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Population composition

Human geography of India · Part 2 / 4 · Fact-checked on · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

What India's population is made of: the sex ratio and child sex ratio (Census 2011, NFHS-5) and the laws and schemes on them; age structure, the dependency ratio and the demographic dividend; Census literacy; rural and urban shares; main and marginal workers and the four worker categories; language families and the Eighth Schedule; religious composition; and the Human Development Index.

Part 1 counted India's people and asked where they live and how fast their numbers grow. A total, however, says little about the kind of society behind it. Two countries of the same size can differ sharply if one has many children and the other many old people, or if one is largely literate and the other is not. This part looks inside the total. It covers the balance of women and men, the age structure and what it means for the economy, literacy, the split between village and town, the kinds of work people do, the languages they speak and the religions they follow, and finally the Human Development Index, which sums up health, schooling and income in one figure.

The Census measures the balance between women and men as the sex ratio: the number of females for every 1,000 males. A ratio below 1,000 means fewer women than men. India's ratio in Census 2011 was 943, up from 933 in 2001, yet still well short of parity. Most rich countries have more women than men, because women tend to live longer, so a low figure is a warning sign rather than a natural feature. The state pattern is uneven. Kerala, at 1,084, was the only state with more women than men, and Puducherry (1,037) led the union territories. At the other end, Haryana had the lowest ratio among states (879), and Daman and Diu (618), where many male workers had migrated in, was the lowest of all.

Why are women 'missing'? Part of the answer is in the child sex ratio, which counts girls per 1,000 boys aged 0–6. It fell from 927 in 2001 to 918 in 2011, a sign that families with a strong preference for sons were using prenatal tests to identify and abort female foetuses, and that girls who were born often received less care. Haryana's child ratio (834) was the lowest of any state. The state's response came on two fronts. The Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, as amended in 2003, bans telling parents the sex of a foetus and regulates the clinics that can find it out. Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, launched at Panipat in January 2015, works on attitudes. NFHS-5 (2019–21) recorded 1,020 women per 1,000 men in the households it surveyed, but a sex ratio at birth of only 929.

Age structure is the share of people in each age group, and it is usually drawn as a population pyramid: bars for each five-year group, males on one side and females on the other, with the youngest at the bottom. A country with high birth rates has a wide base and a narrow top, like a true pyramid. As birth rates fall, the base narrows and the middle bulges, giving a shape closer to a beehive or barrel. Census 2011 found a little under a third of Indians below 15, about three-fifths aged 15–59 and about 8.6 per cent aged 60 or above. India's pyramid is therefore no longer broad-based: the bulge has moved into the young working ages, which is exactly the stage the demographic transition of Part 1 predicts.

The economic meaning of the age structure is captured by the dependency ratio: the number of children and elderly for every 100 people of working age. Children and the old mostly consume, while those of working age produce, save and pay taxes. When fertility falls, the ratio drops, because there are fewer children to support and the large cohorts born earlier are now of working age. This window is called the demographic dividend. It is an opportunity, not a guarantee: the extra workers raise growth only if they are healthy, skilled and find jobs, which is why the debate in India links the dividend to schooling and employment. The Economic Survey 2018–19 projected that India's working-age share would peak around 2041. After that the window closes and ageing begins, already visible in Kerala and the southern states, where fertility fell first.

For the Census a literate person is anyone aged seven or above who can both read and write with understanding in any language. Reading alone does not count, and no formal schooling is needed. Children up to six are left out of the calculation, so the literacy rate is literates as a share of the population aged seven and above. In 2011 it was about 74 per cent: about 82 per cent for men and about 65 per cent for women, a gender gap of roughly 16.7 percentage points, narrower than in 2001 but still wide. Kerala led the states at about 94 per cent and Bihar was last at about 62 per cent. The north-central states had the lowest female literacy, and the gap between them and the south and north-east is one of the clearest regional divides in Indian social data.

Rural–urban composition is the split of the population between villages and towns. In Census 2011 about 68.8 per cent of Indians lived in rural areas and about 31.2 per cent in urban areas, so more than two in three were still villagers, even though the urban share had risen by more than three points since 2001. The split varies a great deal across the country. The southern and western states, with longer histories of trade, industry and services, are more urban; the Ganga plain states, Odisha, Assam and the Himalayan states remain overwhelmingly rural, and Himachal Pradesh, where only about one person in ten lived in a town, was the least urban state. How the Census decides what counts as urban, and how fast the urban share is growing, are taken up in Part 3.

The Census divides people by economic activity in the year before the count. Main workers worked for six months (183 days) or more; marginal workers worked for less than that; everyone else is a non-worker, such as a student, a person doing only household duties, a dependant or a retired person. The work participation rate is workers, main and marginal together, as a percentage of the whole population. In 2011 it was about 39.8 per cent: about 53 per cent for men but only about 25.5 per cent for women, partly because much of women's unpaid work at home is not counted as economic activity. Workers are further placed in four categories, shown in the table: cultivators, agricultural labourers, household industry workers and other workers. A landmark of 2011 was that agricultural labourers outnumbered cultivators for the first time.

The four Census categories of workers (Census 2011)
CategoryWho is includedShare of all workers, 2011
CultivatorsWork on land they own, lease or hold, for cropsAbout 24.6%
Agricultural labourersWork on another person's land for wages in cash or kindAbout 30.0%
Household industry workersProduce, process or repair goods within the household, mostly by family membersAbout 3.8%
Other workersAll others: factories, trade, transport, services, government, plantations and so onAbout 41.6%

India's hundreds of mother tongues belong to four main language families. The Indo-European family, through its Indo-Aryan branch, covers about three-quarters of speakers across the north, west and east: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia and others. The Dravidian family dominates the south (Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam) and survives in central India in tribal languages such as Gondi and Kurukh. The Austric family includes the Munda languages of the central tribal belt, such as Santhali, Mundari and Ho, and Khasi in Meghalaya. The Sino-Tibetan family is spoken along the Himalaya and in the north-east, including Bodo, Manipuri and the Naga languages. The Constitution lists 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule: fourteen at the start, Sindhi added in 1967, Konkani, Manipuri and Nepali in 1992, and Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali in 2003. In Census 2011 Hindi was the mother tongue of about 43.6 per cent, followed by Bengali and Marathi.

The Census also records religion as each person states it. In 2011 Hindus formed about 79.8 per cent of the population, Muslims about 14.2 per cent, Christians about 2.3 per cent, Sikhs about 1.7 per cent, Buddhists about 0.7 per cent and Jains about 0.4 per cent, with smaller groups making up the rest. The national picture hides strong regional concentrations, which is what geography questions test. Muslims formed the majority in Jammu and Kashmir (then a state) and in Lakshadweep; Christians were the majority in Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya; Sikhs were the majority in Punjab; and Buddhists were concentrated in Maharashtra, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. These patterns are rooted in history, in the routes of trade and conquest, and in the work of reformers and missionaries.

All these features can be pulled together into a measure of how well people live. The Human Development Index, published by the United Nations Development Programme since 1990 and associated with the economist Mahbub ul Haq, combines three dimensions: a long and healthy life, measured by life expectancy at birth; knowledge, measured by mean years of schooling of adults and expected years of schooling for children; and a decent standard of living, measured by gross national income per person in purchasing-power terms. Each dimension is turned into an index between 0 and 1 and the three are averaged. The Human Development Report 2025 placed India 130th of 193 countries, with a value of 0.685, in the medium human development group. Within India, Kerala's high literacy and long life expectancy explain why it scores well above states with similar incomes.

The pieces of this part fit together. Falling fertility, the theme of Part 1, is what reshapes the age pyramid and opens the demographic dividend; whether India gains from it depends on literacy, skills and work, which are exactly where the gender gaps in this part are widest. A low sex ratio and low female literacy and work participation tend to occur in the same north-central states, while Kerala scores well on all of them and on human development too. Rural–urban composition, the mix of workers and the language and religious map are the background against which migration and urbanisation, the subject of Part 3, should be read. For the exam, keep the 2011 figures, the Census definitions (literate, main and marginal worker) and the HDI's three dimensions clearly in mind.

Exam traps

Recap

Practice questions

Q1. In the Census of India, the sex ratio is expressed as

  1. males per 1,000 females
  2. females per 1,000 males
  3. females per 100 males
  4. girls per 1,000 boys at birth only
Show answer

Answer: B. females per 1,000 males

India's Census counts females per 1,000 males. Males per 1,000 females is the reverse convention used in many other countries; per 100 is not the Indian measure; and the sex ratio at birth is a separate, narrower measure.

Q2. Consider the following statements about Census 2011:
1. Kerala was the only state with more females than males.
2. The child sex ratio (0–6 years) was higher in 2011 than in 2001.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  1. 1 only
  2. 2 only
  3. Both 1 and 2
  4. Neither 1 nor 2
Show answer

Answer: A. 1 only

Statement 1 is correct: Kerala's ratio was 1,084. Statement 2 is wrong: the child sex ratio fell from 927 to 918. So '2 only', 'both' and 'neither' are wrong.

Q3. For the purpose of the Census, a person is treated as literate if he or she

  1. has completed at least primary school
  2. is aged seven or above and can read and write with understanding in any language
  3. is aged five or above and can read in any scheduled language
  4. can sign his or her name
Show answer

Answer: B. is aged seven or above and can read and write with understanding in any language

The Census test is age seven or more plus the ability both to read and to write with understanding in any language. No schooling is required, so the first option is wrong; the age is seven, not five, and reading alone or in a scheduled language only is not enough; signing a name is not literacy.

Q4. With reference to the Census, consider the following statements:
1. A main worker is one who worked for six months or more in the reference year.
2. The work participation rate is the percentage of main workers alone in the total population.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  1. 1 only
  2. 2 only
  3. Both 1 and 2
  4. Neither 1 nor 2
Show answer

Answer: A. 1 only

Statement 1 is correct (183 days or more). Statement 2 is wrong: the rate counts all workers, main and marginal together. So '2 only', 'both' and 'neither' are wrong.

Q5. In Census 2011, which category formed the largest share of India's workers?

  1. Cultivators
  2. Agricultural labourers
  3. Household industry workers
  4. Other workers
Show answer

Answer: D. Other workers

'Other workers' (services, manufacturing outside the household, trade, transport and so on) were about 41.6 per cent. Agricultural labourers (about 30 per cent) outnumbered cultivators (about 24.6 per cent) for the first time but neither was the largest; household industry was under 4 per cent.

Q6. Match the language family with a language that belongs to it:
A. Austric — 1. Bodo
B. Dravidian — 2. Santhali
C. Sino-Tibetan — 3. Kurukh
Select the correct answer using the code given below:

  1. A-2, B-3, C-1
  2. A-1, B-3, C-2
  3. A-3, B-2, C-1
  4. A-2, B-1, C-3
Show answer

Answer: A. A-2, B-3, C-1

Santhali is a Munda (Austric) language, Kurukh (spoken by the Oraon) is Dravidian, and Bodo is Sino-Tibetan. The other codes pair Bodo with Austric, Kurukh with Austric or Bodo with Dravidian, all wrong.

Q7. Which of the following languages were added to the Eighth Schedule in 2003?
1. Bodo
2. Konkani
3. Maithili
4. Santhali
Select the correct answer using the code given below:

  1. 1, 2 and 3 only
  2. 1, 3 and 4 only
  3. 2 and 4 only
  4. 1, 2, 3 and 4
Show answer

Answer: B. 1, 3 and 4 only

Bodo, Dogri, Maithili and Santhali were added in 2003. Konkani came earlier, in 1992 with Manipuri and Nepali, so every option containing 2 is wrong.

Q8. Consider the following statements about the Human Development Index:
1. Its three dimensions are health, knowledge and a decent standard of living.
2. The standard of living is measured by gross national income per person in purchasing-power terms.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

  1. 1 only
  2. 2 only
  3. Both 1 and 2
  4. Neither 1 nor 2
Show answer

Answer: C. Both 1 and 2

Both are correct: the HDI combines a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living, the last measured by GNI per person at purchasing-power parity. So '1 only', '2 only' and 'neither' are wrong.

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