Demographics of India

India houses a population of 1.1 billion people (2006), comprising approximately one-sixth of the world's population. This population is remarkably diverse; every major religion is represented, as are three families of languages. Further complexity is lent by the great variation that occurs across this population on social parameters such as income and education. These factors render the task of comprehensively detailing the Demographics of India prohibitive; some important indices are available, nevertheless.

Salient features

Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 15% of the world's population. Only China has a larger population, and even that is about to change in fewer than a 100 years. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. More than 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities.

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

Although 80.5% of the people are Hindus, India is also home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world (13.4%). India also contains the majority of the world's Zoroastrians (.001%). Other religious groups include Christians (2.3%), Sikhs (1.84%), Buddhists (0.76%), Jains (0.40%), Jews and Bahá'ís.

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

Census

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

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

The total population calculated for 1 March 2001 was 1,027,015,247, making the 2001 census the first to count more than a billion Indians. The population had risen by 21.34% compared to the 1991 total. The female population had increased by 0.3 percentage points to 46.6%.

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

Key data

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

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

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

The average age of Indians is 26 years.

Population growth rate: 1.38% (2006 est.)

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

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

literacy rate: 64.8%

Percent of the population under the poverty line: 10%

Unemployment Rate: 9.2%

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

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

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

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

Total fertility rate: 2.73 children born/woman (2006 est.)

Nationality:
noun: Indian(s)
adjective: Indian

Religions: Hindu 80.46%, Muslim 13.43%, Christian 2.34%, Sikh 1.87%, Buddhists 0.77%, Jains 0.41 %, Others or not stated 0.72% (2001 Census)

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

Languages: See Languages of India, List of Indian languages by total speakers There are 216 languages/dialects with more than 10,000 native speakers in India. The largest of these by far is Hindi with some 337 million (the second largest being Bengali with some 70 million). 22 languages are recognized as "official languages".

Religious breakdown

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

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

All figures in %.
Gender Ratio*: no of females/1000 males
Others includes Tribal Animists, Jews, Parsis and Bahá'ís

*Census information for 2001*
Composition	Hindus	Muslims	Christians	Sikhs	Buddhists	Jains	Others
% total of population 2001	80.46	13.43	2.34	1.87	0.77	0.41	0.72
10-Yr Growth % (est '91-'01)	20.3	29.3	22.6	18.2	24.5	26	NA
Gender ratio* (avg. 933)	931	936	1009	893	953	950	992
Literacy rate (avg. 64.8)	65.1	59.1	80.3	69.4	72.7	94.1	47
Work Participation Rate	40	31.3	40	37.7	40	32.9	NA
Rural gender ratio	944	953	1001	895	958	937	995
Urban gender ratio	894	907	1026	886	944	941	966
Child gender ratio (0-6 yrs)	925	950	964	786	942	870	927

However, some unofficial estimates claim a higher figure of Muslim population supposedly discounted in Censuses. For instance, in an interview with a well circulated newspaper of India The Hindu Justice K.M. Yusuf, a retired Judge from Calcutta High Court and Chairman of West Bengal Minority Commission, says that the real percentage of Muslims in India is at least 20%. On the other hand, some believe that Muslim population figures are exaggerated due to various reasons. For instance, As per Syed Shahabuddin, a diplomat-turned-politician, a Muslim scholar and one of the members in the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, both Hindu and Muslim ‘spokesmen’, speaking for their respective communities amplify and exaggerate the Muslim population in India, the first, to convince their followers about the rising ‘Islamic menace’, a threat to the country and at least to its Hindu character, the second, to raise the morale of a politically deprived, educationally backward, economically poor and socially vilified, frustrated community.[http://www.milligazette.com/Archives/15092001/29.htm

Ethnic Groups

Jews number about 4,000 of which 2,000 reside in Bombay.
Parsis number about 65,000, down from 71,000.

There are at least 4365different ethnic groups in India and ethnic groups in Manipur can be found here [http://www.manipuronline.com/Features/November2005/interethnicrelationship17_2.htm.

External links

Census of India; Govt. site with detailed data from 2001 census
Census of India map generator; generates maps based on 2001 census figures
Demographic data for India; provides sources of demographic data for India
Peopling of India
http://kokrajhar.nic.in/census.htm
http://www.indianchild.com/population_of_india.htm