India’s billion-plus census head count begins

AP: Millions of census workers fanned out across the country yesterday as they began a mammoth effort to document every person in the world’s second most populous country over the next three weeks.

President Pratibha Devisingh Patil was the first of the estimated 1.17 billion Indians to be counted at her pink sandstone presidential palace. Next, Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi sat with the census-takers under a banyan tree in her yard while inspecting and signing off on a 29-point questionnaire listing income, religion, education and access to basic utilities among other topics.

The current population of India, with 1,190,000,000 (1.19 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.