From India’s linguistic diversity to the number of Indians paying Income tax and the likely fallouts of the current census, and how migrants are driving India’s economy – there is one ‘go-to-book’: 100 Ways to See India: Stats, Stories and Surprises by Rohit Saran. It helps place facts in perspective, demolish many a shibboleth and offer a fresh insight about so many things that define the everyday reality of the world’s fastest growing economy.
Statistics are boring and more often than not, put the reader to sleep; but this book is different. Each data set is accompanied by an easy to understand graph/chart and a story which makes one pause, think and say, ‘I didn’t know that!’. The illustration will challenge assumptions on both sides of the ideological spectrum, for as Joan Robinson said about India ‘whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is equally true’.
Let’s start with language. During the last census (of 201) Indians had listed 1,95,691 mother tongues to their enumerators, multiple times the officially listed 22 languages in the Eighth schedule. By August of next year, when the results of the next count are published, we will know whether this number has gone down or remained constant. Although Hindi is understood by 57 % (69 crore) people, only 52 crore spoke it as their first language.
The rate of growth of population has certainly been arrested, and by 2050, India’s population graph will also start its downward journey. In percentage terms, all religions, except Islam have declined, which has increased from 9.8% to 15.2% from 1951 to 2025. When it comes to political power, we have to go granular, and look at legislators in state and UT assemblies. BJP holds 40% of the MLAs, followed by 38.4% of the regional and left parties. This leaves the Congress with less than 22% of political representation at the state level. Contrary to popular perception, India is not a vegetarian country – over 87% men and 75% women relish their meats, though large numbers avoid beef and pork. However, poultry has expanded twelve times – Indians are eating more eggs and broilers than ever before.
Getting into India’s civil service is tougher than making it to Harvard or becoming an astronaut with NASA. Interestingly, while 76% of aspirants came from engineering, science or medicine, 85% chose four optional papers – political science, geography, sociology and anthropology. Although more men appear for the exam than women, their success ratio is substantially higher. In fact, from 2010, girls are out-enrolling boys in schools. But when it comes to dating, women prefer those closer to their age cohort, but men show a marked preference for younger women! When Shah Rukh Khan debuted in Bollywood in 1992, his future co star Deepika Padukone was all of six years old
Let us now look at some of the great ironies of India. In 2011, over eleven million urban homes were vacant, even as many times that number were living in unauthorized JJ clusters. We are told that globally — cities like Vancouver and Washington DC, tax empty houses, to promote affordable rentals. Should India follow suit? Meanwhile five states – Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and UP are all vying with each other to become India’s first trillion $ state.
The report also celebrates India’s partial victory over inflation. In each decade after independence, India saw at least two years of double digit inflation. But after 2015, the RBI and government signed a landmark agreement to formally keep inflation in check: setting a goal of 4% per annum, with an upper limit of 6% in extraordinary circumstances. Most economists agree that price stability is the forerunner to prosperity. But measuring prosperity is not as simple as it may appear.
There is the notional per capita GDP, inflation adjusted GDP, GDP with respect to US $, and GDP with respect to PPP, and it is with the latter count, that India becomes a middle income country in terms of affordability of goods and services. It is also interesting to note that at the time of the Kargil war, Pakistan’s per capita was more than that of India; by 2005, it was equal, and now it is less than half. The war on poverty is certainly the one that it lost to India – without any bullet being fired.
In fact, mobile phones and data are perhaps the cheapest in India – for the cost of mobile data fell by over 90% in the last decade, thereby spiking data consumption by a factor of over 656%. Another interesting data set is about the average spend of a foreign tourist in India vis-à-vis Europe. The European and the trans-Atlantic visitor take longer to come to India, and therefore spends more time here than she would in a neighboring country.
We now come to the great poverty dilemma of India. By June 2025, India had been able to eliminate absolute poverty from the country, and on December 1, 2025, Kerala became the first state in the country to declare itself as ‘poverty free’. However, even as India had significantly reduced the number of rich people, inequality – rather extreme inequality was on the rise, which is a larger policy issue for the political economy to dwell upon. One consequence of poverty is that people ‘vote with their feet’: they just migrate to greener pastures.
This explains why Delhi is Bihar’s second largest city, just as Toronto is for Punjabis! Bihar, UP, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand also continue to be states with high birth rates — and they will supply labour to Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Punjab. Soon surnames like Jha, Paswan, Mandal and Yadav will be on the electoral roll of these states, even as migrants learn to speak Tamil, Marathi, Gujarati and Punjabi with flourish and contest for seats in the Municipal Councils and the Legislative Assembly.
The entries on sports also make a fascinating read. That India dominates cricket is very well known, but it is in the game of chess that India has taken real strides. In 1990, India had just one grandmaster – Viswanathan Anand. Today India has over 90 grandmasters, and in November 2025, India was the only country in the world with three men in the top ten in classical chess – aged 19, 20 and 22. Women have not lagged behind, and we have two dozen of them as well! With India making the pitch for the 2036 Olympics, the country is gearing up to prove its mettle as a sporting nation as well.
Last, but not the least, the book tells us where to access big data. It lists the Parliament, RBI, Census of India, MoSPI, Ministries of Health, Agriculture, Education, NCRB, World Bank and NITI Ayog websites, along with popular search engines like Google, and social media sites like X as sources. But none of them will give you half the joy which this book does.
Go ahead, grab a copy and win any quiz on India!
