September 9 A horrific accident a few days ago killed one of India's best-known business people, Cyrus Mistry. Many people are still going over all the details, agonizing over what happened. (Recently, I was in a long discussion with someone reading this, you know who you are so hello.)
Anyway, it got me thinking about accident numbers. And that reminded me of another recent headline - India's economy has overtaken the UK's. Numbers to think about there as well... ... and thus my column for today Sept 9: Buckle up, numbers aplenty ahead, https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/buckle-up-numbers-aplenty-ahead-11662667113571.html Let me know if the numbers resonate with you. yours, dilip --- Buckle up, numbers aplenty ahead ----------------- Dilip D'Souza A few days ago, we heard that India's economy had overtaken the UK's. This makes India the 5th-largest in the world; ahead are the USA, China, Germany and Japan. This milestone was cause for celebrations in some circles, certainly a reflection of our growing economy. A few days ago as well, a horrific car accident killed Cyrus Mistry and Jehangir Pandole. This tragedy got plenty of people thinking about road safety measures. Sadly, neither Mistry or Pandole were wearing their rear-seat safety belts. In this column, I will toss at you some figures about these two happenings. Perhaps they will give them some context, and you something to think about. If you think about it, India becoming the world's 5th-largest economy was almost inevitable. Why so? Because this is a huge country. As more and more of its citizens are more and more economically active, its economy will naturally grow. Eventually the sheer numbers who live and work within our borders mean we will overtake most other countries, especially the ones that have far fewer people than we do. Consider: The UK has 67.2 million people. India is at about 1.4 billion - twenty times larger. Whatever the reasons - colonialism, industrialization, etc - the UK's economy had a yawning headstart on ours in 1947. 75 years later, that lead has dwindled to zero, as it had to. In much the same inexorable way, we will likely overtake Germany (population: 83 million) and Japan (126 million) sometime relatively soon. What about China and the US? Well, China's population is about the same as ours, and those countries' economies are about 5 (China) and 7 (US) times larger than ours. So their lead will persist for a long time. But these mentions of population and economies raise an intriguing question. If we compare countries' economies by their overall size, should we also compare them per capita? After all, to the average citizen, per capita income is the measure that is relevant. The life that the average citizen lives is shaped far more immediately by the income she makes than the overall state of her country's economy. For this column, let's divide GDP by population to arrive at per capita income. Looked at that way, India's per capita income is a little more than $2000. The UK's is about twenty times that, at about $40,000. Looked at that way, we haven't overtaken the UK at all. So which of these comparisons is "right"? Both, really. India's economy is certainly growing, and is now larger than the UK's. That's a milestone to savour. Still, I would bet the average Indian sees herself, and the majority of her fellow-citizens, as far less prosperous than the average resident of the UK. The respective per capita incomes tell that latter story. Turn now to the accident. The two deaths spurred plenty of commentary about road design, overspeeding and more, and of course the need to use those rear-seat safety belts. That last is critical. You've seen the videos that show the effects of an accident on unbelted mannequins in the rear. You've seen the figures that suggest use of belts decreases the chance of dying dramatically. All eye-opening, but for now, focus on some other figures. When we rank countries not by their economy, but by the number of road-accident deaths, India is not 5th, nor 3rd. It is nearly the top of the heap. According to the estimable folks at Our World In Data ( https://ourworldindata.org/), traffic on our roads kills about 200,000 people every year. That's second only to China, where the toll is about 250,000. In this morbid race, no other countries come anywhere close to us Asian giants; in fact, we outdo all of Africa, all of the Americas and all of Europe. Brazil (45,000), the US (41,000) and Indonesia (37,000) are the rest of the top five countries. Ah, but like with the economy above, what about road death numbers per capita? Divide those tolls by each country's population to find that for every million of their residents, Brazil loses about 211 people to traffic accidents, China 179, India 145, Indonesia 135 and the US 124. So among these five large countries, Brazil tops, pushing India to third place. Do the per capita numbers make you look at accident tolls a little differently? But wait: there are other ways to look at them that might tell different stories. (For the rest of this essay, I'll stick to the US, China and India.) For example, how many traffic accidents in each country? The US is a runaway world leader, with about 2.2 million accidents annually. India's count is at about 500,000, and China about 212,000. (Data from the International Road Federation in Geneva.) Divide the death tolls by these numbers, and what they suggest is that accidents vary widely, and surprisingly, in how deadly they are. Someone dies with every 50th accident in the US, but every second one in India and every single one in China. If you find that hard to swallow, it probably is. What these numbers may really suggest is that many accidents in India and China are simply not reported to authorities; that even what Indians might consider minor "fender-benders" make it to the list of American accidents. What if we factor in vehicle ownership? China leads the world there, with 307 million motor vehicles. Second and third are the US and India, with 291 million and 89 million respectively. Do the arithmetic to find that for every million vehicles, the US has 141 deaths in accidents. China, 814 deaths. India, 2247. (Aside: Though remember that these ownership figures don't account for two-wheelers, which in India are about three times as numerous as other motor vehicles. I'll leave the consequent arithmetic to you.) Sobering, that 2247? That's what statistics can do. Sliced one way, they appear reassuring, worth celebrating. Sliced another, sobering. Take your pick. But whatever you do, please please buckle up. -- My book with Joy Ma: "The Deoliwallahs" Twitter: @DeathEndsFun Death Ends Fun: http://dcubed.blogspot.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dilip's essays" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dilips-essays+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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