INDIA’S POPULATION has jumped to 1.21 billion, making it more populous than Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan and the US put together, the latest provisional census figures released yesterday reveal.
Census commissioner C Chandramouli said India was home to 17 per cent of the world’s population, having added 181 million people to its numbers since the previous head count conducted a decade ago.
And though this 17.6 per cent increase in population was down from the 21.5 per cent rise recorded in 2000, United Nations projections estimate that India’s population could overtake China’s 1.34 billion people by 2030.
Last month China declared its population – already the world’s largest – had increased by 6.3 million in 2010 to 1.341 billion.
But speaking to reporters in Delhi Mr Chandramouli stressed that the population figures were preliminary and it would require up to a year of data analysis before more exact numbers were available.
The census, which was India’s 15th since 1872, was the world’s largest, involving more than 2.7 million enumerators.
They visited almost 300 million homes, spread over 8,001 towns and 640,852 villages, collecting information on India’s numerous castes and tribes, languages spoken and religions followed.
Millions of homeless people too were part of the census, as were all local residents irrespective of nationality, and included Ajmal Kasab, the Pakistani terrorist sentenced to death for attacking and besieging Mumbai in November 2008.
For the first time the census also recorded whether people lived in huts or concrete structures, had access to electricity, to toilets and basic education.
Officials said such data would help administrators develop policies for the socially and economically deprived in a country where almost 800 million people live on less than $2 a day and have no access to basic healthcare, social justice and rudimentary schooling.
The initial census figures also indicated a worrying decline in the country’s child sex ratio, down to 914 females for every 1,000 males, the lowest since independence 64 years ago.
Sex-selective abortions based on ultrasound scans have been illegal in India for decades, but women have been under tremendous pressure to produce male heirs who are seen as wage-earners and future family leaders and traditional inheritors.
Hindu custom also dictates that only sons can light parental funeral pyres, a vital factor in a country where more than 80 per cent of the population is Hindu. Female offspring, especially across rural India, have been considered a financial burden and have been largely neglected after birth.
“This [skewered sex ratio] is a matter of grave concern,” Mr Chandramouli said.
The census also revealed that India’s literacy rate had increased to 74 per cent for those over seven years old, up from around 65 per cent recorded in the last count.