This India thing...

In my Nov. 16, 2008 post (look it up), I made note of the fact that China and India have 39% of the world's population. (The U.S. is a distant third.) Just saw something that helped make this astounding fact more poignant: India now has 41 cities with a population of 1 million or more! Mumbai tops the list with 14 million residents. Dehli has 10 million.

We have nine cities over a million with Los Angeles, our biggest at 8.3 million. How many of the other eight can you name. Bonus points if you can get them in order. (answer at bottom of post.)

With people come problems. Many in India lack municipal services resulting in mounds of rotting trash, sewage flowing directly into rivers and poverty in abundance. Think I recall reading that Mumbai has 179 slum areas. The movie, Slum Dog Millionaire, while a great flick, fairly accurately depicted the problem. The happy ending, however, was purely fiction. Latest news on the child stars of the film had them right back into the slums from where they were found. Hard to imagine, isn't it?

To think I was upset about missing a garbage pick-up...

Oh, yes. The U.S. cities: New York at 8.3 million, Los Angeles- 3.8, Chicago- 2.8, Houston- 2.2, Phoenix- 1.5, Philadelphia- 1.4, San Antonio- 1.3, San Diego- 1.2 and Dallas- 1.1