It Costs More to Live in Karachi Than Bangalore & Mumbai

[RiazHaq]

It costs less to live in Bangalore, India's high-tech capital, and Bombay, India's financial capital, than to live in Pakistan's megacity of Karachi, according to the 2016 Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report. The survey says Karachi's cost of living index is 44 while Bangalore's is 42 and Mumbai's 43. The survey bases it on New York City's cost of living set at 100. Lusaka, Zambia, is the cheapest with cost of living index measured at 41.

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[TD="class: tr-caption"]World's Cheapest Cities Source: EIU. Courtesy: Metro[/TD]
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In fact, there are four Indian cities and just one Pakistani city among the cheapest cities in the world, according to the latest EIU survey. The complete list of the World's Cheapest Cities is as follows:
1. Lusaka, Zambia
2. Bengaluru (Bangalore), India
3. Mumbai (Bombay), India
4. Almaty, Kazakhstan
5. Algiers, Algeria
6. Chennai (Madras), India
7. Karachi, Pakistan
8. New Delhi, India
9. Damascus, Syria
10. Caracas, Venezuela
Eight of the world's cheapest cities are in Asia, one in South America and one in Africa.
The EIU surveyed 133 cities and measured the cost of 160 items. These include food, drink, clothing, household supplies and personal care items, home rents, transport, utility bills, private schools, domestic help and recreational costs.

The survey allows for city-to-city comparisons, but for the purpose of this report all cities are compared to a base city of New York, which has an index set at 100. The survey has been carried out for more than 30 years.
EIU ranks Singapore (index 116) as the world's most expensive city. It's followed by Zurich (114), Hong Kong (114), Geneva (108), Paris (107), London (101), New York (100), Seoul (99), Copenhagen (99) and Los Angeles (99). Three of the top 10 most expensive cities are in Asia, 5 in Europe and 2 in the United States, and none in Africa.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/03/bangalore-mumbai-cheaper-than-karachi.html

 

[RiazHaq]

http://www.riazhaq.com/2012/07/indians-share-eye-opening-stories-of.html

 

[RiazHaq]

Anti-Muslim housing discrimination Apartment Rental Ad in #Mumbai, #India: "All communities allowed EXCEPT #Muslims" http://nyti.ms/1M4Rqel

Such intolerance exists at all price points. In a TV interview, Shabana Azmi, one of India’s most celebrated actresses and a former member of Parliament, described how she and her equally famous screenwriter husband couldn’t buy the flat they wanted because they were Muslim.

More alarming to me, though, is how the inter-communal mix of my formative years has been lost. As the writer Naresh Fernandes describes in his book, “City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay,” some suburban areas are acquiring the feel of religious ghettos. Mumbra, one of the largest, is over 90 percent Muslim. It suffers daily power failures much worse than those in neighboring Hindu localities. To the west, the clearly demarcated Muslim parts of Jogeshwari are snidely called “mini Pakistan” by Hindus across the “border.”

It is not difficult to find Internet listings specifying whether a property lies in the Hindu or Muslim area of an outer suburb, or even, in the case of a half-million dollar flat in the closer-in suburb Andheri, saying explicitly, “All communities allowed EXCEPT Muslims.”

 

[RiazHaq]

#India is second most ignorant nation of the world after #Mexico: Survey http://dnai.in/d3Yc via @dna


India has the "dubious honour" of being the second most ignorant nation in the world after Mexico, according to a survey which posed questions on issues like inequality, non-religious population, female employment and internet access.


The survey conducted by Ipsos MORI, a London-based market research firm, polled 25,000 people from 33 countries and found that while people "over-estimate what we worry about", a lot of major issues are underestimated.


Mexico and India receive the dubious honour of being the most inaccurate in their perceptions on these issues, while South Koreans are the most accurate, followed by the Irish," the survey said.


The rankings of the nations were based on the "Index of Ignorance" which was determined by questions about wealth that the top 1 % own, obesity, non-religious population, immigration, living with parents, female employment, rural living and internet access.


Most Indians "underestimate" how much of their country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1%, the survey said, adding that the top 1% actually own an "incredible" 70 % of all wealth.


The survey also found that most Indians "hugely overestimate" the proportions of non-religious people in the country to be 33% when the true figure is under 1 %.


While Israel significantly underestimates the proportion of female employment (by 29 % points), people in countries like India, Mexico, South Africa and Chile all think of more women in work than really are, it said.


India fell in the list of nations which overestimate representation by women in politics.


Countries like Columbia, Russia, India and Brazil all think there is better female representation than there really is, the survey said.


However, the Indian population seriously underestimates the rural population of the country and thinks more people have internet access than in reality.


In India the average guess among online respondents for internet access is 60 per cent - an overestimation of the true picture of 41 percentage points, the survey added.

 

[RiazHaq]

#Denmark happiest, #Burundi unhappiest among 156 nations. #Pakistan 92, #India 118. #WorldHappinessReport http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/europe/denmark-world-happiness-report.html?_r=0 …

Denmark topped the list in the first report, in 2012, and again in 2013, but it was displaced by Switzerland last year. In this year’s ranking, Denmark was back at No. 1, followed by Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden. Most are fairly homogeneous nations with strong social safety nets.

At the bottom of the list of more than 150 countries was Burundi, where a violent political crisis broke out last year. Burundi was preceded by Syria, Togo, Afghanistan, Benin, Rwanda, Guinea, Liberia, Tanzania and Madagascar. All of those nations are poor, and many have been destabilized by war, disease or both.

Of the world’s most populous nations, China came in at No. 83, India at No. 118, the United States at No. 13, Indonesia at No. 79, Brazil at No. 17, Pakistan at No. 92, Nigeria at No. 103, Bangladesh at No. 110, Russia at No. 56, Japan at No. 53 and Mexico at No. 21. The United States rose two spots, from No. 15 in 2015.

From 2005 to 2015, Greece saw the largest drop in happiness of any country, a reflection of the economic crisis that began there in 2007.

The happiness ranking was based on individual responses to a global poll conducted by Gallup. The poll included a question, known as the Cantril Ladder: “Please imagine a ladder, with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would you say you personally feel you stand at this time?”

The scholars found that three-quarters of the variation across countries could be explained by six variables: gross domestic product per capita (the rawest measure of a nation’s wealth); healthy years of life expectancy; social support (as measured by having someone to count on in times of trouble); trust (as measured by perceived absence of corruption in government and business); perceived freedom to make life choices; and generosity (as measured by donations).

The report was prepared by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an international panel of social scientists that includes economists, psychologists and public health experts convened by the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon.

Though the findings do not represent the formal views of the United Nations, the network is closely tied to the Sustainable Development Goals, which the organization adopted in September, aiming, among other things, to end poverty and hunger by 2030, while saving the planet from the most destructive effects of climate change.

The field of happiness research has grown in recent years, but there is significant disagreement about how to measure happiness. Some scholars find people’s subjective assessments of their well-being to be unreliable, and they prefer objective indicators like economic and health data. The scholars behind the World Happiness Report said they tried to take both types of data into account.

In a chapter of the report on the distribution of happiness around the world, three economists — John F. Helliwell, of the University of British Columbia; Haifang Huang of the University of Alberta; and Shun Wang of the Korea Development Institute — argued against a widely held view that changes in people’s assessments of their lives are largely transitory. Under this view, people have a baseline level of contentment and rapidly adapt to changing circumstances.

The three economists noted research showing that people’s evaluations of their lives “differ significantly and systematically among countries”; that within countries, subgroups differ widely in their levels of happiness; that unemployment and major disabilities have lasting influences on well-being; and that the happiness of migrants approximates that of their new country, instead of their country of origin.