Indian Census Data: Connected, But Still Shitting Outside
Some Indian census data is out, via The Hindu. It’s interesting. Indians are moving out of shared homes into nuclear families, but still shitting in the streets and fields. At the same time, most have electricity, banking facilities and phones. India’s not doing so bad, but the basics are persistently dire.
Still Shitting In The Streets
In many ways, sanitation is civilization, and here India lags behind. Less than half of households have latrine facilities in the house. Of those with latrine facilities, only 12% have piped sewerage (the effective kind) and about 50% seem to have no drainage for the latrine at all.
Registrar-General and Census Commissioner C. Chandramouli said the lack of sanitary facilities “continues to be a big concern for the country.” “Cultural and traditional reasons,” he argued, “and lack of education seemed to be the primary reasons for this unhygienic practice. We have to do a lot in these areas.”
I say sanitation is civilization because human life expectancy actually declined after the Paleolithic (ie, caveman days). Agriculture and lots of people (and animals) living together meant lost of concentrated shit and actually made us less healthy until the advent of modern sanitation. You can read more on this here: Expectancy Of Life And Dinner.
Uh, anyways. Don’t shit where you eat, generally.
Modern Family
When I think of Indian families I think of the Maha Gedera, which is dubbed here into Sinhala. Basically everybody lives in one house, and teledrama ensues. That doesn’t seem to be the norm. More and more Indians are likely to live in their own homes, which spares the baby mama mama drama.
India, the data show, is now overwhelmingly made up of nuclear families — a dramatic change from just a generation ago, where joint families were the norm. Seventy per cent of the households consist of only one couple. Indian families are overwhelmingly likely — 86.6 per cent of them — to live in their own houses, but 37.1 per cent live in a single room.
Connected
67% of Indians have electricity, 93% in urban areas. 63% have phones, 82% in urban areas. Basically, urban areas are connected. There, 8.4% have access to a computer with Internet, compared to 3.1% as a national average. 50% of the nation, however, is still using firewood for cooking.
25% of Indians have accessed to some sort of motorized transport, but only 5% have a car, jeep or van. 50% have a bicycle.
So
So, interesting stuff. India makes persistent gains in terms of modernizing its urban areas, and there is a lifestyle there that far exceeds Sri Lanka, or even parts of the western world. Hence you get innovation, business, culture, hype. At the same time, however, about half of the population is still shitting in the open and only 32% have access to treated water. Those are the basics for entering a healthy, productive, modern life, and until India catches up there, its potential for growth as a nation is still held back.
You can see more deets in The Hindu, though watch out for the autoplaying railway something video.
Posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2012 in economics, India, Statistics.
Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice 
I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and 
I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the 
In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from 
What about pissing? You hardly find a patch of land in any part of India that doesn’t smell piss. Pissing in public is such a common thing in India that most of the Indian’s who visit Sri Lanka find it extremely difficult to digest that they are unable to piss on the road sides when they want to.
You find 95% of Indian population take their all their meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner in small eating places on the roadsides which are literally ‘ pissing places’.
So talking about Indians’ hygiene as if like “Ooragen Saukya Padam Igena gannawa wage” if loosely translated: Taking lessons on health from pig!
It’s pathetic that people use the Internet to spew this kind of racist rubbish. 95% of the population! Has this person done any studies? On what basis are these claims made? Come to place where school vans are parked in Colombo and enjoy the smells. We all have problems to solve. Nothing is achieved by racist rants.
“most of the Indian’s who visit Sri Lanka find it extremely difficult to digest that they are unable to piss on the road sides when they want to.”
Most of the Indians who travel to SL are middle class at least, and are quite used to indoor plumbing.
But they are known to destroy hotel rooms.
Just the Indians?
David, this was something that came up in a conversation with a friend of mine who works for John Keells Hotels. He claims that indians often trash thier place before leaving, often stealing utensils that are lying around. They also have a habit of using the cloths iron as a make shift roti plate. I don’t know if the tourists are equally destructive, but he did say that chinese are pretty nice
*other tourists
Well who am I to judge your friend; but why would a guest need to make rotti when staying in a star-class hotel? Also, I didn’t know john Keells hotels provided irons with their rooms. There’s a lot of casual racism against Indians by Sri Lankans who aren’t very well mannered themselves.
Not all Indians, but some. I’ve heard the roti tale too, from a hotelier, cant remember who. They probably carried a traveling clothes iron. Someone at Galadari told me that an Indian group would hide the used plates under the table after a banquet.
I’m sure Sri Lankans create a lot of ire too, though. I’ve heard how one person using the loo on the middle east flights, would cause a whole group to queue-up outiside.
I certainly hold a grudge againt India after the way Rajiv Gandhi forced the 13th amendment on us, and also talking like saints after arming and training the Tigers.
“They probably carried a traveling clothes iron.”
What’s the big deal then? I thought the charge was trashing the room not screwing the hotel out of an overpriced meal. I know Sri Lankans staying at Blue Water who’ve sneaked koththus into their room.
The point is that Indians (at least the ones who visit SL) are no worse than our own lot.
As for Gandhi, let it go. The Tigers blew his arse away for his troubles and did us all a favour by turning India against them.
This is a good segue into the issue of sanitation in Southern Asia. Averaged over India, Bangladesh and Nepal, between 86-56% (lowest -middle wealth quartiles) of households in the bottom three wealth quintiles were practicing open defecation in 2008, or lacked access to other types of toilet facilities. This hasn’t improved a whole lot over the prior decade or so. That’s according to DHS data. (http://www.childinfo.org/sanitation_status_trends.html).
*quintiles
(see last graph)