INTRODUCTION 

The people are very important component of a country. India is the second most populous country after China in the world with its total population of 1,028 million (2001). India’s population is larger than the total population of North America, South America and Australia put together. More often, it is argued that such a large population invariably puts pressure on its limited resources and is also responsible for many socio-economic problems in the country.  In this chapter, we will discuss the patterns of distribution, density, growth and composition of India’s population. 

DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION 

It is clear that India has a highly uneven pattern of population distribution. The percentage shares of population of the states and Union Territories in the country  show that Uttar Pradesh has the highest population followed by Maharashtra, Bihar and West Bengal.  that U.P., Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh along with Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Gujarat, together account for about 76 per cent of the total population of the country. On the other hand, share of population is very small in the states like Jammu & Kashmir (1.04%), Arunachal Pradesh (0.11%) and Uttarakhand (0.84%) inspite of theses states having fairly large geographical area. Such an uneven spatial distribution of population in India suggests a close relationship between population and physical, socio- economic and historical factors. As far as the physical factors are concerned, it is clear that climate along with terrain and availability of water largely determines the pattern of the population distribution. Consequently, we observe that the North Indian Plains, deltas and Coastal Plains have higher proportion of population than the interior districts of southern and central Indian States, Himalayas, some of the north eastern and the western states. However, development of irrigation (Rajasthan), availability of mineral and energy resources (Jharkhand) and development of transport network (Peninsular States) have resulted in moderate to high concentration of population in areas which were previously very thinly populated.
Among the socio-economic and historicalfactors of distribution of population, important ones are evolution of settled agriculture and agricultural development; pattern of human settlement; development of transport network, industrialisation and urbanisation. It is observed that the regions falling in the river plains and coastal areas of India have remained the regions of larger population concentration. Even though the uses of natural resources like land and water in these regions have shown the sign of degradation, the concentration of population remains high because of an early  history of human settlement and development of transport network. On the other hand, the urban regions of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Jaipur have high concentration of population due to industrial development and urbanisation drawing a large numbers of rural-urban migrants. 

DENSITY OF POPULATION  

Density of population, is expressed as number of persons per unit area. It helps in getting a better understanding of the spatial distribution of population in relation to land. The density of population in India (2011) is 382 persons per sq km. There has been a steady increase of more than 200 persons per sq km over the last 50 years as the density of population increased from 117 persons/ sq km in 1951 to 382 persons/sq km in 2011. A give an idea of spatial variation of population densities in the country which ranges from as low as 17 persons per sq km in Arunachal Pradesh to 11,320 persons in the National Capital Territory of Delhi. Among the northern Indian States, Bihar (1106), West Bengal (1028) and and Uttar Pradesh (829) have higher densities, while Kerala (860) and Tamil Nadu (555) have higher densities among the peninsular Indian states. States like Assam, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Jharkhand, Odisha have moderate densities. The hill states of the Himalayan region and North eastern states of India (excluding Assam) have relatively low densities while the Union Territories (excluding Andaman and Nicobar islands) have very high densities of population .
The density of population, as discussed in the earlier paragraph, is a crude measure of human and land relationship. To get a better insight into the human-land ratio in terms of pressure of population on total cultivable land, the physiological and the agricultural densities should be found out which are significant for a country like India having a large agricultural population. 

Growth of population

Growth of population is the change in the number of people living in a particular area between two points of time. Its rate is expressed in percentage. 
Population growth has two components namely; natural and induced. 
While the natural growth is analyzed by assessing the crude birth and death rates, the induced components are explained by the volume of inward and outward movement of people in any given area. 
The decadal and annual growth rates of population in India are both very high and steadily increasing over time. The annual growth rate of India’s population is 1.64 percent (2011). 
The growth rate of population in India over the last one century has been caused by annual birth rate and death rate and rate of migration and thereby shows different trends. 
As per the 2001 census, 72.2% of the population lives in about 638,000 villages and the remaining 27.8% live in more than 5,100 towns and over 380 urban agglomerations. 
In 1901 the world population was 1.6 billion. By 1960, it became 3 billion, and by 1987, 5 billion and in 1999, 6 billion.  Currently, one billion people are added every 12 – 13 years. When we see the population growth in India it will be observed that while the population of the country was 27.13 crore in the year 1900, it decreased to 26.31 crores in 1925 and increased to 35.04 crores in 1950 and 36.23 in 1951.  From here onwards the population growth took exponential proportions of growth to 43.88 crores in 1961, 54.79 crores in 1971, 68.52 crores in 1981, 84.39 in 1991, and 102.70 crores in 2001.

Decadal Growth Rates in India, 1901-2011

Size and Growth of Population

India comes second to China as regards the size of its population. It occupies 2.4% of world’s area and with 1.5% of world’s income; India is maintaining 16% of world’s population. It shows that there is excessive burden of population in India. 1.60 crore persons are added annually in country’s population. First census took place in 1891 in India . India, with a current population of 967 million, will most likely surpas China in population size by about the middle of the next century. India’s population is currently growing at a rate (1.7 percen annually) about 70 percent higher than that of China and will continue growing faster than China for many years in the future.
Currently, India has a young population which will grow somewhat older largely as a result of the fertility decline which is already underway. Between now and 2020, both the working age population and the number of women in childbearing ages will grow more rapidly and will become larger proportions of the total population than now .