Population of India

India is home to well over a billion people, one of the largest populations on Earth. Where these people live, how fast their numbers are changing, and what the population is made up of shape every aspect of the country's development. Studying India's population is essential to understanding its economy, society and future.

India's population is spread very unevenly. Population density (the number of people per square kilometre) varies enormously:

• the fertile river plains (especially the Ganga plain) and coastal areas are densely populated. Flat land, good soil and water support farming and cities.
• deserts, high mountains and dense forests (Rajasthan's deserts, the Himalayas, the north-east) are sparsely populated.

So physical geography, climate and economic opportunity together decide where people cluster.

These broad patterns show up clearly in census rankings, which examiners test often:

• Density extremes: Arunachal Pradesh has the lowest population density among Indian states. Its mountains and forests keep settlement thin. At the other end, West Bengal recorded the highest density among states in the 2001 Census, thanks to its fertile delta plains.
• Hill-state densities (1991): among the north-eastern and Himalayan states, Sikkim's density was lower than that of Nagaland, Meghalaya and Manipur.
• Most populous states (2001): Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state, with Maharashtra second.
• Smallest population: Sikkim has the minimum population, smaller even than the Union Territories of Chandigarh and Puducherry and the state of Mizoram.
• Smallest area: Goa, not Sikkim, is the smallest state by area. Sikkim is smallest by population, Goa by land.
• Area versus population: Chhattisgarh is larger in area than West Bengal, yet West Bengal holds far more people. Big land does not mean big population.
• Union Territories: Lakshadweep recorded the highest literacy rate among the Union Territories.

Census geography also sorts cities by size:

• Million-plus cities: cities with a population of over one million. The 2001 Census counted dozens of them, including Ludhiana, Kochi, Surat and Nagpur, not just the famous metros.
• Megacities: the very largest urban centres, each with more than 5 million people. India's megacities are all national or state capitals, but they are not all sea ports: Delhi lies far inland.

India's population has grown rapidly over the past century. Geographers explain this through the demographic transition, a shift from high birth and death rates to low ones:

• earlier, both birth and death rates were high, so the population grew slowly,
• then death rates fell sharply (better medicine, food and sanitation) while birth rates stayed high, causing a population explosion, and
• now birth rates are also falling, so growth is slowing down.

India is currently in the later stages of this transition, with growth gradually easing.

In India this transition unfolded in four distinct phases across the twentieth century:

• 1901–21: stagnant growth. Famines and epidemics kept death rates almost as high as birth rates. The 1911–21 decade even recorded a fall.
• 1921–51: steady growth. Death rates began to decline while birth rates stayed high.
• 1951–81: rapid high growth. Death rates fell sharply after Independence, producing the population explosion.
• 1981–2001: high growth with definite signs of slowdown. Numbers still rose fast, but birth rates began to fall and the growth rate started easing.

Growth statistics invite traps, so hold the magnitudes precisely. Between 1951 and 2001, India's population density roughly doubled, from about 117 to 325 persons per square kilometre. It did not triple. Over the same period the annual exponential growth rate rose and then fell back; it did not double.

A key health indicator behind falling death rates is the infant mortality rate (IMR): the number of deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live births in a year. Note both parts of the definition. It covers the first year of life, not the first month, and it is measured per 1,000 live births, not per 100. Falling IMR signals better nutrition, sanitation and medical care.

The composition (make-up) of the population matters as much as its size. Key aspects are:

• age structure: India has a large share of young people. This gives it a potential "demographic dividend" of workers, provided they can be educated and employed,
• sex ratio: the number of females per 1,000 males, an important measure of social equality,
• literacy, which has been rising but varies by region and gender, and
• occupational structure: still heavily dependent on agriculture, though services and industry are growing.

Understanding this composition helps the country plan for jobs, schools, healthcare and old age.

Literacy varies sharply by state, and the census rankings are heavily tested:

• Kerala has the highest literacy rate in India, decade after decade.
• Bihar had the lowest literacy rate in the 1991 Census.
• Rajasthan's literacy rate has stayed below the national average.
• Female literacy (1991): the order ran Kerala first, then Mizoram, then Goa, then Nagaland.
• Union Territories (1991): Pondicherry and Delhi led the UTs in literacy.
• Gender gap (2001): Mizoram, not Kerala, recorded the smallest gap between male and female literacy.
• Female literacy (2001): among Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh had the highest female literacy.

The state-level sex ratio data tell a clear story:

• Highest: Kerala has the highest sex ratio among states (more females than males), and it pairs this with the highest literacy.
• Lowest: Haryana and Punjab record the lowest sex ratios among states.
• Union Territories (2001): Pondicherry had the highest sex ratio among the UTs.
• National trend: the all-India sex ratio improved from 927 in 1991 to 933 in 2001 (females per 1,000 males).

One fact explains why the ratio stays below 1,000: in India, more boys than girls are born each year. The sex ratio at birth favours males. Female survival advantages later in life cannot fully offset this birth imbalance.

Three more structural facts from the 2001 Census round out the picture:

• Rural population: Himachal Pradesh had the highest percentage of rural population among major states, about 90 per cent.
• The elderly: persons above 65 years made up only about 5 to 6 per cent of India's population. India remains a young country.
• Median age: India's median age is the lowest in the comparison set, below China's, which is below that of the USA, which in turn is below the UK's.
• Household size (1991): average households were largest in Uttar Pradesh, then West Bengal, then Gujarat, with Kerala the smallest. Smaller families track higher literacy and lower fertility.

The share of workers in agriculture barely shifted for decades. The reason lies in the pattern of investment. Planned investment flowed mainly into capital-intensive industries, which use machines heavily and create too few jobs to absorb the workers leaving agriculture. With little employment opening up in industry, workers stayed on the farm, and the occupational structure remained almost unchanged.

Population numbers in any place change not only through births and deaths but also through migration, the movement of people from one place to another to live. Migration reshapes both the places people leave and the places they go. It explains the growth of cities, the flow of money across the country, and many social changes.

Migration can be classified in several ways:

• Internal migration: movement within the country, the largest kind in India.
• International migration: movement across national borders.
• By direction, the main internal streams are rural-to-urban (the biggest in India), rural-to-rural, urban-to-urban and urban-to-rural.

Every flow of migrants (a stream) is matched by a smaller flow the other way (a counter-stream). In India, marriage is actually the biggest single reason for internal migration, especially among women.

Why do people migrate? Geographers describe push and pull factors:

• Push factors: poverty, unemployment, lack of services, droughts, or pressure on farmland drive people away from a place.
• Pull factors: jobs, higher wages, better education, healthcare and a more secure life (usually in cities) draw people towards a place.

Most migration in India is the result of rural push (few opportunities) combined with urban pull (the promise of work).

Migration has wide-ranging effects, both good and bad:

• Economic: migrants send home remittances (money), which support families and villages. Cities gain workers but may face pressure on housing and jobs.
• Social: migration spreads ideas, skills and a mixing of cultures, but it can also break up families and strain communities.
• Demographic: it makes cities grow fast and can leave some villages with mostly the old and very young.
• Brain drain: it can drain talented people from poorer regions.

Managing migration well, by creating jobs in villages and planning cities, is a major development challenge.

A population is not only a number. It is also a stock of abilities and relationships. Economists capture this with two ideas that are often confused, so the distinctions matter.

Human capital is the knowledge, skills and capacities embodied in people. Human capital formation is the process that builds this stock: education, training and healthcare that raise what people know and can do. Because skills live inside people, human capital is a form of intangible wealth. It is not the accumulation of money, machines or other tangible assets. Those belong to physical capital, the stock of buildings, infrastructure and machinery.

Social capital is different again. It refers to the networks of relationships, the shared norms and the level of mutual trust and harmony in a society that allow people to act together. A community where people trust one another and cooperate has high social capital, whatever its infrastructure or literacy levels may be. Keep the three apart:

• Human capital: knowledge, skills and capacities of individuals, built through education, training and health.
• Physical capital: tangible assets such as buildings, infrastructure and machines.
• Social capital: trust, shared norms and social networks that enable collective action.

Measures such as the literacy rate or the size of the working-age group describe human resources. They are not social capital, which is about the quality of social ties, not individual attributes.

Rapid growth pushed India to act early. In 1952 India became the first country in the world to adopt a state-sponsored National Family Planning Programme, aimed at slowing population growth through voluntary family planning.

The framework today is the National Population Policy, 2000 (NPP 2000), the government's roadmap for stabilising population while improving health and welfare. It works at three time horizons:

• Immediate objective: meet the unmet needs for contraception, healthcare infrastructure and trained health personnel.
• Medium-term objective: bring the total fertility rate (average children per woman) down to the replacement level of about 2.1 by 2010, projecting a population of around 111 crore at that point.
• Long-term objective: achieve population stabilisation by 2045, at a level consistent with sustainable development.

Progress has been uneven across states. Kerala was the first state to achieve replacement-level fertility, helped by high female literacy and strong public health. Several other southern states followed, while parts of the northern plains still record fertility above replacement level.