According to Robert Neuwirth, most workers in the world are off the books. I do a fair amount of freelance work off the grid (though I try to report it) and a significant amount of Sri Lankan business is cash. Indeed, this ‘informal’ system predates the formal economy, but it’s still surprising to hear “half the workers of the world — close to 1.8 billion people — were working in System D: off the books, in jobs that were neither registered nor regulated, getting paid in cash, and, most often, avoiding income taxes,” (Foreign Policy).

Just saw this interesting infographic from Nielsen. It shows rising prices and cost of living in India, but also rising spend on tasty non-essentials like chocolate. Sri Lanka sees similar rising costs with higher inflation, and people also spend more on taste rather than quantity. Other points of interest are that, despite the growth of sales outlets like fastrack and xyntra (my research is watching StarWorld), fast moving consumer good (FMCG) prices have risen by 23% and half of Indians are saying they’d wait to buy new clothes, etc.

My best guess is 2 million, or about 10%. If you look at connections along, you get about 1.3 million. Why round-up? Well, because multiple people use connections, people connect at work, and the 1.1 million Sri Lankans on Facebook hint at something more. This infographic is nothing fancy, but it shows you various measures compared to Sri Lanka’s population (about 20.6 million).

This map shows plug points (sockets) all over the world. Sri Lanka is in the worst of all worlds, whereby we have western, eastern and hybrid plugs, in seemingly random variation. Hence, we have two standard adaptors, each of which accept three kinds of plugs. It is also standard to shove pencils and keys into plug points to make stuff fit.

Firstly, the Indian government has released a cache of police and crime statistics, for which they should be commended. This is an infographic detailing complaints against the police and what happens to them. Basically, most are rejected, more are processed internally, and a fraction make it to court. Of those that make it, only a sliver ever make it out.

I was like, the 4,626,728,819th person alive on earth. According to this great infographic from the BBC. I’m actually quite amazed that like 2.5 billion people have arrived since then. The place I live now, Sri Lanka, has about 44 births per day, 15 deaths and 6 people migrate. I can expect to live to about 71.2 years old, attaining my maximum baila dancing skill after 50.

Dalits were Indian outcastes or untouchables. Over years (with support from the government) they’ve slowly been moving on up. In Tamil Nadu ‘lower’ castes have done especially well in business, but their lot has improved nationwide. This infographic covers the sitch of all Dalits in one district of Uttar Pradesh – Bulandshahar. It’s from the Center For Advanced Study Of India. The improvements from 1990 to 2007 are striking.

The rains have come, but Sri Lanka’s power utility lost 167 million rupees per day in August. Ye Gods. Why do the rains matter? Because Sri Lanka runs primarily on hydro power and has to top that up with thermal power. What’s thermal power? Well, do you know how a generator works? You pump in diesel or petrol and it gives you electricity for a while? That’s our national policy.

School time, na na na school time. Horror. One wishes more Sri Lankans would be accepted to Hogwarts. Instead, many Colombo district kids travel great distances to get to school, giving the city a second rush hour we call ‘school time’. Herein I’ve attached graphs showing how far kids live from their school, how long it takes them to get there, and how they travel. The average Sri Lankan kid lives within walking distance of school, but not necessarily a good one.

The average Sri Lankan meal is rice, vegetables, and maybe fish, cooked with a lot of chili and spice. This is common knowledge, but it’s also what I found in the latest Household Income And Expenditure Survey. This survey of 22,581 people has data down to what type of rice (Kekulu, mainly), what type of vegetables (beans and brinjal), what variety of fish (small ones, I assume hal maso) and what condiments (Bombay onions, green chilis).