Data For India

Insights, charts and data to create shared knowledge and expand our understanding of India.

[Data For India @dataforin]

Introducing The Roundup - Data For India’s new monthly newsletter!

Over the last couple of years, we’ve published dozens of in-depth analyses, built hundreds of new charts and built features to make our work easy to discover, share and reuse. But if you’re not checking the platform regularly, it might be easy to miss what’s new.

The Roundup is our way of keeping you in the loop, a simple monthly note that brings together:
📝 The latest work we’ve published
🖥️ New platform features and updates
📊 One chart that our team thought you shouldn't miss

Issue #1 is out now; every new issue will land in your inbox on the last Friday of every month.

Read the first issue and subscribe here: https://t.co/lKBe508Qrl

[Data For India @dataforin]

What does employment look like for Indian women across different sectors? Read @akwaghmare's piece to find out: https://t.co/iJepaHYCfm

[Data For India @dataforin]

India's female labour force participation rate (LFPR) - the share of women who are either working or seeking work - is growing, but low by global standards.

Historically, a majority of adult Indian women reported that they were attending to household duties and were not available for paid work. However, recent trends show an increase in female LFPR, particularly among rural Indian women. In 2018, about one in four women in rural India reported being in the labour force; by 2024, this number had climbed to nearly half of all rural women.

Workers are classified by the time spent on work in a particular area as "principal workers" (persons who worked in one activity for a relatively long part of the last 365 days), "subsidiary workers" (persons who worked for more than 30 days but less than six months on a particular activity), and "both principal and subsidiary workers" (those who worked for most of the year on one activity, and for a small part of the year on another activity).

Most Indian workers are only principal workers, meaning that they work on one activity for most of the year, and this category has steadily grown for both men and women. However, a large part of the recent rise in workers among women, particularly in rural areas, was in subsidiary, or part-time, work.

#Work #Women #Employment #LFPR #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

The availability of healthcare workers is a key measure of the effective functioning of a country's health system. It reflects not just access to care, but also the capacity of the system to support its population.

India's Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) records about 5.7 million healthcare professionals in India. This includes registered doctors, registered nurses and midwives, and registered AYUSH practitioners.

India's healthcare system also trains, recognises and employs AYUSH doctors, who are formally trained in traditional systems of medicine including ayurveda, unani, siddha, naturopathy, sowa rigpa (traditional medical system practised in the Himalayan region), and homeopathy. Nurses include not just registered nurses, but also Auxiliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) and Lady Health Visitors (LHVs).

This amounts to about 41 registered healthcare professionals for every 10,000 people in India, including doctors, nurses and midwives. This is close to the World Health Organization's (WHO) suggested threshold of 44.5 per 10,000 people needed to meet healthcare-related sustainable development goals.

More than half of these professionals are nurses and midwives. For every ten doctors, there are roughly 17 nurses and midwives. The number of nurses has grown faster than the number of doctors, almost doubling between 2012 and 2023.

However, despite nearing the benchmark, the distribution of health professionals remains uneven across states and between urban and rural areas.

How does the distribution of registered healthcare professionals look in different regions across India? Read @nileena_suresh's analysis to find out: https://t.co/vNN90I3p7B

#Health #Doctor #Nurse #PublicHealth #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

India is witnessing an exponential growth in digital payments, propelled by rising mobile phone and internet access.

Aside from cash, more than 95% of the money spent every day on major retail payments was made using cheques just two decades ago. However, since the introduction of the National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) in 2005-06, and later with the rise of Unified Payments Interface (UPI), digital retail payments have come to dominate, according to statistics maintained by the Reserve Bank of India.

In the last five years, the use of UPI has in particular grown dramatically. The average daily number of UPI transactions grew from 40 million per day in 2019 to 550 million per day in 2025, outstripping all other modes of digital payments.

The largest daily transactions by value, on the other hand, take place via NEFT, despite being much fewer in number. From 2020 to January 2025, the average daily transaction value on NEFT doubled from Rs 600 billion to Rs 1.2 trillion.

UPI is mainly used for small peer-to-peer and peer-to-merchant payments, while NEFT is used for transactions with a larger ticket size. The average value of a UPI transaction is around Rs 1,500, and for an NEFT transaction is a little under Rs 50,000.

Has this progress in retail digital payments led to equitable access to financial services across India? Read @akwaghmare 's piece to find out: https://t.co/SThDU3ArJb

#Payments #Banking #Finance #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

Indian households use a range of cooking fuels, including Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), natural gas (primarily Piped Natural Gas or PNG), firewood, other natural sources (primarily dung cake), and electricity. Some households also report having no cooking arrangement.

The use of LPG as cooking fuel across Indian households has grown steadily over time. In 2000, fewer than 20% of households used LPG, with the majority reliant on firewood. By the late 2010s, the share using LPG had overtaken the share using firewood, and it continues to grow.

As of 2024, six in ten Indian households use LPG as their primary cooking fuel. A third of Indian households still rely on firewood.

Firewood use is concentrated in rural households. In urban areas, more than four in five households now use LPG. The share using natural gas, including PNG, remains small and geographically concentrated.

This data comes from India’s Household Consumption Expenditure Survey, which asks the head of the household about its primary energy source for cooking in the 30 days preceding the survey.

How does LPG usage vary across different regions in India? Read @Rukmini’s analysis to find out: https://t.co/PcWIv6d0n7

#LPG #Fuel #Cooking #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

One of the most important measures of a country's nutritional and public health status is whether its children are adequately nourished. The most closely tracked indicator on child nutrition outcomes is stunting.

A child is considered stunted if their height is more than two standard deviations lower than the median for children of the same age and gender, using World Health Organization growth standards.

In 1993, more than one in two children under the age of five in India was stunted. By 2022, this rate dropped to one in three, indicating a decline in stunting over time. Even then, the levels of child stunting in India remain high and are comparable to those seen in Sub-Saharan African nations with much lower per capita incomes.

Stunting affects 30% of urban children, while the rate is higher in rural areas at 37%. Across both sectors, children from the richest households are about half as likely to be stunted compared to those from the poorest households.

These persistently high rates of stunting in India despite economic growth have led to some debate around the WHO's international growth standards. However, research suggests that the high rates of stunting in India reflect a combination of multiple underlying factors, rather than just issues with the standards themselves.

How does stunting affect children from different regions across India? Read @nileena_suresh's analysis to find out: https://t.co/eqlyP2ANNI

#Health #PublicHealth #Child #Stunting #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

Access to safe, usable toilet facilities is a critical component of public health and safety.

India has long struggled with very low levels of sanitation, significantly worse than many comparable countries. In 2000, only 14% of India’s population had access to at least a basic sanitation facility, placing it behind much poorer countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Somalia. When people do not have access to a safe and usable toilet, they are forced to defecate in the open.

However, over the next two decades, India made consistent progress in improving access to sanitation. By 2022, India had surpassed countries that were at a similar level in 2000, or were ahead at the time.

Basic sanitation facilities are defined as improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households. These include flush/pour-flush to piped sewer systems, septic tanks or pit latrines; ventilated improved pit latrines, composting toilets or pit latrines with slabs. This categorisation is based on WHO and UNICEF's definition.

What kind of toilet facilities do Indian households have access to? Read @nileena_suresh's piece to find out: https://t.co/a7IDOJ3Mqn

#Toilets #Sanitation #WASH #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

Higher education is seen as a key to getting young Indians into skilled, high-paying jobs and accelerating economic growth.

Just under 40 million young people (aged 18-23) were enrolled in higher education programmes in India as of 2022. This included both undergraduate (or equivalent) and postgraduate (or equivalent) levels of study.

However, at 32%, enrolment in tertiary or higher education in India is still below the world average.

In the early 1990s, India’s higher education enrolment rates were similar to China’s, for instance. But in the two decades since, China has made big strides: more than seven in ten young Chinese adults are now in higher education, compared to three in ten young Indian adults.

How does higher education enrolment look across states, and what disciplines do students choose to study in India? Read @akwaghmare’s piece to find out: https://t.co/hGYV4UowwP

#College #Undergraduate #Education #HigherEducation #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

The rate of murder, or ‘intentional homicide’, is widely used as an indicator of public safety in a city or country.

India recorded nearly 37,500 incidents of intentional homicides in 2023.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) considers statistics put out by India's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under three offences to calculate intentional homicides in India.

First, culpable homicide, that is murder (punishable under Sec. 103 under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita or previously, Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code). Four in five intentional homicides in India are murders.

Second, dowry deaths (defined and punishable under Section 80 of BNS or previously, Section 304B of IPC), accounting for nearly one in six intentional homicides.

The remaining are culpable homicides not amounting to murder (punishable under Sec. 105 under BNS or previously, Section 304 of IPC), an offence that is considered less serious than murder. One example of this would be a sudden fight between two people where one of them kills the other only in the heat of the moment, without any premeditation to cause the death.

How has the incidence of intentional homicide changed over time in India? Read Ameya Bokil’s piece to find out: https://t.co/imK5PnK4Gd

#Murder #Homicide #Law #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

How has the share of people from other age-groups in the population evolved for states in India over time? Read @Rukmini’s piece to find out: https://t.co/vWglmfd1S8

[Data For India @dataforin]

🧵 India is a relatively young country. Half of India's population is under the age of 30, making it a far younger country than its European, North American and East Asian counterparts.

#Population #Census #Demographics #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

In the decade ahead, they will see their working-age populations begin to shrink, even as the north-central states will continue to see their working-age populations grow.

[Data For India @dataforin]

The most widely used indicator to understand how risky pregnancy and childbirth are in a region is the maternal mortality ratio (MMR). MMR is the number of maternal deaths, during pregnancy or within 42 days after, for every 100,000 live births.

Maternal mortality in India stood at 398 deaths for every 100,000 live births in 1998, and by 2023, this number had decreased to 88 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.

Improving access to healthcare has been a key factor in this decline. A study found that nearly half of maternal deaths occurred at home, with 14% happening in transit between home and a health facility.

The number of institutional births in India has risen significantly over the last twenty years, lowering the risk of maternal mortality. In 1993, only a quarter of deliveries took place in public or private hospitals; by 2021, this had increased to 89%.

Even with this progress, over a quarter of mothers in India’s poorest rural households continue to give birth at home. Five of 36 states - Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Meghalaya and Nagaland - still report over one in five deliveries at home.

Alongside institutional births, access to adequate healthcare during pregnancy is crucial for reducing risks before delivery. How does this access look across India? Read @nileena_suresh’s piece to find out: https://t.co/0kCmUia79b

#Hospital #Birth #Death #Health #India #DataForIndia

[Data For India @dataforin]

Vocational training refers to the set of practical skills people need to do specific kinds of work. These are the skills that can make someone more employable.

Only one in three Indians receive any form of vocational training for their jobs.

About 4% of working-age Indians, or 36 million people aged 15-59, report having received formal vocational training. Formal vocational training refers to structured, usually paid courses with a defined curriculum that lead to certification.

Informal training, which includes hereditary skills passed down within families, self-learning, learning on the job, and short-term training that is not formally recognised, is much more widespread. About 30% of people aged 15-59 report having received informal training.

Vocational training patterns are different among men and women. Overall, women are about as likely as men to receive formal training, but are less likely to receive informal training, which often happens in workplaces or through apprenticeships. Formal training is slightly more common in cities than in rural areas, where informal skilling is higher.

What are the different types of vocational skills that Indians are acquiring? Read @nileena_suresh’s analysis to learn more: https://t.co/7iyngVI0l6

#Training #Jobs #Work #India #DataForIndia