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12 Responses to “Mera Bharath Mahan!*”  

1. 1 Flea Jun 28th, 2006 at 2:41 am

   What happened to all that opium?

   Flea

2. 2 It's me, T.J. Jun 28th, 2006 at 6:50 am

   These numbers are staggering and are hard on the imagination.

   And really absolutely amazing.

   I didn’t realize how “great” India was!

   later…

3. 3 scan man Jun 28th, 2006 at 9:29 am

   Thanks TJ.

   Dr. Flea, I had the same question so I did some Googling..
   I got some info from a newspaper article written by the former Director of India’s Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), Joginder Singh…

   India is one of the world’s top producers of licit opium, and is the sole producer of opium gum. To meet India’s share of anticipated world demand for licit opium in 2000 and rebuild domestic stockpiles toward an International Narcotics Control Board, the recommended level was about 750 metric tons. The Government set a harvest target of 1,200 metric tons, of which 870 metric tons was meant for export, 130 metric tons for domestic use and 200 metric tons for buffer stocks. To meet this goal, the Government continued to license a historically larger number of farmers and an increased area for poppy cultivation.

   However, in 2001, the total licensed area has been reduced from 35,271 hectares to 25,375 hectares in 2001. Those cultivators who had failed to achieve qualifying yields at least 45 kilograms per hectare in States like Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were de-licensed. On the other hand, criminal elements produce heroin from both diverted legal opium and illegally grown opium, no reliable data are available on the extent of production.

   Nevertheless, the NCB sources are of the opinion that farmers often hide the exact quantity of their yield and sell off some in the black market. The Government periodically raises the official price paid to farmers to increase incentives to licit cultivators. This graduated scale of payment to licensed farmers is designed to encourage greater productivity and prevent diversion to the black market, where opium can fetch prices as much as 25 times higher than the base price of Rs 630 per kilogram (about $14).

   For one kilogram the Government pays a farmer Rs 250 ($5.5), which is not only meagre but also a fraction of the drug’s value on the black market. In 2001, there was a decrease in the floor purchase price of opium from Rs 280 to Rs 270 per kilo. This led to induce the farmers to divert sales to drug traffickers instead, who paid a much higher price.

   So I guess a lot of the opium does get diverted to illegal channels.

4. 4 Arunn Jun 29th, 2006 at 6:21 pm

   A child is born in India every 1.25 seconds.

   1) Do you know how this statistic is arrived at?

   2) agreeing with this number, this makes it 40 child per minute and 21,024,000 per year. Is this correct?

   3) If “India’s population grows by 15,300,000 every year”, then does this mean 5724000 children die every year? This then means about 11 children die every minute.

   Ofcourse, if the 15,300,000 includes other deaths also (which is what it should be, I hope), the 11 figure should come down more. An achievement for us.

5. 5 scan man Jun 30th, 2006 at 10:25 am

   Arunn, I have no idea how India Today came up with that number. Probably divided the population growth per year by number of seconds in a year or some such complicated math
   Your Qs 2 & 3 are interesting…
   Let me see…
   The Child Mortality Rate in India is 87 (UNICEF statistics for 2003), in lay terms that means 87 children (under the age of 5 years) die for every 1000 live births annually. That means 1,829,088 children die every year (as per your figure of 21,024,000 live births per year). In other words 7 children die every 2 minutes. Still a considerable achievement.

6. 6 Arunn Jun 30th, 2006 at 7:46 pm

   I made a mistake. I took it as 1.5 instead of 1.25. Number 1.25 makes it 48 per minute and about 19 children per minute die in India. Extending it to you calculation, it makes the 7 go up to slightly more than 8.

7. 7 Hans G. Engel, M.D. Jun 30th, 2006 at 10:54 pm

   Thank you for your fascinating statistics! It raises manyh many questions, but the one of greatest concern is: how can a country with such a dense population adequately feed it’s people with such an enormous birth rate in the future ? Or even today?

8. 8 Moof Jul 4th, 2006 at 11:10 am

   Dr. Scan Man … those numbers boggle my mind! I can’t imagine that many people! It’s a fascinating country … you’ve opened up a whole new world for me with all of your information!

   You know, your RSS feed (Bloglines) hasn’t been working. It seemed as if you’d been really quiet, so I came over to take a look … and I’m glad I did! You’ve been busy!

   I think I’m going to see if you have more than one feed so that I’ll have a better chance of not missing your posts …

1. 1 Nonoscience / How to Make Forty Eight Children Per Minute Pingback on Jun 30th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
2. 2 nOnoscience » Blog Archive » How to Make Forty Eight Children Per Minute Pingback on Jun 3rd, 2007 at 10:35 pm
3. 3 How to Make Forty Eight Children Per Minute « nOnoscience Pingback on May 14th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
4. 4 How to Make Forty Eight Children Per Minute « Unruled Notebook Pingback on Nov 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am

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