A news report says a city's population is 12 lakh

Why

Ravi has correctly spotted that lakh and million are both words for large numbers, and it's fair to guess two 'big number' words might swap directly. They mark different sizes, though — one lakh is 1,00,000 (one hundred thousand), while one million is 10,00,000 (ten lakh) — so a million is actually TEN TIMES bigger than a lakh, not the same size. That means 12 lakh is 12,00,000, and converting to millions means dividing by ten (since 10 lakh make one million): 12,00,000 ÷ 10,00,000 = 1.2 million, not 12. Writing '12 million' for a city of 12 lakh people would overstate its population tenfold — the difference between a mid-sized city and one of the world's largest metro areas. Test: write out both numbers in full — 12,00,000 has six digits after the 1 and 2; 12 million written out is 1,20,00,000, with two more digits, visibly ten times bigger. No, 12 lakh = 1.2 million: a lakh and a million are different-sized units, and converting between the Indian and international systems means dividing (or multiplying) by ten, not swapping the number straight across.