The 2011 Human Development Index is out. What’s interesting is that inequality, especially gender inequality, has dragged India to the bottom of South Asia and the world in general. At the same time, however, “Sri Lanka has overtaken China on human development and with an HDI of 0.691, is now within touching distance of the “high human development” category” (Times Of India).

Sri Lanka’s Internet is quite slow by regional standards. We do, however, have wide coverage and it feels cheap. That is, I have a lot of friends online, but they all complain about how slow it is. That’s better than not being online at all, but it still sucks. These graphs are from LIRNEasia’s yearly South Asian Quality Of Service review (direct PDF). Some of the data is from another LIRNEasia report by Helani Galpaya.

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.

Income does not guarantee a decent life. The answer is in that sentence itself. Decent is a relative term, relative to the people around you. While there’s no particular relation between income and say, health, internationally, there is a pretty clear relation within countries. That is, inequality does matter.

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.

From 2002-2010, the Sri Lankan vehicle population has more than doubled. There were 1.9 million vehicles on the road in 2002 and now there are nearly 4 million. I highlight vehicles because these are not cars. Over 50% of the vehicles on the road are motorcycles. As you may have noticed, at every single junction.

I’ve been going thru the election results for the recent local government elections. While the UNP got the most votes, they’ve lost their majority in Colombo and their presence here is on a steady decline. Note that they’ve already lost the suburbs (Kotte, Dehiwela) and, of course, the rest of the country. They’re also losing minority votes in Colombo, and in the North and East, which have their own parties.

Hans Rosling of Gapminder tweeted this: “Yearly 100 billion intercourses yields 200 million pregnancies resulting in 135 million births of which 127 million kids survive to year 5!”. I found it interesting and made the infographic above. Only additions are to divide everything by 365, giving a daily figure. I somehow find it impossible to comprehend 100 billion intercourses.

If you post more on a blog do you get more traffic? I don’t know about you, I do. This spreadsheet has nearly six years of data from indi.ca. At times I’ve posted a lot, at times I’ve posted not. In December 2007 I posted twice and got about 11,000 visitors. In January 2010 I posted 97 times and got about 30,000. Those are extreme examples. My rule of thumb is that doubling post frequency increases traffic by 50-75%.

India has a different university problem than Sri Lanka. We have too few seats that produce unemployable graduates. They have too many seats that also produce unemployable graduates. I guess I’d rather have their problem. I guess. “Why do we go to school?” There are two basic theories, as per this great New Yorker article. It’s to get a better job, or it’s to just get better.