Demographics of India

Map showing the population density of each district in India

Map showing the population growth over the past ten years of each district in India

Map showing the literacy rate of each district in India

Map showing the sex ratio of each district in India

Chart showing the percentage of population in India below poverty line

India houses a population of 1.1 billion people (2006), comprising approximately one-sixth of the world's population. This population is remarkably diverse; it has more than two thousand ethnic groups, and every major religion is represented, as are two major families of languages,^[1] two smaller groups^[2] and one or two language isolates^[3]. Further complexity is lent by the great variation that occurs across this population on social parameters such as income and education. These factors render the task of comprehensively detailing the Demographics of India prohibitive; some important indices are available, nevertheless.

Salient features

Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 16% of the world's population. Currently it is the second most populous nation on Earth, though if current trends persist, India will replace China as the most populous nation in less than 40 years. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. More than 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities.

Over thousands of years of its history, India has had invasions and migrations from the Middle East, Central Asia and the West, as well as migrations from Tibet and southern China; Indian people and culture have absorbed and changed these influences to produce a remarkable racial and cultural synthesis. Religion, caste, and language are major determinants of social and political organization in India today. The government has recognized 22 languages as official; Hindi is the most widely spoken. India also has the second largest number of English speakers in the world with over 150 million people speaking English in India.

Although 82.0% of the people are Hindus, India is also home to the second-largest Muslim population in the world (13.1%). India also contains the majority of the world's Zoroastrians (0.01%). Other religious groups include Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.94%), Buddhists (0.76%), Jains (0.40%), Jews and Bahá'ís.

The caste system reflects Indian occupational and socio-religiously defined hierarchies. Traditionally, there are four broad categories of castes (varnas), including a category of outcastes, earlier called "untouchables" but now commonly referred to as "dalits." Within these broad categories there are thousands of castes and subcastes, called jātis, whose relative status varies from region to region. Despite economic modernization and laws countering discrimination against the lower end of the class structure, the caste system remains an important source of social identification for most Hindus and many non-Hindus as well, thus making it a potent factor in the political life of the country.

Census

The most recent census of India was performed in 2001. It was the 14th census in an unbroken series, and the 6th after independence in 1947 (except for Assam which did not figure in the 1981 census). Eight censuses were performed under the British Raj, the first one was carried out throughout the 1860s and completed in 1871. After this, there has been one census every decade.

The 2001 census was conducted in two phases, the first being Housenumbering and Houselisting operations, carried out in May 2000, and the second being population enumeration, carried out from February 9 to 28, 2001. The reference time for the census is 1 March, 2001. The houseless population was enumerated on 28 February. A revisional round was undertaken 1 to 5 March 2001 to account for mutations between the time of visit in February and 1 March.

The total population calculated for 1 March 2001 was 1,027,015,247, making the 2001 census the first to count more than a billion Indians. The population had risen by 21.34% compared to the 1991 total. The female population had increased by 0.3 percentage points to 48.4%.

See list of States of India by urban population. Maharashtra has the largest urban agglomeration while Delhi is the most urbanised market at over 93%.

Key data

Population:1,095,351,995 (July 2006 est.); 1,028,737,436 (2001 Census)

Rural Population:742,617,747(72.2%)(Male: 381,668,992, Female: 360,948,755) (2001 Census)

Urban:Age structure:
0–14 years:30.8%(male 173,478,760/female 163,852,827)
15–64 years:64.3% (male 363,876,219/female 340,181,764)
65 years and over:4.9% (male 27,258,020/female 26,704,405) (2006 est.)

The average age of Indians is 26 years.

Population growth rate:1.38% (2006 est.)

Birth rate:22.01 births/1,000 population (2006 est.)

Death rate:8.18 deaths/1,000 population (2006 est.)

literacy rate:64.8%

Percent of the population under the poverty line:10%

Unemployment Rate:9.2%

Net migration rate:−0.07 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2006 est.)

Sex ratio:
at birth:1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years:1.06 male(s)/female
15–64 years:1.07 male(s)/female
65 years and over:1.02 male(s)/female
total population:1.06 male(s)/female (2006 est.)

Infant mortality rate:total: 54.63 deaths/1,000 live births female: 55.18 deaths/1,000 live births (2006 est.) male: 54.05 deaths/1,000 live births

Life expectancy at birth:
total population:64.71 years
male:63.9 years
female:65.57 years (2006 est.)

Total fertility rate:2.73 children born/woman (2006 est.)
Population History and Projections for India by decades|-| align=center |1950-357,880,000
1960-445,393,249
1970-553,888,762
1980-684,887,703
1990-838,158,831
2000-1,004,124,224
2004-1,075,473,222
2005-1,093,563,426
2006-1,111,713,910
2010-1,184,090,490
2020-1,362,053,154
2030-1,532,674,365
2040-1,684,311,505
2050-1,807,878,574
Nationality:
noun:Indian(s)
adjective:Indian

Religions:Hindu 82%, Muslim 12.20%, Christian 2.31%, Sikh 2.00%, Buddhists 0.77%, Jains 0.41 %, Others or not stated 0.76% (2001 Census)

Scheduled Castes and Tribes:Scheduled Castes: 16.2% (2001 Census)Scheduled Tribes: 8.2% (2001 Census)

Languages: See Languages of India, List of Indian languages by total speakersThere are 216 languages/dialects with more than 10,000 native speakers in India. The largest of these by far is Hindi with some 337 million (the second largest being Telugu with some 80 million). 22 languages are recognized as "official languages". In India there is overall 415 total languages.

Religious breakdown

Censuses were conducted in India in ancient times with examples such as Kautilya's Arthashastra which describes the collection of population statistics for taxation. The British census in 1871 was the first conducted in modern times in India.

The 2001 census figures released by the India Census Commission give a breakdown by various parameters including religion.

Breakup of India's religions: ██ Hinduism — 80.5% ██ Islam — 13.8% ██ Christianity — 2.3% ██ Sikhism — 1.9% ██ Buddhism, Jainism, others — 1.5%

1. All figures in %.
2. Gender Ratio*: no of females/1000 males
3. Others includes Jews, Parsis and Bahá'ís
4. Tribal Animists (and non religious) are grouped under Hindu after 1926 (1931 census onwards)

However, some unofficial estimates claim a higher figure of Muslim population supposedly discounted in Censuses. For instance, in an interview with a well circulated newspaper of India The Hindu Justice K.M. Yusuf, a retired Judge from Calcutta High Court and Chairman of West Bengal Minority Commission, says that the real percentage of Muslims in India is at least 20%. [1]. On the other hand, some believe that Muslim population figures are exaggerated due to various reasons. For instance, As per Syed Shahabuddin, a diplomat-turned-politician, a Muslim scholar and one of the members in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, both Hindu and Muslim ‘spokesmen’, speaking for their respective communities amplify and exaggerate the Muslim population in India, the first, to convince their followers about the rising ‘Islamic menace’, a threat to the country and at least to its Hindu character, the second, to raise the morale of a politically deprived, educationally backward, economically poor and socially vilified, frustrated community.[2]

Ethnic Groups

Unlike the USA, UK, and Australian Censuses, the national Census of India does not recognize racial or ethnic groups within India ^[4] but recognizes many of the tribal groups as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (see list of Scheduled Tribes in India). Organizations and individuals not affiliated with India's national census have classified India into racial/ethnic groups. These racial and ethnic groups are debated (see Racial groups in India (historical definitions)). According to the Joshua Project, there are 2,334 ethnic groups in India.[3] The Indian people are descended from more or less all of the peoples that historically settled the subcontinent, including the Dravidians, Indo-Aryans, Austro-Asiatics, Tibeto-Burmans, Persians, Greeks, Bactrians, Scythians, Parthians, Kushans, Hepthalites, Arabs, Pashtuns, Turks, Mughals, Siddis and Europeans. It also must be noted that Dravidian, Austro-asiatic and Indo-aryan are linguistic terms and cannot be directly taken as ethnic terms. It simply means a speaker of a language belonging to a particular linguitic family. The speakers of these languages descend from a plethora of different races that eventually adopted one or more set of languages. The imprint of each of these groups can be found in at least some small segments of the population, but at the same time over a long period of time these superficial differences in appearances have blurred to a great extent. The framework of the culture of the Indian people comes from these various peoples who contributed to Indian civilization as it is today.

See also

• Muslim population growth in India

References

1. ^ Indo-European languages and Dravidian languages
2. ^ Munda languages and Tibeto-Burman languages.
3. ^ the Nihali language; the Burushaski language is spoken in disputed parts of Kashmir.
4. ^ Kumar, Jayant. Census of India. 2001. September 4, 2006. <http://www.censusindia.net/>.

External links

• Census of India; Govt. site with detailed data from 2001 census
• Census of India map generator; generates maps based on 2001 census figures
• Demographic data for India; provides sources of demographic data for India
• Peopling of India
• http://kokrajhar.nic.in/census.htm
• Population Explosion in West Bengal: A Survey A Study by South Asia Research Society, Calcutta
• http://www.indianchild.com/population_of_india.htm
• EventsInIndia.com; List of various events happening in India

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