Free Trade Agreement Signed with Switzerland: Six Amazing Facts About India’s Vast Empire

Multilingualism is not just a Swiss specialty. India can also keep up. It has 200 languages ​​from three language families. Of these, 26 are official languages. One in ten of India’s 1.4 billion inhabitants speaks English. This makes India the second largest English-speaking country in the world. 80 percent of Indians are Hindu. They worship as many as 330,000 gods and fit into a strict caste society. The highest belongs to the Brahmins, followed by the warrior caste and that of the farmers and merchants. The fourth caste is that of servants, servants and day laborers. At the bottom of society are the approximately 240 million ‘untouchables’ or ‘unclean people’, also known as ‘Dalits’. In modern India, there are occasional opportunities for advancement for them too. The ‘ex-untouchable’ Meira Kumar became Speaker of Parliament, the ‘Dalits’ Kocheril Raman Narayanan and Ram Nath Kovind became heads of state.

India’s main exports are raw materials such as petroleum, medical and pharmaceutical products and textiles. It is a global leader in information or biotechnology, offering highly qualified IT and AI experts at the lowest wages. Innovative start-ups, high-tech companies and data centers are springing up like mushrooms. But the new prosperity remains an island of the blessed. Because the vast majority of Indians are poor. 43 percent of the people live from agriculture. A third of them earn no more than 1.60 francs a day. And one in four cannot read or write. That is why only two percent of the population in India pays taxes.

More than 82 percent of the 1.4 billion inhabitants have a mobile phone, but only 66 percent have a toilet. According to Unicef, most people in the world defecate outside their homes in India. More than four million tons of plastic waste are generated every year. There is no regular waste collection. And the city air is thick too. Research has shown that anyone who breathes the air in the metropolis of Mumbai for one day has as much poison in their lungs as after 100 cigarettes. The government has been fighting for a ‘clean India’ for ten years with various projects.

With 169 super-rich people, India ranks third among the countries with the most billionaires in the world – after the US and China. However, the gigantic empire sets a sad record in terms of slave labor: 11 million people are exploited, more than anywhere else in the world. The cause is debt slavery, which is prohibited by law but tolerated in society. It affects people who are financially ruined by high expenses, for example for a wedding, illness or as a result of a death. You or your surviving relatives must then pay off the debts. Debt bondage and therefore slavery are sometimes passed on to children.

Nowhere is there as much gold as in India. There are an estimated 20,000 tons in private households alone. That is eleven percent of the world’s gold reserves and more than the gold reserves of the International Monetary Fund, the US, Germany and Switzerland combined. Its value: a trillion dollars. Up to 800 tonnes of gold, about a fifth of world production, is imported into India every year. The reason for the gold rush is the precious jewelry as dowry for the grooms.

Cows are sacred in Hinduism. India’s 45 million cattle cannot be slaughtered. In some states, consumption is prohibited by law. In West Bengal, cows even have their own photo identity card. Due to the constant smuggling of cattle into Bangladesh for sale, India had stationed 30,000 border guards. That is why the milk trade is flourishing. India produces 150 billion liters per year. Cow urine and cow manure also disappear as warm goo. Cow urine is considered medicinal and the manure is used as fertilizer and fuel.