Indopinions

If India were a village of 100 people …

Posted on 24. Jul, 2009 by Bharat in Articles, Opinion

…  and all the demographic, economic and social proportions remained the same, what kind of village would it be?

I recently came across a very interesting article title “If UK was a village of a 100 people” which basically shrunk UK to a village of hundred people and went through various statistics like population, education and economic splits etc. The goal of the article is to give you a better picture of the country and put into perspective what the statistical numbers mean. For example, if you see in the papers that 100,000 people die every year because of a disease, is that a big number? How much would that have an effect on you or your family and friends?

There are a lot of articles out there and books too (like If the World were a Village) that shrink the world to a 100 people village and then look at the different statistics. For example here’s a excerpt from an article at about.com

61 villagers would be Asian (of that, 20 would be Chinese and 17 would be Indian), 14 would be African, 11 would be European, 9 would be Latin or South American, 5 would be North American, and none of the villagers would be from Australia, Oceania, or Antarctica.

This is very interesting because it puts into perspective, the numbers and percentages we see everyday.

This article however is an attempt to shrink India to a village of a 100 people and try to put into perspective all the religious, economic, habitual statistics and much more. So here we go …

If India were a village of a 100 people,

40 of them would be under the age of 15, and only 17 of them will be going to school although at least 27 of them should be, the other 13 are babies.

1 person will be above 55

In total, there will be 51 men and boys and 49 women and girls.

Of the 60 adults, 44 are married, 11 unmarried, 3 are widowed and 2 are divorced.

If India was a village of 100 people, 82 will be Hindu, 13 Muslim, 2 Christians, 1 Sikh, 1 Jain and 1 Buddhist.
Of the 100 people, 25 were considered untouchables until a few years ago and most of them are still considered untouchable in most places.

2 people are disabled.

If we scale down the land mass of the country proportionate to the population of 100 instead of 1 Billion, the size of the Village will be 0.3 sq km, which by the way is the area of the smallest inhabited island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Which is also approximately the size of about 50 cricket grounds, 14 of which will be irrigated. The rest are spread between industries and housing as well as waste.

If India were a village of 100 people, 12 would be farmers and 10 more will be working for them as labor.

If India had a 100 people, only 48 of them will be voting in a national election and the trend shows a decline in that number.

About 56 of the “villagers” are considered literate (at least high school education) although only 40 will be working, the rest are either kids, dependents or out of work.

If India were a village of 100 people, only 8 will have access to the internet!

Between the 100 people in the village, there will be 36 cell phones and 14 land lines.

The 100 people of the village will be living in 19 households(average of 5 per home) of which only 1 will be headed by a woman. 9 of the households will have kids going to school.
1 person will be homeless.

Of the 100 people in 19 households, 1 house will have a car. About 10 homes will have a television.

42 of the 100 people in the village are below the poverty line by the world standards($1.22 a day). The top 10 richest people will have 33% of the total wealth of the village while the poorest 10 people have 3%.

23 of the 100 people will be smokers or at least use some kind of tobacco product.

It is estimated that 7 out of the 100 villagers are gay!

Of the 100 people in the village,

16 are from Uttar Pradesh
8 each from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal
5 each from Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Mahdya Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat
2 each from Assam, Punjab, Haryana,
Jammu and Delhi are represented by 1 person each.
Rest are from other states

No one will die this year! 2 babies will be born making the population 102 at the end of the year. 1 person will die next year.

Among the 100 villagers, 35 speak Hindi and about the same number speak English although not all fluently.

Finally if India was a village of a 100 people, its external debt right now would be Rs.19,50,000 ($40,000). Each person would be in debt of Rs.19,500 ($400) to the world.

If you use part of this post on your website, please link back to the original post. Please do comment. Most of the information here was taken from the Census of India site. Information provided here is only intended as an interesting conversation and should not be based for any decisions you make.

Tags: featured, fun, india, population, village