Vehicle ownership leaps more than threefold in rural Sikkim

CENSUS OF INDIA 2011 FIGURES FOR HOUSES, HOUSEHOLD AMENITIES AND ASSETS RELEASED
AT 0.9% EACH, SIKKIM HAS AS MANY PLACES OF WORSHIP AS IT HAS HOTELS; MORE FAMILIES WATCH TV THAN LISTEN TO RADIO IN SIKKIM
GANGTOK, 15 March: For all the complaints one hears of the increasing number of vehicles on the roads, only 11.1% of the households own either a car or a two-wheeler. Totalling 14,222, the number of such families adds up to a substantial amount and for all the fear of growing emission, what should gladden the hearts of the planners is the revelation that prosperity, if vehicle ownership were taken as one of the yardsticks, has injected rural Sikkim more expansively than it has touched the urban spread. As per the Census of India 2011, “Houses, Household Amenities and Assets” figures released recently, vehicle ownership has grown from than threefold in rural Sikkim!
Four-wheelers remain the preferred purchase in Sikkim with 8.3% of the households owning either a car, jeep or a van [against a national average of 4.7%]. Only 2.8% of the households have two-wheelers and bicycles have interested only 0.9% of the population here.
A decadal comparison on vehicle ownership throws up impressive results. Household level vehicle ownership increased five-times in the ten years between 2001 and 2011. While only 2,409 households in Sikkim owned a four-wheeler in 2001, by the time Census enumerators returned in 2011, the number of such households had ballooned to 10,635, nearly half of which are in rural Sikkim.
While vehicle ownership is still more dominant in urban Sikkim [where 15.2% of the households own a four-wheeler now against 7.3% in 2001], it is in rural Sikkim that it has taken the largest leap. Vehicle ownership among the 92,370 rural households has grown more than three times from 1.5% in 2001 to 5.3% now. Now, 4,896 rural households own a four-wheeler against the 1,192 families which did so in 2001.
There are however, 23,320 families out of 1,28,131 households in Sikkim, which have neither a radio, nor a TV or a computer or a phone, cycle or any vehicle. They constitute 18.2% of the households in Sikkim.

Television has truly beaten out radio in Sikkim with 54.7% of the households having televisions [national average 47.2%] against only 23% of the households here which have radios. Computers at home is a low 11.5%, only marginally better than the national average of 9.5% and internet penetration even worse with only 3.3% of the households here having internet at home. Telecom density also posts some interesting figures with 73% of the households enjoying this service. The rejection of landlines is borne out by the fact that only 1.8% of the households have only a landline phone against 67.7% of the families having only mobile phones. A slim 3.6% of the households have both landline and mobile phones.
Out of a total of 1,69,022 census houses in Sikkim, 16,400 were vacant and 1,52,622 occupied when Census 2011 enumerators carried out the survey. Interestingly, Sikkim has more houses being used to house educational institutions than it has hotels. And while on hotels, the number of constructions used as hotels or lodges is the same as those which are places of worship here.
Of these, 81% houses were residential, 2.9% residences cum offices, 5.5% were commercial, i.e. either shops or offices, 1.6% were educational institutions, 0.9% were hotels or lodges, 0.2% were hospitals or dispensaries, 0.5% are factories or workshops, 0.9% were places of worship, 6% were being used for other non-residential use and 0.6% of the houses were found occupied, but locked.
A staggering 68.2% of the 1,28,131 households in Sikkim live in homes with a GI Sheet or metal roof. The national average for such houses is a mere 15.6%. Interestingly, an equal number of households live in houses with wood or brick walls – 24.6% each. Of the rest, Ekra walls come the closest at 14.7% while 13.8% have concrete walls. The national average for households living in houses with concrete walls is a miniscule 3.5% and the only region with a higher density of concrete wall houses is the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands where the figure stands at 38.4%.
Sikkim also tops the charts in households with cement floors. With the figure standing at 54.8% [against the national average of 31.1%] for Sikkim, no other state has a higher percentage of houses with such amenity, save some UTs which rank higher. 46.5% of the households in the country, and 27% in Sikkim, make do with mud floors.
The data also reveals that 25.1% of the households in Sikkim are made up of between 6 to 8 family members, while another 22% are 4-member families. Obviously, joint families are on the wane and more and more households are nuclear in Sikkim. This is borne out further by the fact that 71.4% of the households are made up of a single married couple. 16% of the households have no married couples and 10.9% families have two married couples in the same house.
The finding on access to tap water has some interesting data with a handsome 85.3% of the households in Sikkim [against 43.5% in the country] having access to tap water. Only Himachal Pradesh [89.5%] and Goa [85.4%] perform better on this count than Sikkim among the States. However, only 29.2% of the households receive water from a treated source in Sikkim and this will have to be one aspect that the State will need to look into.
Sanitation figures also post some interesting findings. While 87.2% of the households have latrine facilities within their homes, a majority of the 12.8% of the households without such facilities defecate in the open. A mere 1.5% of the households have access to a public toilet and staggering 11.3% defecate in the open in Sikkim.
Data also reveals that firewood continues to be the main cooking fuel in Sikkim with 52.5% depending on it. LPG comes in next with 41.3% of the households [against the national average of 28.6%] opting for it.
Households availing banking services in Sikkim stand at a respectable 67.5% and is bound to increase with the expansive universal financial inclusion scheme launched by the State Government. Ownership of homes these families live in also mimic this statistic with 64.5% of the households living in homes they own while 30.6% live in rented accommodations.