Size, Growth, Density and Distribution of India's Population

2. Size, Growth, Density and Distribution of India's Population

Size. According to the 2011 Census, India's population stood at just over 121 crore (1.21 billion) — making India, at that time, the world's second most populous country after

China. Since then, successive United Nations population estimates have suggested India's

population crossed China's sometime in the early 2020s, making India the world's most populous

country — though the next completed Indian Census will be the first official confirmation of

the exact current figure.

Growth trend. India's population has not grown at a constant pace; its growth RATE itself

has changed across decades:

• Growth was relatively slow through the first half of the twentieth century.
• It accelerated sharply after independence (1951 onward) as death rates fell rapidly while birth rates stayed high — the classic pattern examined in Section 3's demographic transition theory.
• The decadal growth rate — the percentage increase in population over a ten-year Census-to-Census period — peaked around the 1961–1981 decades and has been declining since the 1980s. The 2001–2011 decadal growth rate, at about 17.7%, was the first time since independence that the ABSOLUTE decadal growth rate had actually declined from the previous decade — a genuinely important structural shift, signalling that India is moving toward a later stage of demographic transition (Section 3).

Density. Population density measures how many people live, on average, in each unit of

land area, calculated as:

As per the 2011 Census, India's population density was about 382 persons per square kilometre — among the higher densities of any large country in the world, and a figure that

has risen steadily with every Census since independence. Density is never even across the

country; it is far higher in the fertile river-plain and coastal states and in urban

agglomerations than in mountainous, arid, or forested regions.

Distribution. India's population is unevenly distributed for reasons that are, at heart,

economic and geographic:

• States with very high population/density — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, and Maharashtra are among the most populous states, with West Bengal and Bihar also among the most densely populated, reflecting fertile agricultural plains that historically supported large populations.
• Sparsely populated regions — hill states, desert regions (Rajasthan's arid tracts), and densely forested areas support far fewer people per square kilometre, since the land itself supports fewer livelihoods.
• Rural–urban distribution — the 2011 Census recorded roughly 69% of India's population as rural and about 31% urban, though the urban share has been rising steadily as people migrate toward cities in search of non-agricultural employment (a theme also connected to Rural Development, the previous chapter in this syllabus).
• Sex ratio, another key composition fact, stood at 943 females per 1,000 males as per …