Through the Looking Glass

  What the numbers say—how men and women spend their day differently; and how much bijli, sadak, paani can improve productivity Here’s a question that has been of interest to me: in a country of 1.4 billion people, if only approximately 400 million are in the workforce, what is it that the remaining billion people do? We now have some answers. Time Use Survey 2019, compiled and released by the Ministry of Statistics and Planning Implementation (MOSPI) reveals interesting data about the pattern of time use by Indians. This is how the day of an “average” Indian goes. (Yes, there is no average Indian person – this is the average of the times spent across men and women in rural and urban India.) Out of the 24 hours in a day, almost exactly half is spent in “self-care and maintenance” – this leaves only 12 hours, which is typically used for these five activities: employment and related activities (2.7 hours), unpaid domestic services for household members (2.2 hours), culture, l...

The Financial Express As the practice of sharing becomes more prevalent, cities will develop their own culture, and it is fascinating to see that emerge Over the last month or so, since car-pooling apps launched their pooling or shared services in Mumbai, they have become a favourite mode of transport for many of us office-goers. Concerns on sharing rides with unfamiliar people have given way to the joys of looking forward to meeting with strangers. The stories that are narrated, the experiences shared, the friendships that are made make up for the few minutes of detour that sharing inevitably entails. Of course, the cost of travel coming down has also been a big positive. The co-passengers typically cover the same route as I do, and both of us can do with company in the hour-long ride. It speaks volumes of Mumbai’s infrastructure that a 12-km ride back home in the evening via the Western Express Highway typically takes around an hour. Earlier, the way to while away time was to ...