India People Profile 2012

The Demographics of India are overall remarkably diverse. India's population of approximately 1.13 billion people (estimate for March 10, 2008) comprises approximately one-sixth of the world's population. India is expected to overtake China by 2030 and will then be the most populated country in the world. India 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 a language isolate (the Nihali language spoken in parts of Maharashtra). Further complexity is lent by the great variation that occurs across this population on social parameters such as income and education. Only the continent of Africa exceeds the linguistic, cultural and genetic diversity of the nation of India.

Salient features

Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 17.5% of the world's population. 31.8% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. As per the 2001 census, 72.22% 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, with 13.4% of its population Muslim, is also home to the third-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. India also contains the majority of the world's Zoroastrians, Sikhs and Jains. Other religious groups include Christians (2.3%), Buddhists (0.8%), Jews and Bahá'ís.