manufacturing and ancillary sectors. A Chronicle Pharmabiz report also said the pharma firms spend 8 to 11 per cent of their turnover in research and development.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 35 percent of fake drugs sold all over the world come from India.
A report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said 75% of fake drugs supplied the world over have origins in India, followed by 7% from Egypt and 6% from China.
The lawmakers
An 'India Today' report said that 14 per cent of India’s 542 parliamentarians are women, 38 per cent are farmers, 23 per cent are businesspersons, only 39 per cent are full-time politicians, just 2 per cent are teachers and 6 per cent are ages above 70 years.
Scourge of diabetes
Diabetes affects 70 million Indians, which is more than 7.5 per cent of the adult population, the average age of onset being 42.5 years, and nearly 1 million Indians die due to the diabetes every year.
According to Dr Mayur Patel, chairman of the All-India Institute of Diabetes and Research, the fact that in India, 70 million people are diabetics means 140 million feet are at risk. At the time of diagnosis, up to 50% of Type 2 diabetic patients have significant neuropathy (a condition wherein the person's sensory system in foot becomes weak and eventually dead) and ‘at-risk’ feet.
Road accidents
As per the Indian government data, almost 150,000 people lost their lives in road accidents in 2017, which translates to 17 deaths every hour due to an accident.
The number of fatalities is one-third of the number of accidents, which amounts to 53 road accidents every hour.
Uttar Pradesh is the worst affected state with 20,124 people losing their lives in road accidents, followed by Tamil Nadu with 16,157 fatalities. Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan are also among the top five states. On the other hand, Delhi is among the safest place to drive considering the ratio of the number of vehicles sold yearly and the number of fatalities.
Farmers’ suicides
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of India, farmers’ suicides in the country constitute 11.2 per cent of all suicides. During 2018, there were more than 60,000 suicides in the Indian state of Maharashtra, with an average of 10 suicide deaths reported every day.
Shortage of teachers
The All-India Survey on Higher Education statistics points out that there were 72 female teachers per 100 male teachers.
Thanks to shortage of 500,000 teachers, India trails behind several countries, including Brazil and China in terms of student-teacher ratio in the higher education segment. The 24:1 ratio of India is lower than 19:1 in Brazil and China. Among the eight countries compared, India's student-ratio has turned out to be the lowest–against Sweden's 12:1, Britain's 16:1, Russia's 10:1 and Canada's 9:1.
While the student enrolment in higher education institutes have increased from 32.3 million in 2013-14 to 36.6 million in 2017-18, the total number of teachers have declined from 1,367,535 to 1,284,755.
