The best video you will see today

Swedish professor Hans Rosling delivers a stunning lecture, using animated bubble charts and real data. (link via IndianEconomy.org). Running at about 20 minutes, you may be tempted to give the video a pass. We urge you to see it.

Animation after animation clearly shows that the world has become a much better place since the 70s, in every aspects. Globalization has brought dramatic changes to the lives of billions of people across the world, for the better. The world has become much more equitable across and within countries.

Recently there was a hue and cry about how India is worse than Sub-Saharan Africa in terms of some development indices. Well, Sub-Saharan Africa includes South Africa. And Mauritius.

Similarly, some of our intellectuals like to believe that India should remain a socialist economy since Sweden is a socialist economy and it is much better. It may be a matter of debate whether the Swedish economy can be called "socialistic" in the most understood sense of the term, at least in India. The video tells you why Sweden does much better. Simple, they prefer data to life stories.