India currently has the 2nd largest population in the world. In January 2022, the population of the country went past 140 crores and comprises nearly 20 percent of the world’s population. From the mid 70s to 2010, India’ s population got doubled and became 120 crores. It is currently being speculated that India will go past China and become the country with the largest population in next 2 years. It is also expected to go past 150 crores and 170 crores by the next decade and by 2070 respectively.
More than half the population of the country falls below the age of 25 and more than 65 percent fall below the age of 35. India’s dependency ratio is just above 0.4. However, the number of children which peaked in the country more than 10 years ago, is now falling.
According to a latest round of surveys, India’s gender ratio stands at 1020 females to 1000 males. It is good as it has shown an increasing trend for the past two decades after a constant decline in the 20th century.
India occupies close to two and a half percent of the world’s land area but supports close to 1/5th of the world’s population. According to census 2001, around 70 percent of the population lived in 6.38 lakh villages and the remaining percentage lived in 5,000 urban towns.