Population Boom In India; How The Demography Changed Since First Census In 1961

UNITED Nations estimates that India will surpass the world’s most populous country China, in terms of population, with close to three million more people by the middle of this year. The recently released ‘State of the World Population Report, 2023’ by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that there will be more than 1.4286 billion (142 Crore) Indians by this year’s end.

Compared to this, there will be slightly fewer Chinese in the world at 1.4257 billion. The UNFPA arrived at these population projections using past data collected by the United Nations.

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The UN started tracking global population and its trends in 1950. From 2.5 billion people that lived in the world back then, according to UN’s website, humans crossed the 8 billion mark by November 2022. Between 2010 to 2022, 1 billion people were added to this world. Between 1988 and 2010 humans grew in number by 2 billion. Basically, adding 1 billion people every decade since 1988.

However, India conducted its first census in 1961. Back then there were 459 millions of us, by the time we conducted a census in 2011 (which is the latest) we had grown to 1.25 billion. It marks an increase of 791 million people. India conducts census every ten years.

India’s census exercise, which was supposed to happen in 2021, was put on hold by the Covid pandemic. This has made estimating our population growth a laborious task to say the least. This was conceded by UN’s population experts when they failed to put forth a timeline of when India may surpass China’s population due to “uncertainty” about the data coming out of India and China”.

Amid this backdrop, Jagran English tracks the India’s population growth over six censuses :

1961 - India’s population at the time of first census was 459.64 million, according to worlddata.info. The birth rate in the country, that had just began recovering from the horrors of partition, was a whopping 41.4 per cent. Birth rate is the percentage of live births per thousand of population each year.

1971 - By the second census Indians numbered 567.87 million. That marks a 19 per cent increase in the population. Year after year, India’s birth rate has only decreased. By 1971 it stood at 38.8 per cent.

1981 - However, birth rate does not give us a complete picture. As birth rate kept falling every year, the fall in death rate outpaced it significantly. Meaning, every year we were adding more and more people than as fewer people kept dying. It was sign of India’s maturing health care system. India’s third census found our population stood at 715.38 million, and increase of nearly 150 million.

1991 - Already a much more mature country than what the British had left behind in 1947, India’s death rate had seen a nearly ten percentage points cut standing at 10.6 per cent after the fourth census. Population stood at 891.27 million. Over 175 million more people than in 1981.

2001 - By the time we conducted our fifth census, we had crossed the 1 billion-mark. By 2001, our galloping rate of population increase had started stablising.

2011 - This year was when India conducted its last census. Birth rate at this point stood at 20.5 per cent. While the death rate stood, 7.4 per cent. For perspective, China’s population was nearly 100 million more than ours at 1.35 billion people. India’s population was 1.25 billion. However, China’s one-child policy had been in place for years and slowdown in population growth could already be noticed.

Only 12 years and we already seem to have caught up to our northern neighbour. As their population slowed we kept racing ahead. Now the UN estimates China’s population will actually decrease by 48 million between 2019 and 2050. Although India may become the world’s most populous country soon, it is showing signs of slowing population growth too. Whether there is ‘uncertainty’ over data coming from India or not, there definitely remains uncertainty over how we want to wrap our heads around it.

(With agency inputs)