All are dismaying, as such figures usually are. But to me, one sticks out more than all the rest.
Few things can be more degrading than having to defecate in public.
Yet only three of every ten Indians escapes that shame. Mahbub-ul Haq, the Pakistani economist, has made something of a career out of holding truths like these up to our faces. Filled with figures his reports certainly are. But above all, they are fervent appeals to all governments in the region, India and Pakistan in particular, to begin addressing their people's miseries. In India, Haq's report was curiously well-timed.