Population: Distribution, Density, Growth and Composition

India’s population from the Census: its spread and density, the four phases of growth, rural and urban shares, and workers and their occupations.

Key ideas

• Population data come from the Census, held every ten years; the first complete Census was in 1881.
• People crowd the fertile, well-watered northern plains, deltas and coasts; the Himalayas, deserts and rugged interiors have few.
• Irrigation (in Rajasthan), minerals and energy (in Jharkhand), transport and industry have drawn people to once thinly peopled areas.
• Growth phases: 1901–21 stagnant; 1921–51 steady; 1951–81 population explosion (deaths fell, births stayed high); after 1981 high but slowing.
• Physiological density compares people with cultivated land; agricultural density compares farm people with cultivable land.
• A main worker works at least 183 days a year and a marginal worker less; most workers are still cultivators and agricultural labourers, though their share is falling.

Remember

Watch out

• Dividing by the total area for physiological density (use the net cultivated area).
• Calling 1951–81 a period of slow growth: it was the population explosion.
• Treating someone who works 100 days a year as a main worker (that needs 183 days).

Worked example