Yet, your income tax is among the main sources of revenue for the government. It is spent on a variety of things, from infrastructure development to public welfare. Two primary heads of government expenditure are public health and public education. But you, coming from that 2.8% bracket, rarely go to a government hospital and are not likely to send your children to a government-run school. So, even after paying for these facilities, you spend from your pocket on private healthcare and private education. Why? Because, notwithstanding the talk of an expanding middle class, the taxpayers among them, the 2.8%, do not form a ‘vote bank’, whereas many other groups do and get rebates. 

 

You probably had some idea of that tax conundrum. But did you know that, excepting four states, majority in every state are meat-eaters? And #1 vegetarian state is not Gujarat, but Haryana? Gujarat has more non-vegetarians than Punjab!

 

Or, did you know that Bengaluru, the district, is the language capital of India? If you thought Delhi must have the maximum linguistic diversity, you should note that 107 languages are spoken in Bengaluru district compared to 97 in South-West Delhi.

 

These facts, based on official statistics, are quoted here from a highly unusual book, 100 Ways to See India: Stats, Stories, and Surprises (published by HarperCollins). The author, Rohit Saran, is the managing editor of The Times of India. In the past, he served as executive editor of The ToI, The Economic Times, and India Today, and editor-in-chief of Business Today and Khaleej Times. These days, ‘data journalism’ is a welcome trend, and every self-respecting print publication offers data-heavy articles with reader-friendly visuals. Saran started doing ‘data journalism’ way back in the 1990s, blending numbers, visuals, and text to tell stories in a better way. He is joined here by Sajeev Kumarapuram, the design editor of The ToI. Their cumulative experience has made the book lively, interactive and altogether a pleasant reading experience. They have turned drab PDFs and Excel sheets into exciting stories about ourselves – the stories that we sometimes were vaguely aware of and sometimes will be utterly surprised to read. 

 

‘100 Ways to See India’, Saran says in a note from the publishers, “presents facts in a way that makes you pause and say, ‘I didn’t know that.’ It tries to bridge the gap between facts and opinion, offering perspectives that sit beyond ideology. Designed and written as a visual discovery of a nation in the midst of momentous change, this book invites you to see India differently every time you open it.” And you are bound to open it again and again.

 

The author explains how India faces both data drought or data deluge. “A large part of the country remains unseen not for lack of data, but because that data is buried in dry, dense, fragmented reports. The result: we are flooded with numbers but starved of insight. It takes real work to extract, clean, and build compelling stories from such data.” And this marvelous book “is aimed exactly at that”.

 

Data and numbers are usually associated with money, finance and economy. These topics figure prominently in the ‘hundred’ ways (though that is only an approximate, round figure; there are 300 visuals in 85-plus chapters here). But other themes closer to life for some of us also get a decent coverage: Politics, languages, crime, religion, population, weather and more. Do you know where will the next 100 babies in India be born? Or: Are Shah Rukh Khan’s and Rajinikanth’s future heroines even born yet? 

 

 

This book also serves a far more important function. We live in the age of fake news and post-truth. The numbers don’t reveal the full story (you can find many funny quotations about this), unless you know how to read them, how to interrogate them. But half-baked statistics are purveyed in social media to propel dubious agendas and narratives. In the last section of the book, Saran take you to the next level, by teaching how to read data, not to mention, where to find them, and how not to be fooled by a number. There is also a companion website: 100 Ways to See India - In 100 Charts. Data literacy or numeracy among citizens needs to be enhanced, as the nation prepares for the biggest data-gathering exercise, the Census. The Delimitation exercise that is expected to follow it will make our collective ability to make sense of numbers critical for the future of the nation. 

 

Saran and Kumarapuram contributes to this cause in a cheerful way.