People at Work & Play

A column which grabs my attention in every issue of “Business Today” is called “Numbers of Note”. Here are shown stats. on different subjects spanning the globe including some very interesting trivia.

A sample of numbers from the issue dated April 22;

1. 16 lakh (16,00,000) :The number of people living in penury in New Delhi. Translates to 1/10th of the city’s population.
2. 163 million: Total teen population of India. Nearly 1/2 of India’s 1 billion+ population is under the age of 20.
3. 2.3 million: The expected stregth of the IT/BPO workforce in India by 2010.
4. 250 million: Total number of users of Yahoo !mail worldwide. The highest amongst email service providers. Gmail has 51 million users.
5. 1 million: The number of tourists expected to visit India for the 2010 Commonwealth Games to be held at New Delhi.
6. 500,000: The number of jobs expected to be created in the tourism, hospitality, aviation sectors because of the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

I have no doubt that our teen population of today, given the right environment and our value systems, will transform us to an economic powerhouse of tomorrow.

Today’s “Times of India” has an interesting graphic which depicts how much, on average, Indians buy every day. By the way, a Lakh is 100,000 and a Crore is 10 million:

Cars 2,416
Bikes 15,932
Scooters 19,332
Condoms 43.83 lakh
Cigarettes 26.02 crore sticks
Jeans 72,329
Washing Machines 4,274
Laptops 1,183
Soaps 151 lakh bars of 100 gms
Gold 1,918 kg
Movie tickets 1.04 crores
Air tickets 95,890
Packaged Water 57.6 lakh bottles of 650 ml
Beer 86 lakh bottles of 650 ml
Soft Drinks 1.96 crore bottles of 300 ml
TVs 22,740
Fridges 9,589

I, for one, was pleasantly surprised to see these figures. The best antidote to poverty is economic progress!This bit of trivia makes one marvel at the size of our country, its huge population and the potential to economic prosperity- if we get the basics right.