The people of India

India passed China as the world's most populous country in 2023. Growth is decelerating: the national total fertility rate has fallen to around two children per woman, essentially replacement level, from over five in the 1950s.

The population will nonetheless keep growing for some decades because of demographic momentum — a large cohort of people already born is still entering childbearing age. Peak population is generally projected for the 2060s.

The median age of around 28 is the fact most often invoked in economic discussion. A large working-age population relative to dependants creates a 'demographic dividend' — but it is conditional, not automatic. It only converts into growth if those workers find productive employment, which returns to the employment structure discussed in the economy pages.

The window is also finite. As fertility falls and the current bulge ages, the dependency ratio will rise again. Several southern states are already there: Kerala and Tamil Nadu have age structures closer to East Asian economies than to Bihar or Uttar Pradesh.

The sex ratio has been a long-standing concern, with sex-selective practices producing a deficit of women in several states. Legal prohibition of prenatal sex determination and targeted programmes have been the policy response; the National Family Health Survey tracks the trend.

The gap between southern and northern states across almost every demographic and development indicator is one of the most consequential facts about contemporary India, and it is widening.

Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have fertility well below replacement, higher literacy, higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality and higher per-capita incomes than the large northern states — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.

The political consequence is direct. Lok Sabha seat allocation has been frozen against 1971 population figures precisely so that states which reduced fertility would not lose parliamentary representation for having done so. When that freeze is eventually revisited, redistribution would shift seats towards states whose populations grew fastest — which the southern states view as being penalised for successful policy.

The same divergence drives internal migration: labour moves from the eastern and northern belt towards southern and western industrial and service centres, and remittances flow back the other way.

It also drives fiscal argument. States that generate more revenue per person receive a smaller share back through the Finance Commission's redistributive formula, which is defensible as equalisation and contested as penalty.

The Eighth Schedule recognises 22 languages: Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

The Census records over 120 languages with more than ten thousand speakers and several hundred mother tongues. Four major families are represented: Indo-Aryan across the north and west, Dravidian across the south, and Austroasiatic and Tibeto-Burman languages in the east and northeast.

There is no national language. Hindi in Devanagari and English are the official languages of the Union, and a citizen may deal with the Union government in either. Every state designates its own official language or languages, and the Constitution provides for communication between the Union and states and for education in a person's mother tongue at primary level.

Classical language status has been conferred on a number of languages including Tamil, Sanskrit, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Odia, carrying funding for study and preservation.

Language politics has shaped the map: the States Reorganisation Act of 1956 redrew state boundaries along linguistic lines after sustained agitation, and language remains a live political issue, particularly around the role of Hindi in education and administration.

In practice most educated Indians operate multilingually — a state language, often Hindi, and English — and language of instruction is one of the most consequential choices in Indian schooling.

Around four-fifths of the population is Hindu. India has the world's third-largest Muslim population, plus Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, Jewish and tribal religious communities. The Constitution establishes a secular state and guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, and the Supreme Court has held secularism to be part of the Constitution's basic structure.

Caste remains a significant axis of social organisation despite constitutional abolition of untouchability. Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, listed in Presidential orders, together make up roughly a quarter of the population, with Other Backward Classes a further large share. Reservations in legislatures, public employment and education are the principal constitutional response, and their scope is continuously litigated and politically contested.

Urbanisation is proceeding rapidly but from a low base, and India's official urban share is widely thought to understate reality because of how 'urban' is defined administratively — many settlements that function as towns are still classified as villages.

Internal migration is large and mostly undercounted, dominated by circular and seasonal movement of workers between rural origins and urban work. Its scale became visible during the 2020 lockdown, when the return migration of workers to home states was among the largest movements of people in Indian history since Partition.

The Indian diaspora is among the largest in the world, and remittances back to India are the largest received by any country. Overseas Citizen of India status provides a long-term visa and most residency rights, though not voting rights or agricultural land purchase.

Life expectancy has risen substantially since independence, and the National Family Health Survey is the main source for health, nutrition and household indicators between censuses.