Rant about latest instance of strange reporting in Times of India

The main heading on the front page of today's Times of India (Bangalore edition) pissed me off no end and hence this rant. The piece brings up some grisly statistics (40,000 people killed in road accidents in 2007, 1.5 Lakh injured, of whom only a small fraction were able to benefit from insurance. A large number of this was due to the vehicle not having insurance at all and an equally large number because of claims not settled by the insurance companies. Shocking data indeed. Here is where Times of India puts an unconventional spin on it. The headline expresses remarkable sympathy for the insurance companies by saying

Highway accidents bleed insurance cos

Rs 4,000 Crore Paid Out Every Year In Compensation

Instances of wrong selection of data to be produced and unfair use of revealed data abound.

First they come up with some random estimate that merely Rs. 15 lakhs were collected from the vehicles on whose behalf payments were made. I call it random because it seems so far fetched. They themselves fix the premium to be between 600 (for private cars) to 1500(for commercial vehicles). Something tells me there are some categories for which there are premiums lower than this also but let us take 600 to be mean. To earn 15 lakhs in premium at this rate the insurers need 2500 subscribers. If 4000 crores is paid out on behalf of these subscribers then it comes to an astonishing 1.6 crores in claims against each subscriber claimed against. I cannot accept 1.6 crores to be the average motor vehicle insurance payout in this country. For this I can't give any reason or data to back up but I have never heard of a settled claim higher than a couple of lakhs (the key word here is settled, there have been higher claims of course).

Anyway, the way the insurance business works, isn't it a given that the amount the insurers make from from people who do end up in accidents is less than what they pay them but is compensated for by the money they make from their other subscribers?

Again I regret my inability to produce data to support this but from what I know the average insurance payout is in anycase dismally small compared to most other countries (not just OECD types, even the moderately developed Sri Lanka and Brazil types)

India is a very very huge country by all standards. Media should not try to confuse or scare people with huge numbers. Especially when they are hiding huger numbers which would definitely dwarf the numbers they are using. For example the number of automobiles in India, the number of insured vehicles and the revenue these companies earned from all insured vehicles.*

I submitted to my university a research paper on Motor Vehicles Insurance as part of the Insurance Law course. I cannot say it was of great academic merit but I made a couple of common sense observations there. One that there should be a some common fund to which all vehicle owners contribute (by means of taxes of course) which will be used to compensate victims where the offending vehicle is not insured. I pointed out the existence of such a system in UK and the reason behind it is simple. In all the road accidents I've seen or heard of, never had the victim a chance of first ensuring that the oncoming maniac driver had third party insurance.

I like to keep the dark side of my life (the academic side) away from this blog. But Times of India forced me into this.

I'm never one to make random allegations unless they are nagging me real bad. Here goes one - Is it possible, that some newspersons are tweaking press releases by PR agencies working for insurance companies so as to make them look all victimized?

I normally don't invest this much energy into criticizing some random news paper piece. But it is a boring afternoon and this was on the front page and so glaring.



* The automobile industry in India is immense, producing 23 lakh automobiles in 2008 alone. Now if only 30% of these vehicles (6,90,000) are insured, as he says 70% aren't, at 600 Rs. (These are just four wheels and above. So Rs. 600 is the lowest possible logical average.) That is still a whopping Rs. 41,40,00,000. Why didn't this figure come up in the whole piece?

Mixed up confusion

This is to bring to the notice of the reader a queer situation I came across. (Sad pun, you shall realize later). Two news sources, both respectable, have interpreted the Hon'ble law minister's words in diagonally opposite ways here and here. Should teach me to read more than just the headlines. Or when I don't have time for the details, not to take headlines for face value.

BTW, I got some gossip on the law minister from his time as G.S. Achar's junior at the High Court. Since this blog is a rumour free zone, it shall not go up here.

Survey Janaha Sukhino Bhavantu

If you are of the creed that remembers the Perus Narkp hoax by pen pricks and do not labour under the illusion that all our media/press consists of dedicated hardworking individuals who take great pains to sell us the truth and nothing but the truth, and if you are looking for a good laugh then I suggest you pick up the latest India Today and read their sex survey. Be warned , the cover is a tad NSFW.

Yes this is India's top news weekly we are talking about. And just because I'm targeting them this time does not mean that other magazines are above par.

This survey, conducted countrywide across 11 cities and 5353 people purports to be reflective of the trends in India's bedrooms.

My first and foremost complaint about this survey, which mainly relates to the manner in which the results of the survey are presented, is one that has been made by several people against sex surveys conducted by almost every magazine every year. It is that they all primarily seem to be just an excuse to put sleazy photos all over the magazine. And one big one on the cover which I guess boosts the sales of the magazines in the stalls. An innocent reader would think India Today puts these pics there to titillate the reader. But just read through the text of the article (which is nauseatingly M&B) and you will agree with me is that the main function of these photos is to distract the reader and keep him from realizing that what the mag is trying to pass off as primary research statistics is actually just a shoddy compilation of numbers.

And then there are the absurdities with the results of the survey itself. For the sake of clarity, let us divide these into -

1. results which I deem absurd because they seem to at great variance with the world I see around me.
2. results which are objectively absurd and cannot logically be possible.
   

I could type all night and not put down all the examples that I deem fit to fall under the first category. But notable among these is one which says that 1 in every 3 men in Hyderabad are gay and two thirds of them openly so. Another would have it that adultery is routinely committed by a large section of the population and in some cities they almost constitute a majority(47% in Ludhiana with many more who would like to). If you manage to tear your eyes from the ubiquitous sleazy photos (it took me quite an effort, frankly) and actually read the article you will realize that almost all the results that they have come up with would very well fit into this article.

That possibly is the point of the article - to shock the reader with sensational statistics which give him some vicarious pleasure by either allowing him to tut at the decadence of his fellow countryman or letting him fantasize about debauchery that a huge chunk of country of a billion is up to. Even a person arguing for the magazine wouldn't disagree with me on this completely. He would perhaps say that the objective of the article is to disillusion prudish sexual revolution denialists like me. He could have possibly had a decent case there and the matter could have only been settled by another survey (hopefully with a more broad based cross section) which supported or contradicted the statistics thrown up by by India Today. The results falling within the second category render it unnecessary to have a second survey to bring the results of this one into doubt.

The results which are objectively absurd are the ones which gave me the heartiest of laughs. One of the results they put out says that about 80% of the population had their first sexual experience with a younger person (want to be shocked even more - this is the answer given by 90% of the women and 72% of the men). While such a result is perfectly possible for just the sample group, it is almost impossible in any sample group which claims to be representing the population of the entire nation. Now if a person has his/her first sexual experience with a younger person, then there could be these possible scenarios

1. The younger person is also having his/her first sexual experience which for him/her is with an older person bringing the odds between younger and older person for first sexual experience partner to 1:1.
2. This is not the first sexual experience for the younger person whose first experience was with a different older person, in which case the odds for first experience with older person only increase. We are ruling this out here because though it seems more likely, it is in direct contradiction the results of the survey.
3. This is not the first sexual experience of the younger person whose first sexual experience was with an even younger person. Even now, between Person, younger person and even younger person the odds for first sexual experience with younger person: 1st sexual experience with older person is 2:1.

To reach the ratio given by the survey i.e. 4:1 you are talking about a scenario with four levels of younger persons which, given the mean age for first sexual experience by the same survey (lower than I expected but not ridiculously so), leads one to either impossible or really disgusting and morally reprehensible conclusions.

Then there is also a section of the population which has sex with prostitutes but never pays. This apart from the sets of people who rarely pay, seldom pay and mostly pay.

Something I should have had a problem with at the outset is the methodology. I can't really blame them for taking opinions of only literate, urban samples. But when you have a sample which by no stretch of imagination can be a proper cross section of the population, do not portray it to be one. It would have definitely helped if they had provided the mean economic and educational level of those interviewed.

Further they had such a brilliant opportunity to gather data that would actually be useful. It definitely wouldn't have harmed them to measure the level of awareness regarding healthy practices and basic hygiene relating to sex. Despite the several condom ads in between the pages, there is nothing that tries to delve into this aspect. A broad based survey looking into reproductive health awareness is actually necessary in our country which not only has a huge HIV population but also fares badly on most other indicators.

Even leaving ethical considerations and sense of decency aside, one wonders if the magazine is not afraid of losing a portion of its subscriber base just for the sake of selling a few extra copies from newsstands. If I were a subscriber who had it delivered to my home, not only would I be embarrassed to be seen reading it in front of family, I also wouldn't want my children (well, say I'm about 15 years older in this hypothetical) to go around with really wrong notions about the birds and the bees.