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Rural Demography of India

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International Handbook of Rural Demography

Part of the book series: International Handbooks of Population ((IHOP,volume 3))

Abstract

In the span of a century, there was a fivefold rise in the population of India – at the start of the 20th century the population was about 238 million, which grew to more than one billion in 2001. With an annual increase of nearly 19 million, India accounts for approximately 18% of the world’s population. India has one of the densest rural populations in the world, living in the 600,000 villages scattered throughout the country. The huge density of rural population exerts human pressure on the natural resources and adversely affects the quality of life. According to the 2001 Census, 74% of India’s population lives in villages that vary considerably, although an overwhelming majority of villages have a population less than 1000. This paper presents the rural demographic scenario in India in the light of its physical, cultural and religious diversity and changing socio-economic trends.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The unit of classification in Census is “town” for urban areas and “village” for rural areas. In the Census of India 2001, the definition of urban area adopted is as follows:

    1. a)

      All places with a municipality, corporation, cantonment board or notified town area committee, etc.

    2. b)

      A place satisfying the following three criteria simultaneously:

      1. 1)

        A minimum population of 5,000

      2. 2)

        At least 75% of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits; and

      3. 3)

        A density of population of at least 400 per sq. km. (1,000 per sq. mile)

    Settlements that are not urban are considered as rural. However, the local self-Government Departments in each state have their own rules and regulations based on certain Acts to determine the status of a place as urban or rural. Because of the duality of classification of agencies defining urban, there have been occasions when a place has been regarded as rural by the local Self-Government but as urban by the Census organization. For a detailed discussion on India’s demographic scenario, refer to United Nations (1982), Dyson et al. (2004), Haub and Sharma (2006), and Chaurasia and Gulati (2008).

  2. 2.

    The Constitution of India contains a schedule of castes (SCs) and tribes (STs) eligible to receive special benefits, including welfare services, scholarships, and guaranteed places in educational institutions, the civil service and Parliament. These provisions were made for the educational and economic upliftment of weaker sections and to protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.

  3. 3.

    The 2011 Census count of India’s population, one of the largest administrative exercises in the world, is currently in progress (from 9th to 28th February 2011). India’s Census enumeration involves more than 2 million enumerators and supervisors. In the year before the Census, the enumerators canvass the entire country listing each and every dwelling. This house listing serves as a basis for actual census count. The motto of Indian Census 2011 is “Our Census, Our Future”. Alongside the Census operation, the Government is also preparing the country’s first ever National Population Register (NPR) which is designed to be a comprehensive identity data base of all usual residents of India. Census 2011 is the 15th National Census in the country and the seventh since independence, having been conducted uninterruptedly every 10 years since 1872 (http://www.censusindia.net).

  4. 4.

    The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) is the Indian equivalent of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Three rounds of NFHS were undertaken in 1992–93, 1998–99 and 2005–06. NFHS provides wealth of information on fertility, contraception, infant and child mortality, immunization, reproductive health, nutrition of women and children, domestic violence and status of women. In NFHS-3 (2005–06), face-to-face interviews were conducted with nearly 200,000 people covering all 29 states of India (http://www.nfhsindia.org). However for district level estimates, the only source is the District Level Household and Facility Survey – DLHS (IIPS, 2010) (http://www.rchiips.org).

  5. 5.

    In the Indian Census, the test of literacy is satisfied if a person can both read and write with understanding in any one language.

  6. 6.

    The Census of India measures the sex ratio as number of females per 1,000 males as opposed to the standard international norm of number of males per 100 females. Defining the sex ratio by covering children in the age group 0–6 may seem arbitrary, but the Census uses it for the purpose of finding literacy status, categorizing the entire population into two groups – those aged 0–6 years and those 7 years and above.

  7. 7.

    The first court case and conviction under this Act did not happen until recently when a doctor and his assistant in the state of Haryana were sentenced to 2 years in jail (The Hindu Newspaper, March 30, 2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Population Policies and Programmes, International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS), Deonar, Mumbai, 400 088, India

    T. V. Sekher

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  1. T. V. Sekher
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Correspondence to T. V. Sekher .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Sociology , Anthropology and Social Work, Kansas State University, Waters Hall 202D, Manhattan, 66506, Kansas, USA

    László J. Kulcsár

  2. , Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Linden Drive 1450, Madison, 53706, Wisconsin, USA

    Katherine J. Curtis

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Sekher, T.V. (2012). Rural Demography of India. In: Kulcsár, L., Curtis, K. (eds) International Handbook of Rural Demography. International Handbooks of Population, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1842-5_13

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