India loses about a quarter of its electrical power output due to problems in its transmission and distribution infrastructure. It is one of the worst loss rates in the world, although it pales in comparison to Botswana, where almost 80% of power output is lost.
India is not the only country where businesses suffer significant losses due to power failures. Nepalese firms report that they lose an astonishing 27% of annual sales due to electrical outages. Check our Value lost due to electrical outages indicator for more details.
India is a country with extraordinary problems due to the size of its population. At the same time, it has extraordinary potential which may be realized if it can implement some major changes best identified in a paper released by Goldman Sachs in 2008 (PDF). According to the study, there are ten key areas where reform is needed:
I believe the only controversial item in the list above may be number six, given the disastrous effects that financial market deregulation had in the US in recent years. Nevertheless, the nine other recommendations are still highly relevant and fundamentally sound. Do you agree?
According to the Department of Telecommunications of India, there were 346.9 million wireless telephones in India as of December 2008. Using a total population of 1,147,995,904 (July 2008 estimate), the penetration rate of cell phones was 30.2%. For comparison purposes, the penetration rate as of December 2007 was only 20.7%. In other words, the number of mobile phones in India increased by 113 million in 12 months, an astounding 48.5% growth rate.
You may also want to compare India’s mobile phone penetration to China’s mobile phone penetration.
A complete list of mobile network operators in India has been uploaded to the India section of the site.
I just finished a major upgrade to the thematic map engine. It can now generate color-coded maps (choropleths) for individual countries. Check out the following examples:
I have population data for several other countries. I will soon make it easier to discover which country maps are available.