India Fact Book – Facts About Indian People and Population

India is a country that leaves one spellbound with its alluring contrasts and striking features in all that it beholds! India is a 34,000 years old country with a rich legend and history. India is a country with a population of around 1.15 billion approximately. The current Indian population as on July 2009 is 1,156,897,766. India is the second most populated country is the world after China. Indian population has always been a major issue along with problems like poverty, illiteracy and unemployment. Almost 80.5% of the country men are Hindus. India also has one of the world’s largest Muslim populations amounting to 120 billion. The population also includes other castes like Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, and Parsis. Scheduled castes amount to16.2% and scheduled tribes amount to 8.2% as per the 2001 Census. There are reservations for these special category people as they belong to the backward class and off late the increase in this quota has created a lot of controversy in the country. The greatest number of tribal people live in Orissa. However, the populations of states in the northeast has the greatest concentrations of scheduled tribe members. 31% of the population of Tripura, 34% of Manipur, 64% of Arunachal Pradesh, 86% of Meghalaya, 88% of Nagaland, and 95% of Mizoram belong to the Scheduled Tribe.

Age Structure :

• 0-14 years: 30.5% (male 187,197,389/female 165,285,592)
• 15-64 years: 64.3% (male 384,131,994/female 359,795,835)
• 65 years and over: 5.2% (male 28,816,115/female 31,670,841) (2009 est.)

Median Age :

• Total: 25.3 years
• Male: 24.9 years
• Female: 25.8 years (2009 est.)

• Population Growth Rate: 1.407% (2009 est.)
• Birth Rate : 21.72 births/1,000 population (2009 est.)
• Death Rate : 7.6 deaths/1,000 population (July 2009 est.)
• Net Migration Rate : -0.05 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2009 est.)

Urbanization :

• Urban population: 29% of total population (2008)
• Rate of urbanization: 2.4% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)

Sex Ratio :

• At birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
• Under 15 years: 1.1 male(s) / female
• 15-64 years: 1.06 male(s) / female
• 65 years and over: 0.9 male(s) / female
• Total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2009 est.)

Infant Mortality Rate:

• Total: 50.78 deaths / 1,000 live births
• Male: 49.33 deaths / 1,000 live births
• Female: 52.4 deaths / 1,000 live births (2009 est.)

Life expectancy at Birth :

• Total population: 66.09 years
• Male: 65.13 years
• Female: 67.17 years (2009 est.)

• Total Fertility Rate : 2.68 children born / woman (2009 est.)

• HIV/AIDS – adult prevalence rate: 0.3% (2007 est.)

• HIV/AIDS – people living with HIV/AIDS: 2.4 million (2007 est.)

• HIV/AIDS – deaths: 310,000 (2001 est.)

Major Infectious diseases :

• Degree of risk: High
• Food or waterborne diseases: Bacterial iarrhea, Hepatitis A and E, and Typhoid fever
• Vector-borne diseases: chikungunya, dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, and malaria
• Animal contact disease: rabies
• Water contact disease: leptospirosis
• Note: highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza has been identified in this country; it poses a negligible risk with extremely rare cases possible among US citizens who have close contact with birds (2009). H1N1.

Nationality

• Noun: Indian(s)
• Adjective: Indian
• Ethnic Groups : Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000)
• Religions : Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)
• Religion : Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)
• Languages : Hindi 41%, Bengali 8.1%, Telugu 7.2%, Marathi 7%, Tamil 5.9%, Urdu 5%, Gujarati 4.5%, Kannada 3.7%, Malayalam 3.2%, Oriya 3.2%, Punjabi 2.8%, Assamese 1.3%, Maithili 1.2%, other 5.9% note: English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the most widely spoken language and primary tongue of 41% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language (2001 census)
• Education expenditures: 3.2% of GDP (2005)

Literacy:

• Definition: age 15 and over can read and write
• Total population: 61%
• Male: 73.4%
• Female: 47.8% (2001 census)

School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education):

• Total: 10 years
• Male: 11 years
• Female: 9 years (2005)