Takeaways from the Census numbers

From traffic jams to the rising price of vegetables, we Indians like to attribute most of our problems to one villain — our teeming millions. That's why the provisional data from Census 2011, India's decennial exercise to estimate its population, many takeaways for us. We sifted through the data to answer some common questions.

Where does India figure on population, in the global scheme of things?

Provisional numbers from Census 2011 put India's population at 121.019 crore, compared to 102.87 crore in 2001. With 17.5 per cent of the world's population, India remains the second most populous country in the world after China. With India's population growing much faster than China's, it is expected to overtake it as the world's most populous country by 2030.

India's population expanded by 17.6 per cent in the last decade, while China curtailed the increase to 5.4 per cent. This is indeed why India's demographic ‘dividends' from a young population and high proportion of workers are expected to last longer than China's, aiding its economic growth.

Which States face the most pressure on available land?

The problem of land is acute for India because the country is home to 17.5 per cent of the world's people, while it controls a meagre 2.4 per cent of the surface area. Fifty years ago, India had only 142 people to every sq km; now it has 382.

However, population density shows huge variations between States, with some bursting at the seams while others are less crowded. The Census data shows the National Capital Territory of Delhi to be hosting a breathtaking 11,297 people to every sq km.

Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh had the highest population densities among the States. Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Bihar host a disproportionately high share of population, in relation to their land mass. Investors note, that's likely to have implications for real-estate values in these regions!

Are Indians getting more affluent?

They certainly are, as the country's GDP growth has comfortably outpaced its population growth in the past decade. Even as India's headcount edged up by 17.6 per cent between 2001 and 2011, its GDP (at factor cost) more than doubled, rising 141 per cent!

This has, in fact, taken the country's per capita income up from Rs 16,172 in 2000-01 to Rs 33,731 by 2009-10 (Source: Economic Survey ). This is, if the indicator is expressed in constant rupee terms, without taking into account inflation.

Is India's food production keeping up with population growth?

Not as comfortably as we would like. On a point-to-point basis, while India's output of wheat, pulses, oilseeds and sugar outpaced population growth by a comfortable margin between 2001 and 2010 (See table), that of rice and coarse cereals didn't. These numbers are, however, distorted by the point-to-point comparisons. The key challenge with India's agriculture has been the huge fluctuations in output from year to year. Separate statistics from the Economic Survey suggest that the per capita availability of key food items — an indicator of whether food availability has kept pace with population — has charted an erratic course over the past decade.

For instance, the per capita availability of cereals — was as high as 423 gm per day in 2000, dipped to 386 gms the very next year and has lurched up and down to stand at 407 gm by 2009. Pulses too have seen their per capita availability start the decade at 30 gms/day and close at 41.8 gms by 2009, with no clear trend.

The gyrations in food output create quite a few challenges for policymakers. One, as both population and income levels rise steadily as they have done in India, predictability in food output becomes crucial to curn price rise. Two, economists have also pointed out that India has to prepare for a shift in the consumption pattern of its people. A recent research paper published by the RBI argued that the price rise in pulses, milk and eggs was driven, not so much by weather-related factors, but by a structural shift in the consumption patterns of families seeking to improve their protein intake.

Is there a North-South divide in population growth?

There is, but it is being bridged. Falling birth rates have already made for low population growth in the four southern states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala) over the past two decades. These States are likely to be the first to attain the goal of ‘stable population', where low birth rates co-exist with low death rates, to make for a higher standard of living.

However, in the latest decade, the phenomenon of low population growth has also spread to select States from the North (Himachal and Punjab), West (Maharashtra) and East (Orissa and West Bengal) of India. The six most populous States have also seen slower additions. Therefore, while some States are ahead of others in the process of demographic transition, most States are likely to get there, eventually.

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