Times of Better Bharat

The Union Health Secretary, Punya Salila Srivastava, told a United Nations high-level meeting that India is committed to strengthening global pandemic preparedness and response capacity, according to a Press Information Bureau release issued this week (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315237).

The baseline a response system would protect

Life expectancy at birth was 72.2 years in 2024 (World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN). Under-five mortality — the share of children dying before their fifth birthday — was 3.6%, on UN IGME data for 2019, via Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/child-mortality-rate). That is the older number in the set and predates the pandemic period.

The Human Development Index for 2023, published in the 2025 Human Development Report, ranks India 130th of 193 countries with a score of 0.685, up four places from 133rd (0.676) (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index). That is still 'medium human development', just below the 0.700 threshold for 'high'. Inequality reduces India's score by 30.7%, the steepest such discount among its neighbours on the same measure.

Nutrition is the binding constraint

The Global Hunger Index 2025, published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe in October 2025, ranks India 102nd of 123 countries with a score of 25.8, in the 'serious' band, improved from 105th of 127 (27.3) in 2024 [CONTESTED] (https://www.globalhungerindex.org/india.html). The Indian government has formally contested the methodology. Within the index, child wasting is 18.7%, among the highest in the report, stunting 32.9% and undernourishment 12.0%. India ranks below its South Asian neighbours with one exception.

A preparedness system — surveillance, laboratories, hospital surge capacity, supply chains — meets a population whose baseline indicators sit where these numbers place them. Wasting and stunting are the measures most closely tied to how severe an infectious shock becomes.

What would have to change

Preparedness is a health ministry function at the Centre and in the states, funded and drilled. The nutritional numbers respond to different levers: the food distribution and nutrition programmes run by the Union government, and the state administrations that deliver them.

The trend on both scoreboards is incremental — four places on the HDI in a year, three on the GHI. Both have moved slowly under successive governments, and neither improves in a single budget cycle.

Ministries and departments across the Union government are in the preparation phase for Special Campaign 6.0, with the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals focusing on e-waste disposal, cleanliness and workplace efficiency (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315242, https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315240). The Ministry of Heavy Industries and its public sector undertakings and autonomous bodies are preparing as well (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315230).

The campaign's subject matter is housekeeping: file pendency, scrap disposal, cleanliness of premises. It is worth setting against the measures that track how the state performs.

One positive column

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2025 put India at +0.50 on government effectiveness, on a scale running from −2.5 to +2.5 (https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators). That is the only one of the six dimensions in the set where India sits on the positive side of zero.

The others: regulatory quality −0.17, voice and accountability −0.15, rule of law −0.13, control of corruption −0.28, and political stability and absence of violence −0.61. Government effectiveness is the dimension a cleanliness-and-pendency campaign can plausibly touch, because it measures the quality of public services and the credibility of government commitments to policy.

The corruption picture

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, released on 10 February 2026, ranks India 91st of 182 countries with a score of 39, up five places from 96th (38) in 2024 (https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi). India remains below the global average score of 42. It ranks ahead of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and behind China (43) and Bhutan (71).

A note on field size: some trackers still describe the index as covering 180 countries, while the 2025 edition covered 182. The denominator is not always reported consistently alongside the rank.

V-Dem's 2025 indices, via Our World in Data, put public sector corruption at 0.69 on a scale from 0 to 1, where higher is worse (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/public-sector-corruption-index).

What would have to change

Faster file clearance and cleaner offices are inputs to the effectiveness score, and they are the part of the machinery that a campaign can reach directly. The corruption scores move with prosecution and conviction rates, procurement transparency and follow-up on audit findings — levers held by the vigilance and audit machinery and by the courts, which take cases to conclusion.

Both score sets have moved by small increments across several administrations. Neither is a one-government story, and the CPI's own movement, five places in a year, is the scale on which this kind of change currently happens.

A foundation stone was laid for a four-lane overbridge between Guntur and Nambur, at a cost of ₹108 crore, according to a Press Information Bureau release issued this week (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315302).

The project is one crossing. The figure it has to be read against is national.

1,83,434 deaths

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways records 1,83,434 road deaths in 2025, the highest absolute toll of any country, roughly 11% of the global total and ahead of China and the United States (https://morth.nic.in/road-accident-in-india). The same series shows deaths rising 25.5% from 1,46,133 in 2015, while reported crashes rose only 2.4% over the period. Crashes have become markedly deadlier; the ministry's note names pedestrians and cyclists among those worst affected.

For 2023, the ministry counted 4,80,583 accidents and 4,62,825 persons injured (https://morth.gov.in/en/road-accident-in-india).

Where infrastructure fits

The World Bank's Logistics Performance Index, 2023 edition, ranked India 38th of 139 countries, up six places from 44th in 2018 and sixteen from 54th in 2014 (https://lpi.worldbank.org/). Within the index, India placed 22nd on international shipments but 47th on infrastructure and 48th on logistics competence — the infrastructure column is the laggard. India's stated target is a top-25 place by 2030.

A caution attaches to the number. A later methodology change means the index no longer ranks countries on a single overall score, so the 38th place may not be comparable with earlier editions.

What would have to change

A grade-separated crossing removes conflicts between vehicles and pedestrians at one point on one road. It does not by itself change approach speeds, the enforcement of helmet and seatbelt rules, or the speed of trauma care after a crash.

Those levers are held separately. State public works and transport departments design roads and repair black spots. Police enforce. State health departments run ambulance and trauma capacity. The Union ministry sets standards and compiles the annual toll.

The 25.5% rise is spread across a decade in which the Union government changed hands. This is not a one-administration record, and it will not be reversed by one administration's road-building programme.

Five popular science magazines published in as many Indian languages were released by the Minister of Science and Technology, Dr Jitendra Singh, according to a Press Information Bureau release issued this week (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315291). They were produced by CSIR-NIScPR.

The launch is a distribution decision. It sits inside a research scoreboard that has been improving for a decade.

38th of 139

WIPO's Global Innovation Index for 2025 ranks India 38th of 139 economies, up one place on 2024 and ten places since 2020 (https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/). India leads Central and Southern Asia, is the top-performing lower-middle-income economy in the index, and has over-performed relative to its income level for fifteen consecutive years. It ranks first in the world for ICT services.

The internal split is the more interesting number. India places 52nd on innovation inputs but 32nd on outputs. The enabling environment is running behind what the country's researchers, firms and exporters actually produce.

That gap defines the policy question. Outputs are ahead of the conditions meant to sustain them.

Who can read it

Language is a reach question, and the reach is largely built. Some 70% of the population used the internet in 2025 (World Bank / ITU, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS), and mobile subscriptions stood at 79.4 per 100 people in 2024 (ITU, via World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P2). Some 89% of adults aged 15 and over hold a bank account, on the World Bank's Global Findex for 2024 (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS).

Publishing in five Indian languages is an attempt to use that plumbing for science communication rather than for transactions. Whether magazines in five languages move any part of a 52nd-place input ranking is not a question one launch answers.

What would have to change

The input score responds to long-run investment in research and higher education, and to the rules that govern how institutions hire, patent and commercialise. The Union ministries for science and technology and for education fund and set policy for that system. State governments deliver most of the schooling that feeds it.

The output score suggests the scientific base can already deliver. The launch is a dissemination step. The 52nd place is the one that measures whether the base itself is being fed.

The Union Home and Cooperation Minister, Amit Shah, launched a set of women's empowerment and cooperative initiatives in Kollam, Kerala, according to a Press Information Bureau release issued this week (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315337).

89% hold an account

Some 89% of adults aged 15 and over in India hold a bank account, on the World Bank's Global Findex for 2024 (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS). That is the base on which cooperative credit, self-help group lending and direct benefit transfer all rest, and it is the strongest inclusion figure in the current data set.

13.8% of Lok Sabha seats

Women hold 13.8% of lower-chamber seats, per the Inter-Parliamentary Union, via Our World in Data, for 2025 (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-women-in-parliament). V-Dem's women's political participation index, also via Our World in Data for 2025, puts India at 0.71 on a scale running from 0 to 1 (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/women-political-participation-index).

The two numbers describe different things: presence in elected office, and the wider conditions for participation. Financial inclusion has moved faster than political representation.

The number that argues with the headline

The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 4,45,256 crimes against women in 2022, a rate of 66.4 cases per lakh women, or about 51 FIRs an hour [CONTESTED] (https://ncrb.gov.in/en/crime-india). Cruelty by a husband or his relatives accounted for 31.4% of the total, kidnapping and abduction 19.2%, assault with intent to outrage modesty 18.7% and rape 7.1%. Delhi's rate, 144.4, was more than double the national figure.

The figure is contested in a specific way. NCRB counts recorded crime, not prevalence, so a rising rate can mean more reporting as much as more crime, and the 2022 data is the latest in the series. It should be read as a record of what reached the police, not as a measure of what happens.

What would have to change

Cooperative and credit programmes work the economic channel, and on the available evidence that channel is responding. The political channel moves through candidate selection by parties, the design of reservations, and the enforcement of laws on violence — police and prosecution in the states, and the Union home ministry on the legislative framework.

The representation figure has barely moved. It is not a new problem, and no single government owns it.

The International Centre for Automotive Technology marked twenty years of operations with a dialogue with industry on PM e-Drive and the inauguration of a testing facility for agricultural machinery, according to a Press Information Bureau release issued this week (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2315235).

The occasion is a transport story. The number it sits against is an air-quality one.

48.9 µg/m³, sixth of 143

IQAir's 2025 World Air Quality Report ranks India sixth of 143 countries on population-weighted PM2.5, at 48.9 µg/m³ (https://www.iqair.com/world-air-quality-report). That is close to ten times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³. It is also an improvement: India was fifth in 2024 at 50.6. Delhi remains the world's most polluted capital, at 82.2 µg/m³, itself a three-year low on the same measure.

Yale's Environmental Performance Index for 2026 ranks India 176th of 177 countries, with a score of 22.46 [CONTESTED] (https://epi.yale.edu/). Yale cites air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection as drivers. The Environment Ministry rejected the 2022 edition of the index outright as methodologically unsound, and that dispute over method has not been settled. Within the index's own series, India's ten-year change in score is nonetheless positive, at +7.47.

Where the electricity comes from

Electrifying the vehicle fleet moves the tailpipe, not the smokestack. Renewables supplied 24.1% of India's electricity generation in 2025 (Ember and Energy Institute, via Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewables), and solar generation reached 196 TWh (Energy Institute, via Our World in Data, https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/modern-renewable-energy-consumption).

On that measure, roughly three-quarters of generation remains non-renewable, and the PM2.5 reading is the sum of vehicle exhaust, thermal power, construction dust and seasonal residue burning. A testing and certification body can set and verify standards for the vehicles it certifies. It cannot change the fuel mix, or the enforcement of dust rules at a construction site.

What would have to change

The levers sit outside the automotive regulator. Power and electricity regulators decide how fast coal gives way in the generation mix. Environment authorities and state pollution control boards write and enforce the dust, waste-burning and industrial-emission rules. Transport departments and municipal bodies handle the on-road fleet.

The direction of travel on the readings is mildly positive: India is one place better on IQAir in 2025 than in 2024, and the contested EPI score shows a positive ten-year change. The gap between the reading and the WHO guideline remains the measure that matters, and on that measure the distance has barely narrowed.