The Census data is a goldmine of interesting information, if you're into that kind of thing. Here's one nugget I found not long ago.
We see cars everywhere in India, or certainly in urban India -- more every day, choked traffic, flyovers and sea-links built so the cars can move faster. Again, judging by how many people I know own cars, it would be easy to say that everyone owns one.
But obviously, everyone doesn't own one. Exactly how many cars are there in India?
I haven't found a figure yet, though I'm sure it is available somewhere. What I found instead was a table based on the 2001 Census data that gives the number of Indian households that have each of various assets -- TV and radio, for example, and cars.
The 2001 Census reported about 192 million households in India. How many of those do you think owned cars (or jeeps or vans)? Take a guess, before you read further.
Answer: about 4.8 million. About one in 40 Indian households. Let's be wildly generous and say each of those 4.8 million households owns two cars (or jeeps or vans). That's less than ten million of these vehicles in India in 2001.
(I don't know the figures now, but when I lived in the States in the '80s, ten million was about how many cars were sold each year in that country).
As before, I don't quote this figure to talk about privilege, or poverty, or a comparison with the USA, nothing like that. I simply mean to say, these snapshots tell me things about this country. (The table has more such snapshots).
Source: This table from the 2001 Census.
11 comments:
I've often spend hours running through the US census data.. but this looks even more interesting. thanks dilip... and umm.. pick yourself up a jeep while youre out today... join the millions.
If you could say something instead of just putting up stats, it would be more interesting.
Again, judging by how many people I know own cars, it would be easy to say that everyone owns one.
You move in pretty affluent circles, man. I tried going through the various folks I know, and out of 30-odd households I could think of, about 1 in 5 had cars. All of them upper middle class urban families.
Thanks to your link I now know that Hoshiarpur district in Punjab is aptly named - it seems to be the most literate of all Punjabi districts.
Dilip,
Here is the data about current shipments.
Last fiscal year, 1 million passanger vehicles were shipped. Looking at the trend, by March '06, the number of cars on street should be around 10 million mark. Just a guess!
--shashi
BicycleM, welcome. You need a ride anytime in my jeep, you just ask me, OK?
Anirudh, it's my considered opinion that the stats say something by themselves!
Pareshaan, is that right?! I'm thrilled. Maybe the name fuels study and intelligence?
And Shashi, thanks so much for that link. I see the 1M PVs last year, and I see the totals for the previous years, but how did you get the 10M figure? Are you adding the 4.8M of 2001 and the yearly sales totals since then? Or is there some other table available? Just wondering.
Correction. Correct link is this
Yeah, I added car sales from 2001-2005, which is approx 4M. (Sales in 2000-2001 may be an issue of contention.) Another 1M may get added in 2005-2006. This total of 5M added to earlier 4.8M gives a ballpark figure of 10M. This is not accurate (it may be off by as much as 10-15%), but it gives a broad picture.
is there data distributed for cities/towns/villages?
i guess it may be 1 in 500 if you take just villages
As this is a blog and not a column, I guess putting up just stats is "okay".
*looks paternalistic*
This is such a great news, it really helps,
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This is such a great news, it really helps,
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