Dear Friends:
This is from New York Times today (14 03 2012). I hope the statistics will be useful to those who are interested. -bhuban In Indian Homes, Phones and Electricity in rise, but sanitation & Internet Lagging India’s households have, overall, become more comfortable in the past 10 years, but hundreds of millions of people still lack basics like electricity, toilets and a convenient water source, according the Housing Census that was released Tuesday by Home Secretary R. K. Singh. The survey looks about 330 million households in India. A few highlights: Housing: More than 91 million households live in one room homes, and 179 million homes are two rooms or less. Electricity: Nearly 70 percent of the households use electricity, the census shows, an improvement over 11 percent in 2001. The rural-urban gap for homes with electricity has dropped from 44 percent in 2001 to 37 percent. More than 30 percent of households still use kerosene for light. For cooking, 67 percent of households use firewood, crop residue or cow dung cakes. Only 29 percent of households use cooking gas, biogas or electricity as cooking fuel. Water: Only 43.5 percent of houses have tap water. More than one-third, roughly 36 percent, have to fetch water from source a located within 500 meters (about a third of a mile) from their home in rural areas and 100 meters in urban areas. Nearly 20 percent have to walk farther than that to get water. Communication: A telephone, whether a land line or mobile, is used by 63 percent of total households – 82 percent in urban areas and 54 percent in rural areas, an increase of 54 percentage points from 2001. A mobile phone is owned by 59 percent of households. There has been a huge jump in television ownership – up from 15.6 percent to 43 percent in since 2001. A computer or laptop is owned by 20 percent of the households in urban India and just 5 percent in rural areas. Only 3 percent of overall households have an internet connection. Sanitation: Kitchen facilities are present in 61 percent of households, but 53 percent have no toilet facilities, down from 63 percent in 2001. Just over half of all households, or 51 percent, are connected to some sort of drainage facilities. Bathing facilities are present in 58 percent of homes, up from 21 percent in 2001. Transportation: Just 5 percent of Indian households have a four-wheeled vehicle, or car or truck. More than one-fifth, or 21 percent, have motorcycles or scooters and 41 percent rely on bicycles. Banking: The number of households using banking facilities has jumped substantially, from 27 percent in 2001 to 59 percent in this census. E-mail Print Recommend _______________________________________________ assam mailing list assam@assamnet.org http://assamnet.org/mailman/listinfo/assam_assamnet.org
