An interactive data story exploring health inequality across states, castes, genders, and the rural-urban divide.
Data: NSSO 75th Round, Schedule 25.0 — Household Social Consumption: Health (July 2017 - June 2018)
113,823 households | 557,889 individuals | 36 States/UTs
India's health outcomes are not uniform — they're shaped by where you live. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Goa lead in insurance coverage and sanitation. Bihar, Jharkhand, and Madhya Pradesh lag behind. Geography is destiny for health in India.
Within the same state, within the same village, your caste determines whether you have a toilet. Scheduled Tribes are disproportionately without sanitation facilities compared to others.
Trace how different social groups flow into different insurance coverage types. Government-sponsored insurance primarily reaches certain groups, while self-arranged coverage is concentrated among higher-expenditure households.
The system that should protect the vulnerable barely reaches them.
We measure development by what people burn to cook. Rural India is dominated by firewood and dung cake. Urban India runs on LPG. Click any segment to zoom in.
States with higher consumer expenditure generally have lower hospitalisation — but Kerala is an outlier. High hospitalisation there doesn't mean worse health — it means people actually access healthcare. Low hospitalisation in Bihar doesn't mean health — it means poverty.
The absence of treatment is not the absence of disease.
Women are less likely to be hospitalised than men — not because they're healthier, but because families spend less on their health. Women's health expenses are deferred until conditions become critical.
Illiterate women aged 40-60 are the epicentre of chronic disease. As education increases, chronic ailment rates drop sharply. A mother's education is the strongest predictor of a child's health.
India doesn't have one water story — it has 36. Rajasthan and Gujarat depend on borewells. Bihar relies on unprotected sources. Kerala and Punjab have piped water.
For every single indicator — insurance, sanitation, clean fuel, piped water — rural India falls behind. But the slopes aren't parallel: some gaps are closing, while health coverage remains a chasm.
After all of this — here is the reality. Each square represents 1% of India's population.
India's health outcomes are determined not by medical science, but by your state, your caste, your gender, your village, and your family's wallet — and the system meant to bridge these gaps hasn't reached the people who need it most.