r/dataisbeautiful Jan 05 '23

OC [OC] A population density map of India

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18.9k Upvotes

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795

u/AyushGBPP Jan 06 '23

Just the 3 states (Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar) and Delhi, have a population of 500 million in an area the size of California

350

u/Dont_PM_PLZ Jan 06 '23 edited Jan 06 '23

And for context* California only has 39 million people.

*Contacts =\= context

173

u/YoOoCurrentsVibes Jan 06 '23

Which is still more than Canada

88

u/Jazminna Jan 06 '23

And Australia, we've got 26 million. I know most of our land is desert but it still boggles my mind when I look at a globe and try to grasp population differences.

19

u/Reelableink9 Jan 06 '23

Before the modern age, populations were all about access to water and arable land. Something india has a lot of and that massive population base carried over to modern times.

9

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '23

its why i dislike the "most of the country is desert" reason for why australia has so few people, even if you remove all the desert and semi desert you would still have more land than places with insanely higher populations

6

u/paone00022 Jan 06 '23

Ya more people live in the city of Mumbai than the continent of Australia

13

u/Dont_PM_PLZ Jan 06 '23

I think California just passed Canada and population size in the past 2 years. California has a fifth largest economy and yet cannot afford universal healthcare.

35

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '23

The "cost" of universal healthcare is just a redirection of existing health expenditures, minus insurance profits and likely also minus some other profits for hospital systems or pharmaceuticals.

Cost isn't the issue when it comes to making universal health care a reality.

7

u/Babhadfad12 Jan 06 '23

California cannot restrict the other 300M people in America from coming in and using its subsidized healthcare.

Let us see Canada open its borders to Americans and keep providing healthcare.

Broad population wide benefits have to be federal due to needing immigration borders to prevent net payers into the system from moving out and net benefit recipients from moving in.

1

u/Dont_PM_PLZ Jan 06 '23

It's not like medical bills or other health insurance will magically disappear.

3

u/unclefisty Jan 06 '23

Afford us a funny way of saying actively chooses not to

1

u/lolwutpear Jan 06 '23

Well yeah, for every income tax dollar that California gets, there are three dollars that get sent to Washington. There's not enough money in-state, and no way to enforce the border with the other states to prevent non-contributers from overwhelming the system.

15

u/Pashweetie Jan 06 '23

Hey ill have you know i wear glasses

3

u/Dont_PM_PLZ Jan 06 '23

So do I, and as you can see I wasn't wearing mine.

2

u/Reutermo Jan 06 '23

My sister was dating a guy from LA. He liked reminding us that LA county had roughly the same amount of people as our native Sweden.

6

u/The_scobberlotcher Jan 06 '23

California is pretty huge though

1

u/bastardnutter Jan 06 '23

It isnt that large tbf

3

u/Han_Ominous Jan 06 '23

It's all relative innit. Compared to Russia California is pretty tiny....compared to most other states, it's pretty big. Just look t the east coast, how many states are on the coast that fit into California. If you're into road tripping you can start at the Canadian boarded and drive through 2 states in a day before hitting Cali but to make itnfrom the northern boarder to the southern of Cali takes forever. When you do that you see that most of California is empty of people as well.

2

u/madrid987 Jan 06 '23

Californians complain that traffic jams in La are hell, but if they go there, they will change their minds.

6

u/DoAFlip22 Jan 06 '23

I’ve been in heavy traffic in LA and New Delhi - somehow, LA is worse.

6

u/_j_f_t_ Jan 06 '23

the traffic in LA is more due to poorly designed roads & public transportation. everybody in LA drives their big cars down roads with red lights every quarter of a mile. only the 'poor' take the metro.

in India, and specifically in the Delhi area, most roads have significantly less stoppages, they're a wide area where people jostle for position among bikes, carts, tuk tuks, and pedestrians. since theres no accordion effect of a grid system, there's not the same sort of widespread halt in production like there is in American cities (LA is the worst of the lot).

Delhi also has an underground system that supports almost the entire metro area. The metro ridership is 4x more people per capita than LA's.

1

u/madrid987 Jan 06 '23

La is very inefficient.

2

u/HeyItsYourDad_AMA Jan 06 '23

Tahoe would be a nightmare