India's Population 2011

Current Population of India in 2011 Total Male Population in India Total Female Population in India Sex Ratio Age structure 0 to 25 years 50% of India's current population 1,210,193,422 (1.21 billion) 623,700,000 (623.7 million) 586,500,000 (586.5 million) 940 females per 1,000 males

Currently, there are about 51 births in India in a minute. India's Population in 2001 Population of India in 1947 1.02 billion 350 million

Current Population of India - India, with 1,210,193,422 (1.21 billion) people is the second most populous country in the world, while China is on the top with over 1,350,044,605 (1.35 billion) people. The figures show that India represents almost 17.31% of the world's population, which means one out of six people on this planet live in India. Although, the crown of the world's most populous country is on China's head for decades, India is all set to take the numero uno position by 2030. With the population growth rate at 1.58%, India is predicted to have more than 1.53 billion people by the end of 2030. More than 50% of India's current population is below the age of 25 and over 65% below the age of 35. About 72.2% of the population lives in some 638,000 villages and the rest 27.8% in about 5,480 towns and urban agglomerations. The birth rate (child births per 1,000 people per year) is 22.22 births/1,000 population (2009 est.) while death rate (deaths per 1000 individuals per year) is 6.4 deaths/1,000 population. Fertility rate is 2.72 children born/woman (NFHS-3, 2008) and Infant mortality rate is 30.15 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 estimated). India has the largest illiterate population in the world. The literacy rate of India as per 2001 Population Census is 65.38%, with male literacy rate at 75.96% and female at 54.28%. Kerala has the highest literacy rate at 90.86%, Mizoram (88.80%) is on the second position and Lakshadweep (86.66%) is on third. Every year, India adds more people than any other nation in the world, and in fact the individual population of some of its states is equal to the total population of many countries. For example, Population of Uttar Pradesh (state in India) almost equals to the population of Brazil. It, as per 2001 Population Census of India, has 190 million people and the growth rate is 16.16%. The population of

the second most populous state Maharashtra, which has a growth rate of 9.42%, is equal to that of Mexico's population. Bihar, with 8.07%, is the third most populous state in India and its population is more than Germany's. West Bengal with 7.79% growth rate, Andhra Pradesh (7.41%) and Tamil Nadu (6.07%) are at fourth, fifth and sixth positions respectively. The sex ratio of India stands at 933. Kerala with 1058 females per 1000 males is the state with the highest female sex ratio. Pondicherry (1001) is second, while Chhatisgarh (990) and Tamil Nadu (986) are at third and fourth places respectively. Haryana with 861 has the lowest female sex ratio. Some of the reasons for India's rapidly growing population are poverty, illiteracy, high fertility rate, rapid decline in death rates or mortality rates and immigration from Bangladesh and Nepal. Alarmed by its swelling population, India started taking measures to stem the growth rate quite early. In fact India by launching the National Family Planning programme in 1952 became the first country in the world to have a population policy. The family planning programme yielded some noticeable results, bringing down significantly the country's fertility rate. In 1965-2009, the contraceptive usage more than tripled and the fertility rate more than halved. The efforts did produce positive results, however, failed to achieve the ultimate goal and the population of India since getting independence from Britain in 1947 increased almost three times. Whereas India has missed almost all its targets to bring the rate of population growth under control, China's 'One Child Policy' in 1978, has brought tremendous results for the latter. The policy claims to have prevented between 250 and 300 million births from 1978 to 2000 and 400 million births from 1979 to 2010.

Current Population of India 2011

Rank State or union territory 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 Uttar Pradesh Maharashtra Bihar West Bengal Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh Tamil Nadu Rajasthan Karnataka Gujarat Odisha Kerala Jharkhand Population (2011 Census) 199,581,477 112,372,972 103,804,637 91,347,736 84,665,533 72,597,565 72,138,958 68,621,012 61,130,704 60,383,628 41,947,358 33,387,677 32,966,238 Density (per km) 828 365 1102 1029 308 236 555 201 319 308 269 859 414 Sex ratio 908 946 916 947 992 930 995 926 968 918 978 1,084 947

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Assam Punjab Haryana Chhattisgarh Jammu and Kashmir Uttarakhand Himachal Pradesh Tripura Meghalaya Manipur Nagaland Goa Arunachal Pradesh Mizoram Sikkim

31,169,272 27,704,236 25,353,081 25,540,196 12,548,926 10,116,752 6,856,509 3,671,032 2,964,007 2,721,756 1,980,602 1,457,723 1,382,611 1,091,014 607,688 16,753,235 1,244,464 1,054,686 379,944 342,853 242,911 64,429 1,210,193,422

397 550 573 189 56 189 123 350 132 122 119 394 17 52 86 9,340 2,598 9,252 46 698 2,169 2,013 382

954 893 877 991 883 963 974 961 986 987 931 968 920 975 889 866 1,038 818 878 775 618 946 940

UT1 Delhi UT2 Puducherry UT3 Chandigarh UT4 Andaman and Nicobar Islands

UT5 Dadra and Nagar Haveli UT6 Daman and Diu UT7 Lakshadweep Total India

Census of India 2011

Present Population of India in 2011 is 1,210,000,000 (1.21 billion) Population Census of India 2011 - The Census of India 2011 which started on 1st of April in 2010 is a historical landmark in Indian history. This will be largest census in human history till date ever done by any government in the world. Government of India will collect data from each and every household in the states and union territories of India. The Census 2011 is the 15th

National Census of India undertaken by the government after a gap of 10 years. However this year, the Government of India has added another task to prepare a National Population Register (NPR) along with census data. Over the years, Indian census has been a reliable source of information on Demography, Economic Activity, Literacy and Education, Housing and Household Amenities, Urbanization, Fertility and Mortality, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, Language, Religion, Migration, Disability and many other socio-cultural and demographic data in India. How Census of India works The Census of India officials visit each and every household and collects data by asking questions and filling up census forms about each and every person. The data collected about each and every individual is kept confidential and safe. Therefore any information about a person and his identity is kept totally confidential. The work of Population census has been divided into two phases. The first phase will cover House listing and Housing Census. This will be completed in the months of April and July in 2010. The dates are adjustable according to time and situations in a particular state and Union territory. The second phase which will start from 9th of February in 2011 will cover Population Enumeration throughout the country. The second phase of Population census will finish on 28th February in 2011.

Census of India 2011

Census of India 2011 in States and UT Andaman and Nicobar Island Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Chandigarh Chhattisgarh Dadra and Nagar Haveli Daman and Diu Delhi Goa Gujarat Haryana Start Date 01-04-2010 26-04-2010 15-04-2010 01-04-2010 15-05-2010 15-04-2010 01-05-2010 21-04-2010 21-04-2010 01-05-2010 01-04-2010 21-04-2010 01-05-2010 End Date 15-05-2010 10-06-2010 31-05-2010 15-05-2010 30-06-2010 31-05-2010 15-05-2010 04-06-2010 04-06-2010 15-06-2010 15-05-2010 04-06-2010 15-06-2010

Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Lakshadweep Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Orissa Puducherry Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal

07-04-2010 15-05-2010 15-06-2010 15-04-2010 07-04-2010 07-04-2010 07-05-2010 01-05-2010 15-05-2010 01-04-2010 15-05-2010 01-06-2010 07-04-2010 01-06-2010 01-05-2010 15-05-2010 07-04-2010 01-06-2010 26-04-2010 16-05-2010 01-05-2010 01-04-2010

22-05-2010 30-06-2010 30-07-2010 01-06-2010 22-05-2010 22-05-2010 22-06-2010 15-06-2010 30-06-2010 15-05-2010 30-06-2010 15-07-2010 22-05-2010 15-07-2010 15-06-2010 30-06-2010 22-05-2010 15-07-2010 10-06-2010 30-06-2010 15-06-2010 15-05-2010

ndias 2011 Census, a population turning point

with 3 comments 20110725 Major update The Census of India has released its Paper 2 of the 2011 Census. This provides the national and state-level data for urban and rural populations and their growth rates. The summary of the update follows:

Administrative Units: Census 2011 covered 35 States/Union Territories, 640 districts, 5,924 sub-districts, 7,935 Towns and 6,40,867 Villages. In Census 2001, the corresponding figures were 593 Districts, 5,463 sub-Districts, 5,161 Towns and 6,38,588 Villages. There is an increase of 47 Districts, 461 Sub Districts, 2774 Towns (242 Statutory and 2532 Census Towns) and 2279 Villages in Census 2011 as compared to Census 2001. Population: As per the Provisional Population Totals of Census 2011, the total population of India was 1210.2 million. Of this, the rural population stands at 833.1 million and the urban population 377.1 million. In absolute numbers, the rural population has increased by 90.47 million and the urban population by 91.00 million in the last decade. Uttar Pradesh has the largest rural population of 155.11 million (18.62% of the countrys rural population) whereas Maharashtra has the highest urban population of 50.83 million (13.48% of countrys urban population) in the country. Growth Rate: The growth rate of population for India in the last decade was 17.64%. The growth rate of population in rural and urban areas was 12.18% and 31.80% respectively. Bihar (23.90%) exhibited the highest decadal growth rate in rural population.

Urban population percentages for states, 2011 Proportion of Population: In percentage terms, the rural population formed 68.84% of the total population with the urban population constituting 31.16% (increase of 3.35%). Himachal Pradesh (89.96%) has the largest proportion of rural population, while Delhi (97.50%) has the highest proportion of urban population. The EAG States have a lower percentage of urban population (21.13%) in comparison to non EAG States (39.66%). Sex Ratio: The Sex Ratio in the country which was 933 in 2001 has risen by 7 points to 940 in 2011. The increase in rural areas has been 1 point from 946 to 947. The same in urban areas has been 26 points from 900 to 926. Kerala has the highest sex ratio in total (1084), rural (1077) and urban (1091). In rural, Chandigarh (691) and in urban, Daman & Diu (550) show the lowest sex ratio in the country respectively. Eight states namely Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and 1 UT Lakshadweep show fall in the sex ratio in rural area and 2 Union Territories, Daman & Diu and Dadra & Nagar Haveli, in urban areas.

Child Population (0-6 years): Out of the child population of 158.8 million in the age group of 0-6 in the country the rural child population stands at 117.6 million and urban at 41.2 million in 2011. The Child population has declined by 5.0 million in the country decline of 8.9 million in rural areas and increase of 3.9 million in urban areas. The Country has observed a decline in the percentage of child population in the age group 0-6 years by about 3 percentage points over the decade rural areas show a decline of about 3 % and urban a decline of 2%. The growth rate of Child population has been -3.08% in the last decade (Rural- (-)7.04%; Urban- (+)10.32%). Child Sex Ratio (0-6 years): Census 2011 marks a considerable fall in child sex ratio in the age group of 0-6 years and has reached an all time low of 914 since 1961. The fall has been 13 points (927-914) for the country during 2001-2011. In rural areas, the fall is significant 15 points (934-919) and in urban areas it has been 4 points (906-902) over the decade 2001-2011. Delhi (809) has recorded the lowest and Andaman & Nicobar Islands (975) the highest child sex ratio in rural areas. Haryana (829) has recorded the lowest and Nagaland (979) the highest child sex ratio in urban areas.

Urban population percentages for states, 2001

Number of Literates: As per the Provisional Population Totals of Census 2011, the number of literates in India was 778.5 million. Of this, 493.0 million literates were in rural areas and 285.4 million literates in urban areas. Out of an increase of 217.8 million literates over the decade 2001-2011, rural areas accounted for 131.1 million and urban areas 86.6 million. The highest number of rural literates has been recorded in Uttar Pradesh (88.4 million). Maharashtra (40.8 million) has recorded the highest number of literates in urban areas. Literacy Rate: The Literacy Rate of India as per the Provisional Population Totals of Census 2011 is 74.04. In rural areas the Literacy Rate is 68.91 and in urban areas it is 84.98. The decadal change works out to 9.21 points 10.17 points in rural areas and 5.06 points in urban areas respectively. The male Literacy Rate which is 82.14 (Rural- 78.57; Urban-89.67) is higher than the female Literacy Rate of 65.46 (Rural- 58.75; Urban-79.92). The increase in female literacy rate is significantly higher in all areas i.e. total (11.79 points), rural (12.62 points) and urban (7.06 points) in comparison to corresponding male literacy rates total (6.88 points), rural (7.87) and urban (3.40 points) over the decade. It is significant to note that the gap in literacy rate among males and females has reduced to 16.68 in the country. The gap is 19.82 points in rural areas and 9.75 points in urban areas. Kerala (92.92) ranks first in rural areas whereas Mizoram (98.1) ranks first in urban areas. As far as Male literacy rate is concerned, Kerala (95.29) ranks first in rural areas whereas Mizoram (98.67) ranks first in urban areas. Rajasthan (46.25) has recorded lowest female literacy rate in rural areas, whereas, Jammu & Kashmir (70.19) has the lowest female literacy rate in urban areas. Lowest male literacy rate in rural areas has been recorded in Arunachal Pradesh (68.79) and in urban areasin Uttar Pradesh (81.75). [The full contents of Paper 2 of the 2011 Census can be found here.] Paper 2 sections and data links are: India at a Glance by Rural, Urban Distribution [pdf, 1.1 MB] Rural Urban Distribution of Total Population [pdf, 22.5 MB] Rural Urban Distribution of Child Population [pdf, 18.0 MB] Rural Urban Distribution of Literacy [pdf, 17.5 MB] Administrative Units [pdf, 1.5 MB] General Notes [pdf, 1.2 MB] Rural-Urban Data Sheets [pdf, 7.9 MB] Rural Urban distribution of population and proportion of Rural and Urban population [xls, 15kb] Population and Sex ratio by residence [xls, 18kb] Population, decadal variation and percentage share of population by residence [xls, 16kb] Child population in the age group 0-6 years, percentage and sex ratio (0-6) by residence [xls, 15kb] Number of literates and Literacy Rate by sex and residence [xls, 16kb] A presentation on Rural-Urban distribution of Population [pdf, 2.5 MB] Executive Summary [pdf, 62kb]

20110628 The India Census 2011 page has been updated with the full text of Chapter 8 of the first official paper on the census. This deals with population projections. 20110523 Major addition - Datasheets are now listed and linked for 21 of the major states. The states are: Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha/Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal 20110515

The enumerator, India's 2011 census illustration icon, representing the 2.7 million enumerators and supervisors, "the heroines and heroes of Census 2011". The first set of detailed state-level data is almost complete as a release from the Census of India, 2011 Census. In the post titled Indias 2011 Census the states and their prime numbers I am providing the data types for each state and the links to the Census documents. So far, data sheets for 12 states are listed and linked. These are Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Kerala. 20110414 Exactly half of the twenty most populous states, each with a population of ten million or more, have added lesser persons in the decade 2001-2011 compared to the previous one. Had these ten states added the same number of persons during 2001-2011 as they did in the previous decade, everything else remaining the same, India would have added another 9.7 million more persons during this decade. [Text from the introductory note of Paper 1 on the Census.]

The phenomenon of low growth have started to spread beyond the boundaries of the Southern states during 2001-11, where in addition to Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in the South, Himachal Pradesh and Punjab in the North, West Bengal and Orissa in the East, and Maharashtra in the West have registered a growth rate between eleven to sixteen percent in 2001-2011 over the previous decade. The Provisional Population Totals of Census 2001 predicted this: It is also obvious that in the contiguous four major South Indian states fertility decline appears to have well established, stretching to neighbouring Maharashtra on the west and Orissa and West Bengal in the east, whereas in other regions it is rather scattered. Among the smaller states and Union Territories, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu registered very high growth rates of more than fifty three percentage points. In contrast, Lakshadweep, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Goa have registered single digit decadal growth. Nagaland is the only State which has registered a small negative growth during 2001-2011 after very high growths in all the previous decades. It took four decades for Kerala to reach a decadal growth of less than ten percent from a high growth rate of 26.29 percent during 1961-71 to 9.43 during 1991-2001. Although Kerala has continued with this impressive show to register a growth rate of just above 4.9 percent during 2001-2011, the decadal growth rates in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh are still above 20 percent, a level where Kerala and Tamil Nadu were forty years ago. However, the International experience is (European Fertility Project) that once the fertility transition had been established in a linguistic or cultural area, it spread rapidly and independently of socio-economic level achieved. Perhaps the policy measures taken in the decade have prepared the basic ground for a similar situation in India and, one may expect a faster rate of fall in growth rates in the remaining states and Union Territories with increase in literacy and child care facilities and a reduction in poverty. The road to a stationary population before 2060 is long and arduous and would require intense efforts. 20110401

The long-awaited first set of provisional totals and demographic data have been released. This is a big moment. Indias is after all the biggest population enumeration exercise in the world yes Chinas population is greater, but the evidence of census operations in the twentieth century suggests that Indias census (not number of people) is the most complex and data-intensive in the world. It is also the longest running series Census 2011 is the fifteenth census from 1872! In a country like India, with multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural and multilevel society, the Census is much more than a mere head count of the population. It gives a snapshot of not only the demographic but also the economic, social and cultural profile of the country at a particular point of time. More often than not, it is the only available source of primary data at the level of the village and town (ward). It provides valuable information for planning and formulation of policies by the Government and is also used widely by national and international agencies, scholars, and many more. In addition, the Census provides a basic frame for conduct of other surveys in the country. Any informed decision making that is based on empirical data is dependent on the Census. Democratic processes like the delimitation of electoral constituencies and affirmative action like reservation are also based on the basic data sets of the Census. It has indeed come a long way from what was described as the idle curiosity of an eccentric sirkar. So said J Chartres Molony, Superintendent of Census, Madras, 1911: The Village Officer, source of all Indian information, is the recorder of his village, and it well may be that amid the toils of keeping accounts and collecting mamuls, he pays scant heed to what he and his friends consider the idle curiosity of an eccentric sirkar.

The earliest references of Census taking in India can be traced back to the Mauryan period in Kautilayas Arthashastra (321-296 BC) and later during the Mughal period in the writings of Abul Fazl (1595-96) in the Ain-e-Akbari. Records have it that in 1687, during the Governorship of Elihu Yale in Madras Presidency, the King of England desired that a count of the inhabitants of Fort St George be taken. This however was not followed up until 1872. A count was also taken up in 1853 in the North Western Frontier, which was followed by a series of Census like enumerations. However these were not censuses but simple head counts. Dr. W.R.Cornish, Superintendent of Census Operations, Madras, 1871: The estimates of population of Madras previous to 1867 had been so various and the direct censuses of 1822 and 1863 were so untrustworthy that it had been found utterly impossible to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the actual number of people. Rev C.W.Ranson: for the period prior to 1871, we are dependent for our knowledge of the growth of population of Madras upon estimates which at their best represent only informed guesswork and at their worst wildest conjecture. A systematic and modern population Census, in its present scientific form was conducted non synchronously between 1865 and 1872 in different parts of the country. This effort culminating in 1872 has been popularly labelled as the first population Census of India (the first synchronous Census in India was however conducted in 1881). Christophe Guilmoto: 1871 is probably the turning point of the statistical history of India owing to the inception of a century long tradition of decennial censuses which in turn triggered a new development in the monitoring of socio demographic phenomena like famines, epidemiology or the natural increase of population.

The Indian Census has a long tradition of releasing the population data on a provisional basis within a short time after the completion of the Population Enumeration. The population totals are built up by each Enumerator right from the page totals of a few data items for each page of the Household Schedule, which are then consolidated at the Enumerators Block level. The totals at various Administrative levels the Tahsil/Taluk/Community Development Block etc., the Town, the District and the State are consolidated through a process of successive aggregation. The entire exercise of aggregation right from the Enumerators Block level to the State level is completed within a short span. Dr C Chandramouli, the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, has cautioned that the first flush of Census 2011 results, The Provisional Population Totals, is rather raw and not subjected to the intensive checks and cross checks as the usual final Census data is. Further, the numbers given are somewhat tentative and the final figures are found to be a bit different. Some caution is therefore needed while interpreting the results. The intelligent data user will definitely keep these limitations at the back of his mind but still use the data provided here to pick up some early demographic trends. The Final Population Totals will be released after the scanning and the processing of information collected in the Household Schedule are completed. (Data sheets, tables and explanatory material can be found on the Census of India website.) The population of India, at the turn of the twentieth century, was only around 238.4 million. This has increased by more than four times in a period of 110 years to reach 1210 million in 2011. Interestingly, the population of India grew by one and half times in the first half of the twentieth century, while in the later half it recorded a phenomenal three-fold increase.

One of the important features of the present decade is that, 2001-2011 is the first decade (with the exception of 19111921) which has actually added lesser population compared to the previous decade. This implies that as a result of the combination of population momentum and somewhat impeded fertility, although India continues to grow in size, its pace of net addition is on the decrease. In absolute terms, the population of India has increased by about 181 million during the decade 2001-2011. Although, the net addition in population during each decade has increased consistently, the changes in net addition has shown a steady declining trend over the decades starting from 1961. While 27.9 million more people were added between the decade 1981-1991 than between 1971-1981, this number declined to 19.2 million for the decades between 19811991 and 1991-2001. The provisional results of 2011 shows that between 2001 and 2011, the net addition is less than that of the previous decade by 0.86 million. Population Growth Rates It is significant that the percentage decadal growth during 2001-2011 has registered the sharpest decline since independence. It declined from 23. 87 percent for 19811991 to 21.54 percent for the period 1991-2001, a decrease of 2.33 percentage point. For 20012011, this decadal growth has become 17.64 percent, a further decrease of 3.90 percentage points.

The provisional population totals of Census 2011 brings a ray of hope with definite signs that the growth rate of population is tapering off especially in areas where it had been stagnant for several decades. There is also a marked decline in fertility as evidenced by the declining proportion of child population in the age group of 0-6 years. Independent India, urged by the First Census Commissioner R A Gopalaswami, who referred to improvident maternity as the primary cause of the population problem became the first country in 1952 to establish a policy for population control. For the world as a whole, demographers are generally confident that by the second half of this century we will be ending one unique era in history the population explosion and entering another, in which population will level out or even fall. Population pessimists have warned the congenital optimists, not to believe that humanity will find ways to cope and even improve its lot. Still, Malthus noted: The exertions that men find it necessary to make, in order to support themselves or families, frequently awaken faculties that might otherwise have lain for ever dormant, and it has been commonly remarked that new and extraordinary situations generally create minds adequate to grapple with the difficulties in which they are involved. A feature of both mortality and fertility transitions has been their increasingly faster tempo. Targeted programmes like those on female literacy, improving general health care, improving female employment rates, minimum years of schooling, advocacy through village groups, etc. is slowly redefining motherhood from childbearing to child rearing. Census 2011 is perhaps an indication that the country has reached a point of inflexion. [Dr Chandramouli's excellent opening essay, from which these extracts have been taken, is dated Chaitra, Ekadashi,Vikram Samvat 2067 (30th March 2011).] This is the second of my entries on the 2011 Census of India (see the posts One frozen moment in 1911 and British Bombays furious 1911 growth rate). These will continue to appear as more data and analysis are released. A page will appear soon to contain all the entries, arranged chronologically, and which will link to data sets. The first group of tables I have now posted. These are: Table_1-Distribution of population, sex ratio, density and decadal growth rate of population Table_2.3-Literates and literacy rates by sex Table_2.2-Population aged 7 years and above by sex Table_2.1-Child population in the age group 0-6 by sex

Table_3-Sex Ratio of Total population and child population in the age group 0-6 and 7+ years2001 and 2011

Poverty in India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Percent of population living below the poverty line, over the final quarter of the 20th century.

Poverty is widespread in India, with the nation estimated to have a third of the world's poor. According to a 2005 World Bank estimate, 41.6% of the total Indian population falls below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day (PPP, in nominal terms 21.6 a day in urban areas and 14.3 in rural areas).[1] According to a new UN Millennium Development Goals Report, as many as 320 million people in India and China are expected to come out of extreme poverty in the next four years, while India's poverty rate is projected to drop to 22% in 2015.[2] the report also indicates that in Southern Asia, however, only India, where the poverty rate is projected to fall from 51% in 1990 to about 22% in 2015, is on track to cut poverty in half by the 2015 target date.[3]

Percentage population living on less than 1 dollar day 2007-2008

Contents
[hide]

1 Poverty estimates 2 Impact of poverty 3 Causes of poverty in India o 3.1 Corruption o 3.2 Caste system o 3.3 India's economic policies o 3.4 Liberalization policies and their effects [44] o 3.5 Rich Indians not generous 4 Reduction in Poverty 5 Efforts to alleviate poverty o 5.1 Outlook for poverty alleviation o 5.2 Controversy over extent of poverty reduction o 5.3 Persistence of malnutrition among children 6 See also 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Poverty estimates
There has been no uniform measure of poverty in India.[4][5] The Planning Commission of India has accepted the Tendulkar Committee report which says that 37% of people in India live below the poverty line.[6] The Arjun Sengupta Report (from National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector) states that 77% of Indians live on less than 20 a day (about $0.50 per day).[7] The N.C. Saxena Committee report states that 50% of Indians live below the poverty line. A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there were 645 million[8] poor living under the MPI in India, 421 million of whom are concentrated in eight North Indian and East Indian states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. This number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations.[9] The states are listed below in increasing order of poverty based on the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index.[10]

MPI Rank

States

Population (in MPI millions) 2007

Proportion Average of Poor Intensity 55.4% 15.9% 21.7% 26.2% 31.0% 32.4% 40.3% 40.1% 41.6% 41.5% 43.8% 53.5% 40.9% 43.4% 46.0% 42.3% 43.6% 46.9% 48.1% 47.9% 49.2% 47.7%

Contribution to Overall Poverty

Number of MPI Poor (in millions) 645.0 5.6 0.4 7.1 2.1 22.0 3.9 43.6 10.0 23.8 5.4

India 1 Kerala 2 Goa 3 Punjab 4 Himachal Pradesh

1,164.7 0.296 35.0 0.065 1.6 0.094 27.1 0.120 6.7 0.131 68.0 0.141 9.6 0.189 108.7 0.193 24.1 0.199 57.3 0.205 12.2 0.209

0.6% 0.0% 1.0% 0.3% 2.6% 0.5% 6.0% 1.3% 3.4% 0.7%

5 Tamil Nadu 6 Uttaranchal 7 Maharashtra 8 Haryana 9 Gujarat 10 Jammu And Kashmir Andhra Pradesh

11

83.9 0.211 58.6 0.223 44.2 0.303 89.5 0.317 40.7 0.345 65.4 0.351 192.6 0.386

44.7% 46.1% 57.6% 58.3% 64.0% 64.2% 69.9%

47.1% 48.3% 52.5% 54.3% 54.0% 54.7% 55.2%

5.1% 4.2% 4.0% 8.5% 4.3% 7.0% 21.3%

37.5 27.0 25.5 52.2 26.0 41.9 134.7

12 Karnataka 13 Eastern Indian States

14 West Bengal 15 Orissa 16 Rajasthan 17 Uttar Pradesh

18 Chhattisgarh 19 Madhya Pradesh

23.9 0.387 70.0 0.389 30.5 0.463 95.0 0.499

71.9% 69.5% 77.0% 81.4%

53.9% 56.0% 60.2% 61.3%

2.9% 8.5% 4.2% 13.5%

17.2 48.6 23.5 77.3

20 Jharkhand 21 Bihar

Estimates by NCAER (National Council of Applied Economic Research) show that 48% of the Indian households earn more than 90,000 (US$2,007) annually (or more than US$ 3 PPP per person). According to NCAER, in 2009, of the 222 million households in India, the absolutely poor households (annual incomes below 45,000) accounted for only 15.6% of them or about 35 million (about 200 million Indians). Another 80 million households are in income levels of 45,000 90,000 per year. These numbers also are more or less in line with the latest World Bank estimates of the below-the-poverty-line households that may total about 100 million (or about 456 million individuals)[11] The World Bank estimates that 80% of India's population lives on less than $2 a day[12][13] which means a higher proportion of its population lives on less than $2 per day as compared with subSaharan Africa.[13]

Impact of poverty
Since the 1950s, the Indian government and non-governmental organizations have initiated several programs to alleviate poverty, including subsidizing food and other necessities, increased access to loans, improving agricultural techniques and price supports, and promoting education and family planning. These measures have helped eliminate famines, cut absolute poverty levels by more than half, and reduced illiteracy and malnutrition.[14] Presence of a massive parallel economy in the form of black (hidden) money stashed in overseas tax havens and underutilisation of foreign aid have also contributed to the slow pace of poverty alleviation in India.[15][16][17] Although the Indian economy has grown steadily over the last two decades, its growth has been uneven when comparing different social groups, economic groups, geographic regions, and rural and urban areas.[18][14] Between 1999 and 2008, the annualized growth rates for Gujarat (8.8%), Haryana (8.7%), or Delhi (7.4%) were much higher than for Bihar (5.1%), Uttar Pradesh (4.4%), or Madhya Pradesh (3.5%).[19] Poverty rates in rural Orissa (43%) and rural Bihar (41%) are among the world's most extreme.[20] Despite significant economic progress, one quarter of the nation's population earns less than the government-specified poverty threshold of 12 rupees per day (approximately US$ 0.25).

According to a recently released World Bank report, India is on track to meet its poverty reduction goals. However by 2015, an estimated 53 million people will still live in extreme poverty and 23.6% of the population will still live under US$1.25 per day. This number is expected to reduce to 20.3% or 268 million people by 2020.[21] However, at the same time, the effects of the worldwide recession in 2009 have plunged 100 million more Indians into poverty than there were in 2004, increasing the effective poverty rate from 27.5% to 37.2%.[22] As per the 2001 census, 35.5% of Indian households availed of banking services, 35.1% owned a radio or transistor, 31.6% a television, 9.1% a phone, 43.7% a bicycle, 11.7% a scooter, motorcycle or a moped, and 2.5% a car, jeep or van; 34.5% of the households had none of these assets.[23] According to Department of Telecommunications of India the phone density has reached 33.23% by December 2008 and has an annual growth of 40%.[24] This tallies with the fact that a family of four with an annual income of 1.37 lakh rupees could afford some of these luxury items.

Causes of poverty in India

Corruption

This is the main cause of poverty in India.[citation needed] According to Wikileaks, crime money (corruption money) held by Indians in Swiss banks (and other banks with secrecy laws) is more than that of rest of the world put together[citation needed] amounting to several trillion dollars. Widespread and huge levels of corruption in most of the India ensures weak governance and basic facilities like health and education being denied to poor.[citation needed] This makes it impossible for poor to get out of the trap. Even though India is a democracy, the media and election process have been corrupted which makes it hard for people to throw away the corrupt politicians.[original research?][citation needed] Since Independence, a single party has ruled for 60 out of 65 years.[opinion]
Caste system Further information: Caste system in India

According to S. M. Michael, Dalits constitute the bulk of poor and unemployed.[25] According to William A. Haviland, casteism is widespread in rural areas, and continues to segregate Dalits.[26] Others, however, have noted the steady rise and empowerment of the Dalits through social reforms and the implementation of reservations in employment and benefits.[27][28] Caste explanations of poverty fail to account for the urban/rural divide. Using the UN definition of poverty, 65% of rural forward castes are below the poverty line.[29]

India's economic policies

A rural worker drying cow dung in Bihar.

In 1947, the average annual income in India was US$439, compared with US$619 for China, US$770 for South Korea, and US$936 for Taiwan. By 1999, the numbers were US$1,818; US$3,259; US$13,317; and US$15,720, respectively.[30] (numbers are in 1990 international Maddison dollars) In other words, the average income in India was not much different from South Korea in 1947, but South Korea became a developed country by 2000s. At the same time, India was left as one of the world's poorer countries. License Raj refers to the elaborate licenses, regulations and the accompanying red tape that were required to set up and run business in India between 1947 and 1990.[31] The License Raj was a result of India's decision to have a planned economy, where all aspects of the economy are controlled by the state and licenses were given to a select few. Corruption flourished under this system.[32]
The labyrinthine bureaucracy often led to absurd restrictions - up to 80 agencies had to be satisfied before a firm could be granted a licence to produce and the state would decide what was produced, how much, at what price and what sources of capital were used. BBC[33]

India had started out in the 1950s with:[34] high growth rates, openness to trade and investment, a promotional state, social expenditure awareness and macro stability but ended the 1980s with:[34] low growth rates, closure to trade and investment, a license-obsessed, restrictive state (License Raj), inability to sustain social expenditures and macro instability, indeed crisis. Poverty has decreased significantly since reforms were started in the 1980s.[35][36] Also:

Over-reliance on agriculture. There is a surplus of labour in agriculture. Farmers are a large vote bank and use their votes to resist reallocation of land for higher-income industrial projects.

While services and industry have grown at double digit figures, agriculture growth rate has dropped from 4.8% to 2%. About 60% of the population depends on agriculture whereas the contribution of agriculture to the GDP is about 18%.[37] High population growth rate, although demographers generally agree that this is a symptom rather than cause of poverty.

Liberalization policies and their effects

Other points of view hold that the economic reforms[clarification needed] initiated in the early 1990s are responsible for the collapse of rural economies and the agrarian crisis currently underway. As journalist and the Rural Affairs editor for The Hindu, P Sainath describes in his reports on the rural economy in India, the level of inequality has risen to extraordinary levels, when at the same time, hunger in India has reached its highest level in decades. He also points out that rural economies across India have collapsed, or on the verge of collapse due to the neo-liberal policies of the government of India since the 1990s.[38] The human cost of the "liberalisation" has been very high.[clarification needed] The huge wave of farm suicides in Indian rural population from 1997 to 2007 totaled close to 200,000, according to official statistics.[39] That number remains disputed, with some saying the true number is much higher. Commentators have faulted the policies pursued by the government which, according to Sainath, resulted in a very high portion of rural households getting into the debt cycle, resulting in a very high number of farm suicides. As professor Utsa Patnaik, Indias top economist on agriculture, has pointed out, the average poor family in 2007 has about 100 kg less food per year than it did in 1997.[39] Government policies encouraging farmers to switch to cash crops, in place of traditional food crops, has resulted in an extraordinary increase in farm input costs, while market forces determined the price of the cash crop.[40] Sainath points out that a disproportionately large number of affected farm suicides have occurred with cash crops, because with food crops such as rice, even if the price falls, there is food left to survive on. He also points out that inequality has reached one of the highest rates India has ever seen. In a report by Chetan Ahya, Executive Director at Morgan Stanley, it is pointed out that there has been a wealth increase of close to US$1 Trillion in the time frame of 2003-2007 in the Indian stock market, while only 4-7% of the Indian population hold any equity.[41] During the time when Public investment in agriculture shrank to 2% of the GDP, the nation suffered the worst agrarian crisis in decades, the same time as India became the nation of second highest number of dollar billionaires.[42] Sainath argues that Farm incomes have collapsed. Hunger has grown very fast. Public investment in agriculture shrank to nothing a long time ago. Employment has collapsed. Non-farm employment has stagnated. (Only the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has brought some limited relief in recent times.) Millions move towards towns and cities where, too, there are few jobs to be found. In one estimate, over 85 per cent of rural households are either landless, sub-marginal, marginal or small farmers. Nothing has happened in 15 years that has changed that situation for the better. Much has happened to make it a lot worse.

Those who have taken their lives were deep in debt peasant households in debt doubled in the first decade of the neoliberal economic reforms, from 26 per cent of farm households to 48.6 per cent. Meanwhile, all along, India kept reducing investment in agriculture (standard neoliberal procedure). Life was being made more and more impossible for small farmers. As of 2006, the government spends less than 0.2% of GDP on agriculture and less than 3% of GDP on education.[43] However, some government schemes such as the mid-day meal scheme, and the NREGA have been partially successful in providing a lifeline for the rural economy and curbing the further rise of poverty.
Rich Indians not generous [44]

There are 115,000 individuals in India with high net-worth. Since 2000, this elite group has grown an average of 11 per cent annually. Between 2006 and 2007, the number of wealthy individuals in India surged by 23 per cent, which is the highest growth rate in the world. However, the wealthiest have the lowest level of giving at 1.6% of their household income for charitable purposes. "While the 'high class', which is ranked one level below the 'upper class' on the income and education scale, donates 2.1% to charity, the middle class gives 1.9% of household income to philanthropy," says Arpan Sheth, partner, Bain & Company.[44] The percentage of India's GDP that is spent for charitable purposes is only 0.6 where the percentage is 2.2 in the United States.[45]

Reduction in Poverty
Despite all the causes, India currently adds 40 million people to its middle class every year.[citation needed] Analysts such as the founder of "Forecasting International", Marvin J. Cetron writes that an estimated 300 million Indians now belong to the middle class; one-third of them have emerged from poverty in the last ten years. At the current rate of growth, a majority of Indians will be middle-class by 2025. Despite government initiatives, corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains low on the agenda of corporate sector. Only 10 percent of funding comes from individuals and corporates, and "a large part of CSR initiatives are artfully masqueraded and make it back to the balancesheet". The widening income gap between the rich and the poor over the years, has raised fears of a social backlash.[46]

Efforts to alleviate poverty

Since the early 1950s, govt has initiated, sustained, and refined various planning schemes to help the poor attain self sufficiency in food production. Probably the most important initiative has been the supply of basic commodities, particularly food at controlled prices, available throughout

the country as poor spend about 80 percent of their income on food. The schemes have however not been very successful because the rate of poverty reduction lags behind the rapid population growth rate.[47]
Outlook for poverty alleviation

Eradication of poverty in India is generally only considered to be a long-term goal. Poverty alleviation is expected to make better progress in the next 50 years than in the past, as a trickledown effect of the growing middle class. Increasing stress on education, reservation of seats in government jobs and the increasing empowerment of women and the economically weaker sections of society, are also expected to contribute to the alleviation of poverty. It is incorrect to say that all poverty reduction programmes have failed. The growth of the middle class (which was virtually non-existent when India became a free nation in August 1947) indicates that economic prosperity has indeed been very impressive in India, but the distribution of wealth is not at all even. After the liberalization process and moving away from the socialist model, India is adding 60 to 70 million people to its middle class every year. Analysts such as the founder of "Forecasting International", Marvin J. Cetron writes that an estimated 390 million Indians now belong to the middle class; one-third of them have emerged from poverty in the last ten years. At the current rate of growth, a majority of Indians will be middle-class by 2025. Literacy rates have risen from 52 percent to 65 percent during the initial decade of liberalization (19912001).[citation needed]
Controversy over extent of poverty reduction

The definition of poverty in India has been called into question by the UN World Food Programme. In its report on global hunger index, it questioned the government of India's definition of poverty saying: The fact that calorie deprivation is increasing during a period when the proportion of rural population below the poverty line is said to be declining rapidly, highlights the increasing disconnect between official poverty estimates and calorie deprivation.[48] While total overall poverty in India has declined, the extent of poverty reduction is often debated. While there is a consensus that there has not been increase in poverty between 199394 and 200405, the picture is not so clear if one considers other non-pecuniary dimensions (such as health, education, crime and access to infrastructure). With the rapid economic growth that India is experiencing, it is likely that a significant fraction of the rural population will continue to migrate toward cities, making the issue of urban poverty more significant in the long run.[49] Some, like journalist P Sainath, hold the view that while absolute poverty may not have increased, India remains at a abysmal rank in the UN Human Development Index. India is positioned at 132ond place in the 2007-08 UN HDI index. It is the lowest rank for the country in over 10 years. In 1992, India was at 122ond place in the same index. It can even be argued that the situation has become worse on critical indicators of overall well-being such as the number of people who are undernourished (India has the highest number of malnourished people, at 230

million, and is 94th of 119 in the world hunger index), and the number of malnourished children (43% of India's children under 5 are underweight (BMI<18.5), the highest in the world) as of 2008.[48] Economist Pravin Visaria has defended the validity of many of the statistics that demonstrated the reduction in overall poverty in India, as well as the declaration made by India's former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha that poverty in India has reduced significantly. He insisted that the 1999-2000 survey was well designed and supervised and felt that just because they did not appear to fit preconceived notions about poverty in India, they should not be dismissed outright.[50] Nicholas Stern, vice president of the World Bank, has published defenses of the poverty reduction statistics. He argues that increasing globalization and investment opportunities have contributed significantly to the reduction of poverty in the country. India, together with China, have shown the clearest trends of globalization with the accelerated rise in per-capita income.[51] A 2007 report by the state-run National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) found that 77% of Indians, or 836 million people, lived on less than 20 rupees per day (USD 0.50 nominal, USD 2.0 in PPP), with most working in "informal labour sector with no job or social security, living in abject poverty."[52][53] However, a new report from the UN disputes this, finding that the number of people living on US$1.25 a day is expected to go down from 435 million or 51.3 percent in 1990 to 295 million or 23.6 percent by 2015 and 268 million or 20.3 percent by 2020.[54] A study by the McKinsey Global Institute found that in 1985, 93% of the Indian population lived on a household income of less than 90,000 rupees a year, or about a dollar per person per day; by 2005 that proportion had been cut nearly in half, to 54%. More than 103 million people have moved out of desperate poverty in the course of one generation in urban and rural areas as well. They project that if India can achieve 7.3% annual growth over the next 20 years, 465 million more people will be lifted out of poverty. Contrary to popular perceptions, rural India has benefited from this growth: extreme rural poverty has declined from 94% in 1985 to 61% in 2005, and they project that it will drop to 26% by 2025. Report concludes that India's economic reforms and the increased growth that has resulted have been the most successful anti-poverty programmes in the country.[55][56][57]
Persistence of malnutrition among children

According to the New York Times, is estimated that about 42.5% of the children in India suffer from malnutrition.[58] The World Bank, citing estimates made by the World Health Organization, states that "About 49 per cent of the world's underweight children, 34 per cent of the world's stunted children and 46 per cent of the world's wasted children, live in India." The World Bank also noted that "while poverty is often the underlying cause of malnutrition in children, the superior economic growth experienced by South Asian countries compared to those in SubSaharan Africa, has not translated into superior nutritional status for the South Asian child."[59] A special commission to the Indian Supreme court has noted that the child malnutrition rate in India is twice as great as sub-Saharan Africa [60]

The Effects of Growing Populations Hom METHODS e Intro In order to tackle the research question at hand, we conducted a literature ducti search. In addition to using many resources we used our own analytical and on critical thinking. Once the necessary material was gathered, we searched for the reasons as to why population is growing within each country. Once we Meth found this, we then moved on to see the strains such growth exerts upon the ods individual environment of each country. Although the Stella model does not Resuladdress every environmental impact, others were accounted for in the ts discussion section. The Stella model created provides this research with a visual and depiction of the relationship between both countries and the trends related Disc to the population growth. ussio ns The first Stella model looks at how the growing population of the United States and India, separately, affects deforestation and availability of water resources. Impli The population stocks inflows are birth and immigration and outflow is death. catio The births are affected by the birth rate, which then affects the overall ns population. The death is affected by the death rate, while affecting the overall Solut population. ions Conc At the same time, the population affects the amount of water used. This water lusio used is the outflow of the freshwater available in stock. The freshwater stock, ns thus receives its inflow from the yearly precipitation. Per capita water use then affects the water used, which is the outflow of the freshwater stock. Work s The third stock is the forest area of the country. Its inflow is the regeneration Cited of trees. The number of trees cut down is the outflow of the forest area stock
and the deforestation rate affects the number of trees cut down and is affected by the population. The same models were used for both countries in order to accurately compare the two. The two models differed only in the numbers used, yet not the equations. India Population vs. India Forest Area

US Population vs. US Forest Area

India Population vs. India Fresh Water Available US Population vs. US Fresh Water Available

To conclude our findings, we compared the two countries environmental situations to see in what ways they differ and why. Finally, we looked to see what these impacts implied and then we thought of strategies that each population could use to solve the problems at hand. STELLA and EXCEL were

used to model some of the trends that are already being seen in the countries of focus in this research, and have also allowed us to make future predictions as to how the increasing populations of both countries will affect their overall environment.

STELLA and EXCEL graphs

FIGURE 1 Assumptions: Nothing else is affecting the population besides the number of births (affected by the birth rate) and migration rate. The deaths are only affected by a constant death rate. There is no carrying capacity. This graph of the US population implies a similar trend to the India graph. The population appears to have a greater increase, but really by 2050 the population is nearly at 550 million people whereas India reached over 4 billion people by 2050.

FIGURE 2 Assumptions:

Nothing else is affecting the population besides the number of births (affected by the birth rate) and migration rate. The deaths are only affected by a constant death rate. There is no carrying capacity. Here we see the increasing population of India. By 2050 we see how it will already exceed 4 billion people! This model may not be entirely realistic for many other factors may halt the growth rate. Perhaps more women will be educated in the future or perhaps there will be disease outbreaks, which slow this growth. However, by looking at the minimal efforts made today to curtail population growth, we can assume this model holds mostly true. We then looked at Excel in order to better see the relationships.

FIGURE 3 Equation: Final population = present population + (present population * population growth rate)

FIGURE 4 Equation: Freshwater available = present freshwater available (population * per capita water use)

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 7 Equation (for figures 5, 6, 7): Final forest area = present forest area - (present forest area * deforestation rate)

DATA:
Forest Area Deforestation Rate 0.0294 million hectares/year Deforestation Rate 0.2152 million hectares/year Freshwater Available 500000000000 m3 Freshwater Available 4477000000 m3 Per Capita Water Use 1212 m3

INDIA USA

67 million hectares Forest Area 299.6 million

Per Capita Water Use 6932 m3

Population

INDIA USA
EQUATIONS:

1,090,000,000 people Population 298444215 people

Growth Rate 1.51%

Birth Rate 22.01 births/1000 people Birth Rate 14.14 births/1000 people

Death Rate 8.18 deaths/1000 people Death Rate 8.26 deaths/1000 people

Growth Rate .92%

Births: India_pop_2*india_birth_rate_2 Deaths: India_pop_2*india_dr_2 Births: US_pop_2*us_birth_rate_2 Deaths: US_pop_2*us_death_rate_2

SOURCES: (CIA 2006) (Nowak no date) DISCLAIMER: Some of values for these stocks, converters, and flows are not recorded because the numbers cannot be found! The values are changing so constantly that no numbers are accurate enough. These models are just showing you the relationships.

Demographics of India
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This article is about the people from India. For Other uses, see Indian (disambiguation). Demographics of India

Population of India, 1961-2003

Population: Growth rate: Birth rate: Death rate: Life expectancy: male: female: Fertility rate: Infant mortality rate:

1,210,193,422 (2011 est.) (2nd) 1.41% (2009 est.) (93rd) 22.22 births/1,000 population (2009 est.) 6.4 deaths/1,000 population (2009 est.) 69.89 years (2009 est.) 67.46 years (2009 est.) 72.61 years (2009 est.) 2.68 children born/woman (2010 est.) (82nd) 30.15 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Age structure: 0-14 years: 31.1% (male 190,075,426/female 172,799,553) (2009 est.) 63.6% (male 381,446,079/female 359,802,209) (2009 est.) 5.3% (male 29,364,920/female 32,591,030) (2009 est.) Sex ratio: At birth: Under 15: 15-64 years: 65-over: 1.12 male(s)/female (2009 est.) 1.10 male(s)/female (2009 est.) 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.) 0.90 male(s)/female (2009 est.) Nationality: Major ethnic: See Ethnic Groups of India Language: Official: See Languages of India

15-64 years:

65-over:

The demographics of India are inclusive of the second most populous country in the world, with over 1.21 billion people (2011 census), more than a sixth of the world's population. Already containing 17.5% of the world's population, India is projected to be the world's most populous country by 2025, surpassing China, its population exceeding 1.6 billion people by 2050.[1][2] Its population growth rate is 1.41%, ranking 93rd in the world. India has more than 50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% hovers below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan; and, by 2030, India's dependency ratio should be just over 0.4.[3] India has more than two thousand ethnic groups, and every major religion is represented, as are four major families of languages (Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages) as well as two language isolates (the Nihali language[4] spoken in parts of Maharashtra and the Burushaski language spoken in parts of Jammu and Kashmir).

Further complexity is lent by the great variation that occurs across this population on social parameters such as income and education. Only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, genetic and cultural diversity of the nation of India.[5]

Contents
[hide]

1 Salient features o 1.1 List of States and Union territories by demographics o 1.2 Religious demographics o 1.3 Linguistic demographics o 1.4 Largest cities 2 CIA World Factbook demographic statistics 3 Population projections o 3.1 2020 Estimate 4 Ethnic groups 5 Genetics o 5.1 Y-chromosome DNA o 5.2 Mitochondrial DNA 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Salient features

India occupies 2.4% of the world's land area and supports over 17.5% of the world's population. India has more arable land area than any country except the United States,[6] and more water area than any country except Canada and the United States. Indian life revolves mostly around agriculture and allied activities in small villages, where the overwhelming majority of Indians live. As per the 2001 census, 72.2% of the population[7] lives in about 638,000 villages[8] and the remaining 27.8%[9] lives in more than 5,100 towns and over 380 urban agglomerations.[10]
[edit] List of States and Union territories by demographics

[hide]Historical population of India

Census
1951 1961

Pop.
361,088,000 439,235,000

%
21.6%

1971 1981 1991 2001 2011

548,160,000 683,329,000 846,421,000 1,028,737,000 1,210,193,422

[11]

24.8% 24.7% 23.9% 21.5% 17.6%

Source:Census of India

State or Ran union k territory Uttar Pradesh

Population %[12] (2011)

Rural Pop.[13]

Urban Pop.[13]

Densit Area Densit Sex y (per Area mi [14] km y (per ratio km) mi)

199,581,520 16.49%

131,658,3 34,539,58 240,928 828 39 2

93,022.8

2146 908

Maharashtr 55,777,64 41,100,98 112,372,972 9.29% 307,713 a 7 0 Bihar West Bengal Andhra Pradesh Tamil Nadu Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan 103,804,637 8.58% 74,316,70 8,681,800 9 57,748,94 22,427,25 6 1 94,163

365 118,808.7

815 946

1102

36,356.5 2,855 916

91,347,736 7.55%

88,752

1030

34,267.3 2,666 908

84,665,533 7.00%

55,401,06 20,808,94 275,045 7 0 34,921,68 27,483,99 130,058 1 8 44,380,87 15,967,14 308,245 8 5 43,292,81 13,214,37 342,239 3 5 34,889,03 17,961,52 191,791 3 9

308 106,195.5

797 912

72,138,958 5.96%

555

50,215.7 1,437 945

72,597,565 6.00%

236 119,014.1

610 930

68,621,012 5.67%

201 132,139.2

519 926

Karnataka

61,130,704 5.05%

319

74,050.9

826 968

10

Gujarat

60,383,628 4.99%

31,740,76 18,930,25 196,024 7 0 31,287,42 5,517,238 155,707 2 23,574,44 8,266,925 9 20,952,08 5,993,741 8 23,216,28 3,439,240 8 16,096,48 8,262,511 8 15,029,26 6,115,304 0 38,863

308

75,685.3

798 918

11

Orissa

41,947,358 3.47%

269

60,118.8

698 905 1,08 4

12

Kerala

33,387,677 2.76%

859

15,005.1 2,225

13

Jharkhand

32,966,238 2.72%

79,714

414

30,777.7

1071 947

14

Assam

31,169,272 2.58%

78,438

397

30,285.1

1029 954

15

Punjab

27,704,236 2.29%

50,362

550

19,444.9 1,425 893

16

Haryana Chhattisgar h Jammu and Kashmir Uttarakhan d Himachal Pradesh Tripura Meghalaya Manipur Nagaland Goa

25,353,081 2.09%

44,212

573

17,070.3 1,485 877

17

25,540,196 2.11%

16,648,05 4,185,747 135,191 6

189

52,197.5

489 991

18

12,548,926 1.04% 7,627,062 2,516,638 222,236

56

85,805.8

146 883

19

10,116,752 0.84% 6,310,275 2,179,074

53,483

189

20,649.9

490 963

20 21 22 23 24 25

6,856,509 0.57% 5,482,319 3,671,032 0.30% 2,653,453 2,964,007 0.24% 1,864,711 2,721,756 0.22% 1,590,820 1,980,602 0.16% 1,647,249 1,457,723 0.12% 677,091

595,581 545,750 454,111 575,968 342,787 670,577

55,673 10,486 22,429 22,327 16,579 3,702

123 350 132 122 119 394

21,495.5 4,048.7 8,659.9 8,620.5 6,401.2 1,429.4

319 974 907 921 342 986 316 987 309 931 1020 968

26 27 28

Arunachal Pradesh Mizoram Sikkim

1,382,611 0.11% 1,091,014 0.09% 607,688 0.05% 16,753,235 1.38%

870,087 447,567 480,981 944,727

227,881 441,006 59,870 12,905,78 0 648,619 808,515

83,743 21,081 7,096

17 52 86

32,333.4 8,139.4 2,739.8

43 920 134 975 222 889

UT1 Delhi

11,297 9,340

572.6 29,258 866 1,03 8

UT2 Puducherry UT3 Chandigarh Andaman and UT4 Nicobar Islands Dadra and UT5 Nagar Haveli UT6 Daman and Diu Lakshadwe ep

1,244,464 0.10% 1,054,686 0.09%

325,726 92,120

479 2,598 114 9,252

184.9 6,730

44.0 23,970 818

379,944 0.03%

239,954

116,198

8,249

46

3,185.0

119 878

342,853 0.03%

170,027

50,463

491

698

189.6 1,808 775

242,911 0.02%

100,856

57,348

112 2,169

43.2 5,623 618

UT7

64,429 0.01%

33,683

26,967

32 2,013

12.4 5,196 946 1,269,210 .5

Tota India l

1,210,193,4 100.00 742,490,6 286,119,6 3,287,24 22 % 39 89 0

382

954 940

[edit] Religious demographics Main article: Religion in India Religions of India[15][note 1][note 2] [show]Religion Population Percent

India contains the majority of the world's Zoroastrians (even ahead of Iran), Sikhs, Hindus, Jains

and Bah' )also despite of Iran). India is also home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. Religious majorities vary greatly by state. Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep are Muslim majority states; Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya are Christian majority; Punjab is majority Sikh;[citation needed] The table below summarises the findings of the 2001 census with regards to religion in India:
1. All figures in %. 2. Others including Bah's, Jews, and Parsis. 3. Tribal Animists (and non religious) are grouped under Others after 1926 (1931 census onwards) Table 2: Census information for 2001* Composition % total of population 2001 10-Yr Growth % (est '91'01)[23]* Sex ratio (avg. 944)
[22] Hindus[16] Muslims[17] Christians[18] Sikhs[19] Buddhist[20] Jains[21] Others

80.5%

13.4%

2.3%

1.9%

0.8%

0.4%

0.6%

20.3% 935

29.5% 940 60.0

22.6% 1009 90.3

18.2% 895 70.4

24.5% 955 73.0

26.0% 940 95.0

103.1% 1000 50.0

Literacy rate (71.7% for 75.5 Age 7 & above)[24] Work Participation Rate Rural sex ratio[23] Urban sex ratio[23] 40.4 944 922

31.3 953 907 950

39.7 1001 1026 964

37.7 895 886 786

40.6 958 944 942

32.9 937 941 870

48.4 995 966 976

Child sex ratio (06 yrs) 925

N.B. Table excludes Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul subdivisions of Senapati District of Manipur state. * The data is "unadjusted" (without excluding Assam and Indian-administered Kashmir); 1981 census was not conducted in Assam and 1991 census was not conducted in Jammu and Kashmir.

 No. of females/1000 males. India's 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven activists fear eight million female foetuses may have been aborted between 2001 and 2011. [25]
[edit] Linguistic demographics Main article: List of languages by number of native speakers in India

43% of the Hindus speak Hindi while the rest speak Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu,Punjabi and other languages. Almost 45% of the Muslims speak Urdu while the rest speak Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Kashmiri, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and other languages. About one-third of the Christians speak Malayalam, one-sixth speak Tamil while the rest speak a variety of languages. In total, there are 1,652 languages and dialects spoken in India.[26]
Languages of India by number of native speakers as per the 2001 census[27] Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Language Hindi dialects[28] Bengali Telugu Marathi Tamil Urdu Gujarati Kannada Malayalam Odia Punjabi Assamese Maithili Speakers 422,048,642 83,369,769 74,002,856 71,936,894 60,793,814 51,536,111 46,091,617 37,924,011 33,066,392 33,017,446 29,102,477 13,168,484 12,179,122 Percentage 41.03% 8.11% 7.19% 6.99% 5.91% 5.01% 4.48% 3.69% 3.21% 3.21% 2.83% 1.28% 1.18%

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Bhili/Bhilodi Santali Kashmiri Nepali Gondi Sindhi Konkani Dogri Khandeshi Kurukh Tulu Meitei (Manipuri) Bodo Khasi Mundari Ho

9,582,957 6,469,600 5,527,698 2,871,749 2,713,790 2,535,485 2,489,015 2,282,589 2,075,258 1,751,489 1,722,768 1,466,705* 1,350,478 1,128,575 1,061,352 1,042,724

0.93% 0.63% 0.54% 0.28% 0.26% 0.25% 0.24% 0.22% 0.20% 0.17% 0.17% 0.14% 0.13% 0.112% 0.105% 0.103%

N.B. The percentage of speakers of each language for 2001 has been worked out on the total population of India (excluding Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul subdivisions of Senapati District of Manipur state due to cancellation of census results). * Excludes Mao-Maram, Paomata and Purul of Senapati District.
[edit] Largest cities view talk edit view talk edit Largest cities of India World Gazetteer[29]

Mumbai

Ran k

City Name

State/U T

Pop.

Ran City State/UT k Name

Pop.

1 Mumbai

Maharas 13,830,8 3,210,5 11 Jaipur Rajastan tra 84 70 Delhi 12,565,9 Luckno Uttar 12 01 w Pradesh 2,750,4 47

2 Delhi

Delhi
3

Bengalur Karnatak 5,438,06 Nagpu Maharast 2,447,0 13 u a 5 r ra 63 West Bengal 5,138,20 14 Patna Bihar 8 1,875,5 72 1,854,9 30 1,792,2 03 Bengaluru

4 Kolkata

5 Chennai

Tamilna 4,616,63 Madhya 15 Indore du 9 Pradesh

Hyderab Andhra 4,068,61 Madhya 16 Bhopal ad Pradesh 1 Pradesh

Ahmeda 3,959,43 Maharast 1,807,6 Gujarat 17 Thane bad 2 ra 16

Kolkata
8 Pune Maharas 3,446,33 Ludhia 18 Punjab tra 0 na Gujarat 3,344,13 19 Agra 5 Uttar Pradesh 1,740,2 47 1,686,9 76

9 Surat

10 Kanpur

Uttar 3,221,43 Maharash 1,637,9 20 Pimpri Pradesh 5 tra 05

[edit] CIA World Factbook demographic statistics

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

Chart showing the Total Fertility Rate of Indian states (SRS survey 1996-98)[30] Total Population

1,166,079,217 (July 2009 est. CIA)[31] 1,028.7 million (2001 Census final figures, March 1 enumeration and estimated 124,000 in areas of Manipur that could not be covered in the enumeration)

Map showing the population density of each district in India. Rural Population

72.2%, male: 381,668,992, female: 360,948,755 (2001 Census)

Age structure

014 years: 30.8%, male: 188,208,196, female: 171,356,024 1564 years: 64.3%, male: 386,432,921, female: 364,215,759 65+ years: 4.9%, male: 27,258,259, female: 30,031,289 (2007 est.)
Median age

25.1 years
Population growth rate

1.548% (2009 est.)

Birth rate

21.76 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)

Death rate

6.4 deaths/1,000 population (2009 est.)

Map showing the literacy rate of each district in India. Literacy rate

71.7% (Age 7 & above) [24]

Percent of the population under the poverty line

22% (2006 est.)

Unemployment Rate

7.8%
Net migration rate

0.05 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2007 est.)

Sex ratio

at birth: 1.52 male(s)/female under 10 years: 1.28 male(s)/female 1024 years: 1.86 male(s)/female 2464 years: 1.361 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.908 male(s)/female total population: 1.064 male(s)/female (2006 est.)
Infant mortality rate

total: 30.15 deaths/1,000 live births (2009 est.) male: 34.61 deaths/1,000 live births female: 25.17 deaths/1,000 live births
Life expectancy at birth

total population: 69.89 years male: 67.46 years female: 72.61 years (2007 est.)
Total fertility rate

2.72 children born/woman (2009 est.), although more up to date statistics indicate that India's TFR was 2.6 in 2008 [32] The TFR (Total number of children born per women) according to Religion in 2001 was : Hindus 2.0 Muslims 2.4 Sikhs 2.1 Christians 2.1 Buddhists 2.1 Jains 1.4 Animists and Others 2.99 Tribals 3.16 Scheduled Castes 2.89[citation needed]
Religions

Hindu 80.5% Muslim 13.4% Christian 2.3% Sikh 1.8% Buddhists 0.8% Jains 0.4% others 0.7% unspecified 0.1% (2001 Census) [33][34][35][36]

Scheduled Castes and Tribes

Scheduled Castes: 16.2% (2001 Census) Scheduled Tribes: 8.2% (2001 Census) Languages: See Languages of India and List of Indian languages by total speakers. There are 216 languages with more than 10,000 native speakers in India. The largest of these is Hindi with some 337 million (the second largest being Bangla with some 207 million). 22 languages are recognized as official languages. In India, there are 1,652 languages and dialects in total.[26][37]

[edit] Population projections

India is projected to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2030. India's population growth has raised concerns that it would lead to widespread unemployment and political instability.[38][39] Source:[40]

2020: 1,326,093,000 2030: 1,460,743,000 2040: 1,571,715,000 2050: 1,656,554,000

[edit] 2020 Estimate

Source:[41]
Year Under 15 1564 65+ Total 2000 361 2005 368 2010 370 2015 372 2020 373 604 673 747 819 882 45 1010 51 1093 58 1175 65 1256 76 1331

[edit] Ethnic groups

[show]v d eEthnic groups of India

The national Census of India does not recognize racial or ethnic groups within India,[42] but recognizes many of the tribal groups as Scheduled Castes and Tribes (see list of Scheduled Tribes in India). It should be noted that Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic are mainly linguistic terms and denote speakers of these linguistic groups. For a list of ethnic groups in the Republic of India (as well as neighboring countries) see ethnic groups of the Indian subcontinent or the tree diagram above.

[edit] Genetics
See also: Y-DNA haplogroups in South Asian populations. [edit] Y-chromosome DNA
[43]

Y-Chromosome DNA Y-DNA represents the male lineage, The Indian Y-chromosome pool may be summarized as follows where haplogroups R1a, H, R2, L & NOP comprise generally more than 80% of the total chromosomes.[44]

H ~ 30% R1a ~ 20% R2 ~ 15% L ~ 10% NOP ~ 10% (Excluding R) Other Haplogroups 15%

[edit] Mitochondrial DNA

[45]

Mitochondrial DNA mtDNA represents the female lineage. The Indian mitochondrial DNA is primarily made up of Haplogroup M[46]

Haplogroup M ~ 60% Haplogroup UK ~ 15% Haplogroup N ~ 25% (Excluding UK)

National Population Policy of India

National Population Policy of India - It was long before procuring our Independence even that several discussion benches saw the onset of population policy. Much before Independence; in the

year 1938 only a Sub Committee on population was set up by the National Planning Committee appointed by the Interim Government. The National Planning Committee passed a resolution in 1940 that stated the need for the state to adopt family planning and welfare policies in order to bring about a harmonious order of social economy. The resolution also stressed the need of limitation of children. April, 1951 recorded further enhancements in this policy formulation as the First Five Year Plan labeled for an overt population policy and adjudged family planning as a pragmatic and essential step towards improvement in health of mothers and children. It was because in the plan, family planning was treated as a part of the health program and received a 100% funding from the centre government. And with each passing year, the amount of these funds has increased. The success of this family planning agenda was so dear to the heart of the government that even a separate department coined as Department of Family Planning was carved out in the Ministry of Health in the year 1966. This was done with an objective to reinforce the population control program. This National Population Policy was further modified and re announced in 1977. In this new policy, what was reinforced was education and health. The latter component of the reformulated policy included the general as well as maternal and child health both. A voluntary family planning was also introduced here on. This also saw the change of the phrase from Family Planning to Family Welfare program that is maintained till date.

National Population Policy of India India's Population 2010 Population of Delhi 2010

Population Policy in India: Incentives for small families

By P.Sunderarajan NEW DELHI, FEB. 15, 2000. The Centre today gave the nod to a new national population policy that seeks to hasten the process of population stabilisation through a series of socio-economic measures. The approval came at a meeting of the Union Cabinet this morning. The promotional and motivational measures under the policy include linking of the disbursement of the cash awards under the Rural Development Department's maternity benefit scheme to compliance with the ante-natal check-up, institutional delivery by trained birth attendant, registration of birth and BCG immunisation; provision of health insurance scheme for couples below the poverty line, who undergo sterilisation with not more than two living children; and a special reward for those who marry after the legal age of marriage, register their marriage, have the first child after the mother reaches the

age of 21, accept the small family norm and adopt a terminal method after the birth of the second child. The list of incentives includes strengthening of the facilities for safe abortion, rewards for panchayats and zila parishads for exemplary performance in universalising the small family norms, achieving reductions in infant mortality and promotion literacy with completion of primary schooling and provision of creches and child-care centres in rural areas and urban slums to promote participation of women in paid employment. The policy further envisages stricter enforcement of the Child Marriage Restraint Act and the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Acts. a technology mission within the Department of Family Welfare to provide attention for accelerating performance in states which currently have below average socio-demographic indicators. The policy envisages the setting up of a high-powered `national commission' on population, chaired by the Prime Minister, to monitor and guide planning and implementation of the policy. The panel would consist of chief ministers of all states and Union Territories as members, besides Central ministers in charge of the Department of Family Welfare and other concerned Central ministries and departments, and reputed demographers, public health professionals and the representatives of NGO. In addition, it envisages setting up of a coordination cell within the Planning Commission for inter-sectoral coordination between ministries as also creation of state-level commissions on population chaired by the chief ministers. The Union Health Minister, Mr. N.T.Shanmugam, said the main philosophy behind the policy was that the population control could be better achieved by improving the lot of particularly those below the poverty line through greater focus onchild- survival, empowerment of women and increased participation of men in planned parenthood. The immediate objective was to address the needs for contraception, health-care infrastructure, healthpersonnel and integrated service delivery while the medium-term objective would be to bring the total fertility rate to replacement levels by 2010. The "New" Population Policy In February this year, the BJP-led NDA governement presented it's new population policy with much fanfare. Although claiming to incorporate new and more effective incentives for population stabilization, a close examination of the policy reveals that it is more a "population discrimination" policy than an effective population management policy. Lacking in concrete measures, the crux of the policy rests on denying states representation to parliament based on their population. In other words - the essence of the population policy is that by taking away the democratic rights of those states whose population is growing too fast - i.e. the states in the Hindi belt - these states will somehow find a way of controlling their population. This is both naive and absurd - even as it is discriminatory and unethical under India's constitution. The new population policy is but a sophisticated excuse for passing the buck - and for ensuring that nothing concrete is done.Rather than investigate why the Hindi-belt states have failed to control their population and what the centre could do to facilitate that

process, the centre has taken to a cheap discriminatory formulation that essentially washes it's hands off the problem - as if India as a whole will be unaffected by unsustainable population growth in the Hindi-belt states. Is it merely coincidence that in this last "liberalization" decade, it is the Hindi-belt states that have seen the least growth in industrial investment. That virtually all new industrial investment even from the government has gone to the already more advanced states. Could it be that thislack of growth is preventing the state governments from adequately funding social programs that might contribute to poverty reduction and population control? Could it be that the BJP's unabashed support of obscurantist religious ideas is creating social resistance to modern birth-control and family planning methods. Could it be that the obsession with the Ram mandir is inculcating a new type of patriarchal value system under which men feel pressured to exhibit their manhood through procreating over and beyond their ability to actually care for their children. Could it be that this excessive focus on religion is drawing the poor further and further away from reality and from their own role and responsibility in making intelligent reproductive choices? Of course - these speculative questions are not intended to provide conclusive answers to the puzzling question as to why the Hindi-belt has slipped far behind in it's social indicators - but it cannot be left to the individual states to solve this problem. They may be victims of unequal allocation of capital and government resources that could be aggravating the problem. And besides, the consequences of over-population and urban migration are inextricably linked. India's metros like Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Bombay, Hyderabad, Bangalore etc. who absorb India's poor migrants from virtually all over the country cannot afford to simply stay aloof from this problem. The Population Crisis Few in India can deny that India is facing an intense crisis of resources. There is intense competition for the nation's limited natural resources that is leading to quarrels between states, between communities and even families. Our land and water resources are being exploited to the hilt. The exploitation of our mineral resources is threatening our forests, nature reserves, and general ecology. Seventy percent of our energy resources need to be imported putting constant pressure on us to export more or face a currency devaluation. Over use of resources is contributing to natural disasters ocurring more frequently and with greater devastation. For many Indians, life is a big struggle just to put together the bare essentials for survival, and shortages of resources works most against the poor and underprivilged. Even as sections of India's middle-class struggle with scarcities - it is the poor and vulnerable sections of society who suffer most. As famine rages in many parts of India, reports from Gujarat and Rajasthan indicate that Dalit villagers are the last to get access to water. Reports also indicate that much of the burden of collecting water is placed on women who often walk for miles a day to fill a pot or two of water. It is true that better management of resources could reduce this problem - that states like Gujarat and Rajasthan have neglected traditional water-harvesting methods that could be vital to augment scarce water resources. Others have argued that if the Narmada project were to be completed in some acceptable form, that could alleviate such problems in the future. But even with appropriate development schemes and optimum utilization of

scarce resources, it would be hard to argue, that on a per capita basis, India's natural resources are not becoming severely strained. So far, these resources have been shared in a very unequal way. Some Indians have the luxury of taking long showers twice or thrice a day - even their pets are bathed daily, and their cars scrubbed from top to bottom. Other Indians are lucky if they get to bathe once a week. And many Indians are lucky just to have access to clean drinking water. If in the future, India were to become a more egalitarian nation, and attempt to share it's waterresources in a fairer and more just way, it is evident that with projected population growth rates, it is unlikely that every Indian citizen will have access to a reasonable ammount of water every day. The same would be true of other precious resources like land, energy and scarce minerals. Twenty years ago, it may have been possible to argue that in a socialist system, the country would find the resources to provide every Indian citizen a comfortable life. Today, it is becoming more and more difficult to make such assertions with any degree of confidence. While there is no doubt that increased research and more ingenuous and creative management of our resources could be quite effective, we must accept that compared to most nations we are becoming exceedingly resource poor. To a large extent this is a result of the post-colonial division of the world. During colonial rule, Europe was much more densely populated than India, and it's population was growing faster. But Europeans had the option of migrating to the so-called "new world". Very quickly, Europe's excess population was absorbed by the US, Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Some of the world's resource-richest places on the planet were settled by European migrants, who then quickly closed their borders to nonEuropean migrants by enforcing racially biased quotas and other immigration restrictions. By the time colonized nations like India had won independence, and begun to improve their national health system (leading to rapid population growth), the borders in the "new world" were closed to them. As India's life expectancy has doubled from 31 to about 62 in 50 years, and it's infant mortality rate fallen dramatically, it's population has grown to almost a billion. But except for a small trickle - most Indians cannot expect to migrate to "greener pastures". They must endure life on one of the most densely populated resourcelimited lands on the planet. Even as "globalization of the media" has created amongst many Indians the desire for a more comfortable and even extravagant life-style, our growing population makes it almost impossible for anything more than a tiny elite to actually live that way. This is creating tremendous stress in terms of rising middle class and even working class expectations and what is actually possible for India's limited geography to deliver. With the population still growing rapidly amongst the poor peasants, (particularly in the Hindi belt) - the consequences for the future are serious, if not catastrophic. Socio-economic consequences of a burgeoning population Even more serious than the physical consequences of expected scarcities are the potential social consequences. As is already quite evident worldwide, industrial growth can, and is taking place with virtually no increase in the demand for labor. Improved agricultural implements and expanded availiability of tractors and mechanical threshers and harvesters, has meant that there has also been little growth in the demand for agricultural labour. Since most of the population growth in India is taking place amongst those who

will have the least skills when entering the job market - India is likely to be inundated with either completely illiterate or poorly schooled youth and children in a stagnant or pehaps even shrinking job market. The social consequences could be simply devastating and to some extent hints of this impending crisis are already visible in the slums of our metros. More and more children from the slums are being pushed into the job market as their parents find it impossible to feed their families. Village youth and young adults from poor and desperate villages migrate to the cities to compete with the existing pool of unskilled workers for a very limited supply of service-sector jobs. Wages are pushed down and in the long run could head to near-starvation levels even as per-capita city budgets for social spending are cut. Even when allocations for social spending are made, little of the money sanctioned is actually spent on the poor. As their numbers explode, the bargaining power of these desperately poor slum dwellers diminishes to the point where they cannot exercise any control on corrupt officials cheating them out of the few schemes the government runs in their name. This has been particularly true during the Orissa cyclone, and now during the famine that has afflicted much of the country. There have been almost daily reports of the needy being paid a fraction of the wages due to them under the food-for-work programs. Corrupt officials are milking the poor out of every last rupee they possibly can. When people are desperate, they work for even less than what it takes to survive. And they have no energy to fight it out. But an army of poor and unemployed cannot be expected to tolerate their miseries for ever. In the absence of strong social organizations that represent the interests of the poor and help build a more humane and just society - their seething discontent could manifest itself in many unexpected and unpleasant ways. With the present disarray in India's left movement and the inability of the unions to organize the unorganized - it is not unlikely that India's urban slums could become centres of social anarchy. While some may take to petty or violent crime, others may let out their frustrations in sudden and volcanic explosions of social discontent. It may be quite difficult to predict as to which direction this frustration will take. Cheap labour - asset or liability? So far, large sections of India's elite, while viewing the poor and their "tendency to overreproduce" with disgust and contempt, have done little to push for a serious population policy. In large part this has been because they have benefited from this unending supply of cheap labour. But this unending supply of cheap and largely unskilled labour has serious unrecorded economic consequences. It severely constricts demand-growth and limits Indian industry to producing low quality, low-valued added goods. In the global market, this eventually puts Indian industry at a great competitive disadvantage rather than advantage. Modern-day production fetches larger profits when labour productivity is multiplied manifold. With some exceptions (like the Gulf oil industry), even in the extractive industries like mining, India's cheap labour cannot always compete against advanced mechanized procedures. Industries that rely excessively on human labour are generally becoming unrenumerative, and generate low rates of profit.

Higher rates of profit are to be found in those industries where the labor force must be well-educated and highly well-trained. Those Indians who wish to sell India's cheap labour in the world market will find that the scope for selling commodities produced by cheap labour is ultimately quite limited. That will not turn India into the "Asian tiger" that they wish. On the contrary. It is important to abserve that years of high-growth in the ASEAN nations were also accompanied by rapidly falling birth rates, rapidly increasing literacy rates, and what is most significant - also rising wages. Virtually every ASEAN member has a literacy rate of over 85%, with much lower infant mortality rates and higher life-expectancy than India. Their work-force on the average is better trained, better paid, and more skilled than India's. Without investing in the social sector it is futile to dream about India becoming like an ASEAN "tiger". It is their highly skilled work-force - especially in nations like Korea and Taiwan that has helped these nations build advanced products that can compete with the best in the world. India's industrialists ought to know that a poorly-trained and demoralized work-force cannot be compensated for by simply importing tools and machinery. Even to use modern machinery effectively and to keep it in working order requires certain skills that do not come automatically. Another dimension to the cheap work-force scenario is that the demand for labor-saving inputs and devices grows very slowly. This means that both in the industry and in the home, the switch to higher quality machines, and tools does not take place or takes place very slowly. If it is cheaper to hire labour than buy a labour-saving device - who will make the switch? But since human endeavour can rarely match the precision and accuracy of well-designed computer-controlled electronic machines - the quality of Indian goods remains uncompetitive in the world market, even as the internal market for capital goods and appliances stalls. A cheap labour market also implies a restricted market for consumption. When workers are well-paid they are able to buy more goods produced by industry. This leads to increased demand fuelling new investment and new opportunities for industries to expand. But if wages are so low that people can just about eat and spend on nothing else even the market for consumer goods stagnates or shrinks. This means that industry has to constantly contend with demand-recessions. If Indian industry is to ever grow at double-digit rates, the entire Indian mindset will have to change from tolerating a growing but cheap and unskilled workforce into building the social infrastructure that will rapidly control population growth and spend the money on improving the all-round quality of India's workforce. While it is imperative that India quickly address it's growing population, a problem that threatens to grow dangerously out of hand - it must do so without the prejudices and lackadaisical attitudes of the past. The problem should be taken up not just by the social welfare ministry but by all government and non-governmental agencies, as well as by progressive organizations and unions. However, rather than come out with undemocratic and discriminatory schemes like freezing the representation of the Hindi-belt states in parliament, schemes ought to be designed with compassion and sympathy for the poor. Issues such as gender inequality,

social pressures concerning marriage and sexuality, social pressures for having more children, especially male children ought to be confronted. Pressures from religious orthodoxy ought to be challenged. Above all, the well-being of small families ought to be guranteed. So far, India's family planning programs have seen only limited success because the programs have not tackled the issue in a holistic way. There have been few concrete incentives for the poor to keep their families small. There has been little attention paid to enforcing a liveable minimum wage, so that children are not pushed into work early. There has been little attention paid to guaranteeing jobs or decent schooling for those amongst the poor who do adopt family planning methods and restrict their birth rates. There has also been little attention to the need for old age pensions, for affordable healthcare and disability insurance so that the poor feel secure enough not to want to have more children as an "insurance" for the future. Of course, in practice, with the growth of capitalism - the values of the traditional family system have rapidly broken down. As a result, there is little solidarity amongst family members. Few family members chip in when a health emergency strikes or when a family member is seriously injured or disabled. The elderly are often abandoned by their children when they migrate far away from their ancestral villages. All the old reasons for having more children are disappearing. It is consequently imperative that concerned social agencies educate India's illiterate or poorly schooled about the dangers and negative consequences of having large families. India's population policy needs to be based on concrete measures that not only help solve our population problem but also helps the poor to improve their lives in tangible and meaningful ways. In this regard, our film industry and television industry also need to play a socially responsible role in creating the value-systems that not only rewards small families but also makes society collectively responsible for looking after the poor when they do adopt socially responsible measures. Blaming or ridiculing the poor and denying them their democratic rights will not be helpful in this regard. Neither will an escapist or careless attitude. Based on the past record of most state and national governments to delay constructive intervention until the nation becomes overawed by a full-blown crisis, there is a danger that a time may come when as the problem becomes more intense and perceived to be more and more intolerable, there may be a chorus of calls for more intrusive and coercive measures. Rather than wait for the crisis to grow out of hand, progressive organizations need to be especially pro-active. It is particularly important that India's progressive community see to it that the population issue is seriously and adequately addressed - and addressed in an ethical and socially constructive way. For too long, some in the Indian left have dismissed the problem of India's population growth as a problem for the "bourgeoisie" and not a "class" problem. They have not always tried to see the connection between child labour and large families, or the connection between large families and diminished bargaining power for the working class as a whole. It is high time that unions, progressive social organizations and working-class oriented parties and all other concerned organizations and citizens understand this problem in all it's depth and assist India's poor peasantry and young and

growing urban proletariat to intervene in the population debate in a constructive and socially redeeming and socially conscious way.

Countries with highest population for 1950, 2010 and 2050

population 2010 population rank country 2050 1,347,563,498 1,807,878,574 1,184,090,490 1. India 1,424,161,948 309,162,581 2. China 420,080,587 242,968,342 3. USA 201,103,330 4. Indonesia 313,020,847 295,224,598 179,659,223 5. Pakistan 159,765,367 6. Bangladesh 279,955,405 278,283,137 152,217,341 7. Ethiopia 264,262,405 139,390,205 8. Nigeria 260,692,493 126,804,433 9. Brazil 112,468,855 10. Congo, DR 189,310,849 99,900,177 11. Philippines 171,964,187 147,907,650 88,013,491 12. Mexico 128,007,514 87,814,053 13. Uganda 127,563,256 84,440,272 14. Egypt 109,187,353 82,282,988 15. Russia 107,772,641 73,322,470 16. Vietnam 93,673,826 70,916,439 17. Japan 88,227,761 67,037,517 18. Sudan 86,473,786 66,303,290 19. Turkey 64,768,389 20. Afghanistan 81,933,479 81,490,039 61,284,806 21. Iran 58,090,681 22. Germany 73,607,121 23. Yemen 71,278,172 49,109,107 24. France 69,768,223 25. Thailand 69,268,817 48,636,068 26. Tanzania 66,843,312 48,510,799 27. Kenya 65,175,864 46,270,565 28. Colombia 64,977,344 45,415,596 29. UK 63,977,435 41,980,182 30. Madagascar 56,513,827 41,892,895

population rank country 1950 1. China 1. China 562,579,779 2. India 2. India 369,880,000 3. USA 3. USA 152,271,000 4. Indonesia 4. Russia 101,936,816 5. Brazil 5. Japan 83,805,000 6. Pakistan 6. Indonesia 82,978,392 7. Bangladesh 7. Germany 68,374,572 8. Nigeria 8. Brazil 53,443,075 9. Russia 9. UK 50,127,000 10. Japan 10. Italy 47,105,000 11. Mexico 11. Bangladesh 45,645,964 12. Philippines 12. France 42,517,690 13. Ethiopia 13. Pakistan 39,448,232 14. Vietnam 14. Ukraine 36,774,854 15. Egypt 15. Nigeria 31,796,939 16. Germany 16. Mexico 28,485,180 17. Turkey 17. Spain 28,062,963 18. Congo, DR 18. Vietnam 25,348,144 19. Iran 19. Poland 24,824,000 20. Thailand 20. Egypt 21,197,691 21. France 21. Philippines 21,131,264 22. UK 22. Turkey 21,121,639 23. Italy Korea, 23. 20,845,771 South South 24. Africa 24. Ethiopia 20,174,562 Korea, 25. Thailand 20,041,628 25. South 26. Burma 19,487,657 26. Burma 27. Argentina 17,150,336 27. Colombia 28. Iran 16,357,000 28. Ukraine 29. Romania 16,311,000 29. Sudan 30. Canada 14,011,422 30. Tanzania rank country

CONCLUSION
THE PRESENT STUDY brings out the fact that the educational development in India is characterized by glaring regional disparities. It is highly disquietening to note that the educationally developed regions continue to march forward with a rapid rate leaving behind the lagging regions. The challenge should be met by a forward looking policy of reducing the regional disparities. The main conclusions of this study may be recapitulated here: 1 . It has been observed that accessibility to schools in terms of both the population coverage and the overall mean distances is characterized by significant inter-district variations. These variations arise from the random criteria adopted in the locational. planning for schools. However, the present situation can be improved only through effective policy intervention. The study highlights the role of the physical and the social factors in determining the pattern of accessibility to schools. Likewise, the habitations predominantly populated by the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are at relative disadvantage in comparison with other habitations. The situation is the same in educationally developed areas of the country. Thus both the physical and the social factors play their role in determining the pattern of accessibility. The study further reveals that the hilly districts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, as well as the districts in the north-east, the dry region of Rajasthan and the mid- Indian tribal belt suffer from poor accessibility. On the other hand, the northern plain as well as the coastal districts generally show a high degree of accessibility. 2. The study reveals that there are significant inter- district variations in the availability of schools both in the rural and the urban areas. These variations are understandable in view of the large size of the country and differences in the physical setting and in the cultural and social milieu. They a] so reflect the disparities in the development of school education. Evidently, if schools are not there, the spread of education will be seriously hampered. However, it may be noted that the availability, in a way, also reflects the demand for schools, which in itself is determined by economic conditions, social attitudes towards education and awareness of the parents. The spatial variations in the availability of schools cut at the root of the objective of universalization of elementary education. It has been noted that availability of schools is higher in the urban areas than in the rural areas at the higher levels of school education. This shows the in-built urban bias of the educational system. However, there are significant regional variations in this respect. Availability is generally high in the areas where the density of population is low. Low availability, on the other hand, is a feature of the regions having a high density of population. But the density of population is not the only explanation for these variations. The study further shows that the availability of schooling facility is the first necessary condition for the universalization of education. The present distortions in the availability of schools will continue unless proper planning is done to minimize the regional imbalance. This is, a task which cannot be postponed any longer.