AS YOU drive west from Baroda — Gujarat’s cultural capital — towards the coast, it is hard not to marvel at the smooth, fourlane Vadodara-Bharuch National Highway Number 8, which gets you there. The only signs that suggest one is not on cruise control in an SUV somewhere on an expressway in America are occasional roadside dhabas with Indian names and poor passers-by, clad in saris or dhotis. Dwarfed by...

KEY TRENDS   • Suicide by self-employed persons in agriculture as a percentage of total suicides at the national level stood at 15.6 percent in 1996, 16.3 percent in 2002, 14.4 percent in 2006, 13.7 percent in 2009, 11.9 percent in 2010, 10.3 percent in 2011, 11.4 percent in 2012 and 8.73 percent in 2013. Suicides committed in the farming sector (by farmers plus agricultural labourers) as a proportion of total suicides in India was 9.4 percent in...

KEY TRENDS  • In 2021 India had a total of 1,319 prisons housing 5,54,034 prisoners as of that year end. The actual capacity was 4,25,609, which means that Indian prisons were overcrowded by 30.2 percent in 2021. ## • In 2020 India had a total of 1,306 prisons housing 4,88,511 prisoners as of that year end. The actual capacity was 4,14,033. The over crowding in Indian prisons in 2020 was 18 percent. ## • In 2019 India had...

KEY TRENDS   • At the national level, the proportion of government schools having facilities like drinking water was 96.39 percent, boys' toilet was 94.64 percent, girls' toilet was 97.03 percent, boundary wall was 60.12 percent, playground was 56.98 percent, ramp was 71.50 percent, CWSN toilet was 19.59 percent, electricity was 56.45 percent and library was 79.36 percent, according to the Unified District Information System For Education (UDISE) 2017-18 (Provisional) *12   • ASER 2019 ‘Early Years’ data shows a clear...

  KEY TRENDS     •    The biggest school feeding programmes are in India (114 million), Brazil (47 million), the United States (45 million) and China (26 million). India has a universal school meals programmes. It's school feeding programme ranks 12th among 35 lower-middle-income countries covering 79 percent of its total number of school-going children $ •    In 2010-11, the combined expenditure of the central government and the state governments/ Union Territories on the school meals...