Population and Demographics

India has a population of approximately 1.1 billion people, comprising approximately one-sixth of the world's population. This population is remarkably diverse; it has more than two thousand ethnic groups, and every major religion is represented, as are four major families of languages (Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages) as well as two language isolates (Nihali and the Burushaski language spoken in disputed parts of Jammu and Kashmir).

Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 16% of the world's population. It is the second most populous nation on Earth and if current trends persist, India will replace China as the most populous nation in less than 40 years. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. More than 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 2000 towns and cities.

Although 80.5% of the people are Hindus, India is also home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world (13.4%) after Indonesia. India also contains the majority of the world's Zoroastrians (0.01%), Sikhs (1.9%) and Jains (0.40%). Other religious groups include Christians (2.3%), Buddhists (1.05%), Jews and Baha'ís.

Facts and Figures

• Population: 1,129,866,154
• Age Structure:
  • 0-14 years: 31.8% (male 188,208,196/female 171,356,024)
  • 15-64 years: 63.1% (male 366,977,821/female 346,034,565)
  • 65 years and over: 5.1% (male 27,258,259/female 30,031,289)
• Median Age:
  • Total: 24.8 years
  • Male: 24.5 years
  • Female: 25.2 years
• Population Growth Rate: 1.606%
• Birth Rate: 22.69 births/1,000 population
• Death Rate: 6.58 deaths/1,000 population
• Net Migration Rate: -0.05 migrant(s)/1,000 population
• Sex Ratio:
  • At birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
  • Under 15 years: 1.098 male(s)/female
  • 15-64 years: 1.061 male(s)/female
  • 65 years and over: 0.908 male(s)/female
  • Total population: 1.064 male(s)/female
• Infant Mortality Rate:
  • Total: 34.61 deaths/1,000 live births
  • Male: 39.42 deaths/1,000 live births
  • Female: 29.23 deaths/1,000 live births
• Life Expectancy at Birth:
  • Total population: 68.59 years
  • Male: 66.28 years
  • Female: 71.17 years
• Total Fertility Rate: 2.81 children born/woman
• HIV/AIDS:
  • Adult prevalence rate: 0.9%
  • People living with HIV/AIDS: 5.1 million
• Ethnic Groups:
  • Indo-Aryan 72%
  • Dravidian 25%
  • Mongoloid and other 3%
• Religions:
  • Hindu 80.5%
  • Muslim 13.4%
  • Christian 2.3%
  • Sikh 1.9%
  • Other 1.8%
  • Unspecified 0.1%
• Languages:
  • English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication
  • Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% 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
• Literacy:
  • Total population: 61%
  • Male: 73.4%
  • Female: 47.8%