Highly Employed Poor Peoples

Note: Taken information from wikipedia...

With the recent economic slowdown some of the new's that keeps coming often is how lots of peoples are loosing their jobs and unemployment rates are in the rise. I was curious to know the unemployment situation of the world and did a small search. I came out with the following chart which is a compilation of the world unemployment rate from CIA figures.

World rate of unemployment

Now I was surprised to see that India is comparable to most of the developed nations in terms of employment. Even surprising was we were better then the United States. We have an unemployment rate of ~ 7.5% as compared to 10.2% in the USA. Well that's like doing really good. But the hard fact is we are still a long way to go to provide proper employment, and also proper healthcare and food. I was now more interested to know how do we fare in poverty. So I went ahead and checked the poverty statistics. The first chart I checked was that of people below the poverty line as defined by the respective countries. Now we start showing up being not so good. We are just better then the African nations and comparable to the developed nations. The developed nations fared really well in uplifting their peoples above the poverty line. China surprisingly did a really good job, partly because their poverty line must be really on the lower side.

% population below national poverty line

A better way to compare countries is to put them in the same scale. So when I looked into such data I found one which gives the % of population living below $1.25/day. And the statistics revealed the status of our population. 40 - 60% of our population falls in that category. Our neighbors line China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and developing nations like Brazil did much better with 6-20% of their population being in that category. There is a lesson to learn, we India has a long way to go. Though comparing at a single level of currency is not a proper way to look at things and we need to look into purchasing power parity, this still gives us an indication that we are a "Highly Employed Poor Nation"

% population living below $1.25/day

Earth 'heading for 6C' of warming

** Earth 'heading for 6C' of warming **

CO2 emissions rose by a quarter in the last decade, setting the course for a world up to 6C warmer, according to research. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8364926.stm

Emissions rose by 29% between 2000 and 2008, most of it came from the developing nations though a quarter of it was driven by demand and consumption in the industrialized nations. This alarming finding reiterates the need for urgency in political discussions.

China's new found development has ramped the CO2 emissions in recent years. The study said there are still possibility of reaching 2C if things are done urgently, but at the current pace - 6C is a reality we will have to face.

India adds 30 million people to hungry list in the last decade

** Food Day praise for Brazil, China **

Brazil and China are praised, and India criticised, in a new report on efforts to tackle hunger, published on UN World Food Day.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/in_depth/8309979.stm

In a latest published report, India has been criticized for not doing enough to tackle hunger. When other developing nations like China and Brazil has done lots and have reduced its number of hungry people, in the last decade, India has added 30 Million more people in the hungry list.

Here are some pictures from "International food policy research institute" on global hunger index.

India is ranked as alarmingly hungry, which is in the league of the African nations (shame on our economic development).

Countries like Brazil has done a lot to reduce its hungry population as shown in the figure below.

Missions to moon:

With India’s big leap into the league of countries aiming for the moon via its Chandrayan program, I was exploring the web to look into the history of mankind’s attempt to touch our only natural satellite. The complete history is given in the following link from NASA website.

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunartimeline.html

Some interesting observations:

Russia started the lunar race in late 50’s. USA finally overtook them and landed the first man at the moon in 1969 10 years after it all started. USA stopped most of its work in 1972 after its Apollo-17 crewed landing. USA is the only country to have people landing in the moon (having done it 7 times).

Japan entered the race with “Hiten” flyby and orbiter in the 90’s. The European space agency did a lunar orbiter in late 2003. China followed it with a lunar orbiter in October 2007. India did it in October 2008 one year after China.

India thus joined the elite group of nations to leave their mark with journey towards the moon. Well that’s what makes me extremely proud.

China the next sports Superpower?

I was expecting this to happen, in fact the world was expecting this to happen: "China is already leading heavily in the medals tally at Beijing Olympics". Olympics is just halfway and China has already bettered their last times performance of 32 golds (they now have 35 gold medals, equal to the ones the USA won last time in Athens).


The beauty of this years China's performance is they have grabbed medals from places where they were not considered good historically, say it womens swimming, archery. So with half of the medals still to come (most in Athletics though, USA stronghold), it will be interesting to see what final medals tally China ends up getting, AND can USA catch up?


I am also proud of the gold medal India (Abhinav Bindra) has won. But don't you think after so many years of Olympics participation, first Individual gold medal in the history of Olympics is a bit disappointing.

Added on 29th August:- Added a bit late here, China ended first with a real dominant performance winning 51 golds. Thats one of the highest in recent times (if we forget the 80/84 boycotted games). This is the arrival of the new sports superpower.