A new-born Indian can expect to live for 69 years, just three years short of the world average.
But disparities in life expectancy - the average number of years that a person can expect to live - among India's social groups have lingered and widened, according to two new studies.
People belonging to the country's most marginalised social groups - adivasis or indigenous people, Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) and Muslims - are more likely to die at younger ages than higher-caste Hindus, according to one paper by Sangita Vyas, Payal Hathi and Aashish Gupta.
They examined official health survey data of more than 20 million people from nine Indian states accounting for about half of India's 1.4 billion population, reports BBC.
The researchers found that the expected life spans of adivasis and Dalits were four and three years shorter respectively than higher-caste Hindus. Muslims were expected to live a year less than higher-caste Hindus.
Let's now break this down further by gender.
This is how many years India's disadvantaged women are expected to live: 62.8 for adivasis, 63.3 for Dalits and 65.7 for Muslims. An average higher-caste Hindu woman is expected to live for 66.5 years.
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Here's the average lifespan of disadvantaged men: 60 years for adivasis, 61.3 for Dalits, and 63.8 for Muslims. An average higher-caste Hindu man is expected to live for 64.9 years.
Such enduring gaps were comparable in terms of years to the gaps in life expectancies between black and white Americans in the US, researchers say. Since life expectancy in India is less than four-fifths the level in the US, the outcomes in India are more substantial in percentage terms.
To be sure, buoyed by advances in medicine, hygiene and public health, India has made massive gains in life expectancy: half a century ago, the average Indian would beat the odds by surviving into his or her 50s. Now they're expected to live almost 20 years longer.
The bad news is that although life expectancy for all social groups has increased, disparities have not reduced, according to a related study by Aashish Gupta and Nikkil Sudharsanan.
In some cases, absolute disparities have increased: the life expectancy gap between Dalit men and upper-caste Hindu men, for example, had actually increased between the late 1990s and mid-2010s. And although Muslims had a modest life expectancy disadvantage compared to high castes in 1997-2000, this gap has grown substantially over the past 20 years.