Population & Demography of India

Why This Chapter Matters

Population questions show up in almost every SSC and RRB paper, usually two to four marks in CGL Tier-1, CHSL, MTS, and NTPC, because the numbers are precise and easy to frame as one-liners: "which state has the highest sex ratio," "what was India's literacy rate in 2011." You don't need to guess here, you need to remember. That makes this one of the highest-return chapters in the whole book if you drill the numbers properly.

Everything in this chapter is built on Census 2011, India's last full head-count. A 2021 Census was due but got postponed, so 2011 remains the exam standard even in 2026 papers, and any question that doesn't specify a year is almost certainly asking about 2011. The single biggest mistake aspirants make is mixing up population size with population density, or sex ratio with child sex ratio — four different rankings that produce four different "highest" and "lowest" states. Coaching mock papers are full of traps built on exactly this confusion, so we'll flag every one of them as we go.

1. Census 2011 — The Headline Numbers

India's population on Census Day, 1 March 2011, stood at 1,210,854,977 — commonly rounded to 121.09 crore, or about 1.21 billion. India held roughly 17.7% of the world's population on about 2.4% of its land area, which alone explains why crowding, not land shortage, is India's real population problem.

The decadal growth rate (2001–2011) was 17.64%, the lowest of any census decade since independence. That's the number to remember: growth is slowing, not reversing. India added about 18.1 crore people in that decade, still more than the entire population of Brazil, even while the growth rate fell.

Exam trap: A question may ask for the decadal growth rate of 2001–2011 or 1991–2001 (which was 21.54%) in the same set, hoping you'll pick the wrong decade. Anchor the fact to the exact years, not just the number.

India's population density in 2011 was 382 persons per sq km, up from 325 in 2001. Density tells you how packed a region is; population size tells you how many people live there in total. A state can have a huge population and still be sparsely settled if it's also huge in area (think Rajasthan), and a small state can be extremely dense (think Bihar).

Think of population size as the total number of passengers on a train, and density as how many passengers are standing per square metre of the compartment. A long train (large state) can carry a lot of passengers without feeling crowded; a short train packed tight (small state, high density) feels crowded even with fewer people on board.

Growth rate by state — highest and lowest

Meghalaya recorded the highest decadal growth rate among major states (around 27.9%), while Nagaland was the only state to show a negative growth rate in 2001–2011 (a much-discussed anomaly, usually attributed to data and boundary issues in the 2001 count rather than actual population decline). Kerala had the lowest growth rate among the larger states.

Look at the broad pattern rather than memorising every state's exact figure: the northeastern hill states and the poorer, less-urbanised states of the Hindi heartland (Bihar, UP, Madhya Pradesh) tend to sit near the top of the growth-rate table, while southern states (Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh) and smaller, wealthier states sit near the bottom. This gap is not accidental. It tracks almost exactly with female literacy and healthcare access — states that educated girls and expanded institutional childbirth earlier brought their fertility rates down first, and their population growth slowed decades before the northern states caught up. When you see a growth-rate ranking question, you can often reason your way to the right zone of the table even if you've forgotten the exact percentage, simply by asking which state has historically invested more in girls' education.

The four phases of India's demographic transition

Demographers commonly break India's post-independence population history into four broad phases, and SSC-level GS papers occasionally test which phase a given decade belongs to:

1. 1901–1921 — Stagnant/uncertain phase. Both birth and death rates stayed high; famines and epidemics (like the 1918 influenza pandemic) kept population growth nearly flat, even slightly negative in the 1911–1921 decade.
2. 1921–1951 — Steady growth phase. Death rates began falling with better famine control and basic public health measures, while birth rates stayed high, so population started climbing steadily. 1921 is remembered as India's "Year of the Great Divide" because growth never reversed again after it.
3. 1951–1981 — Rapid, high-growth phase. Independent India's improving healthcare and food security pushed death rates down sharply while birth rates fell only slowly, producing the fastest population growth in Indian history.
4. 1981 onward — High-growth-but-declining phase. Birth rates finally started falling meaningfully as literacy, family planning access, and urbanisation spread, so the growth rate has been easing decade after decade even though the population base keeps expanding, which is exactly the pattern you saw in the 21.54% to 17.64% shift between 1991–2001 and 2001–2011.

Memory hook: "Stagnant, Steady, Rapid, Declining" (S-S-R-D) tracks the four phases in order. If a question gives you a decade and asks which phase it falls in, place it on this timeline rather than trying to recall a memorised label.

2. Population Distribution — Why People Cluster Where They Do

Population in India is wildly uneven. The Ganga plains, the coastal strips, and the deltas hold enormous numbers of people, while the Thar desert, the high Himalayas, and the northeastern hill states stay sparsely populated. Four factors decide this pattern, and every one of them shows up in exam questions:

1. Physical factors — flat, fertile alluvial land (Ganga-Brahmaputra plains) supports dense farming populations; rugged terrain, extreme cold, or desert (Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, western Rajasthan) cannot.
2. Climate — regions with reliable rainfall and moderate temperature attract settlement; areas of extreme heat, cold, or aridity repel it.
3. Soil and water availability — river valleys with alluvial soil (which you studied in Chapter 6) have supported dense agricultural populations for millennia; that's precisely why UP, Bihar, and West Bengal remain so crowded.
4. Economic opportunity — industrial and urban centres (Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Chennai) pull in population well beyond what the local land or climate alone would support.

Uttar Pradesh is India's most populous state (about 19.98 crore, roughly 16.5% of India's population), and Sikkim is the least populous state (about 6.1 lakh). Among Union Territories, Delhi has the largest population and the Lakshadweep islands the smallest.

Exam trap: "Most populous state" and "highest density state" are NOT the same answer. Uttar Pradesh is most populous in absolute numbers, but Bihar has the highest population density among states (1,102 persons per sq km in 2011). Delhi, as a Union Territory, tops the density chart overall (over 11,000 persons per sq km), but if a question restricts itself to "states," Bihar is your answer, not Delhi.

The lowest population density among states belongs to Arunachal Pradesh (17 persons per sq km); among all states and UTs, it's usually cited alongside the largely uninhabited Andaman & Nicobar Islands for the sparsest settlement.

It helps to picture India's population map as three broad bands rather than a random scatter of numbers. The northern and eastern Gangetic belt — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal — is India's most crowded stretch, home to well over a third of the country's people on a comparatively small share of its land, because centuries of alluvial farming and, more recently, industrial and administrative activity kept pulling people in rather than out. The peninsular plateau states — Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, most of Karnataka's interior, the drier tracts of Maharashtra — sit in the middle, populous in their cities but far emptier once you move away from the river valleys and mining towns. The Himalayan and desert fringe — Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, western Rajasthan — remains the thinnest, because terrain and climate simply cap how many people the land can support without heavy irrigation or imported food and fuel. Once you hold this three-band picture in your head, most "which state has higher/lower density than which" questions become a matter of placing two states on the map rather than recalling two separate numbers.

3. Sex Ratio — Reading the 943 Number Correctly

India's sex ratio in 2011 was 943 females per 1,000 males, the best figure recorded since 1971 and part of a slow, genuine improvement over previous censuses (933 in 2001, 927 in 1991). Remember the definition precisely: sex ratio is females per thousand males, not a percentage and not males per thousand females — a reversed definition is a favourite distractor in MCQs.

Kerala has the highest sex ratio among states, at 1,084 females per 1,000 males — the only large state where women outnumber men, a legacy of high female literacy, strong healthcare access, and historically high rates of male out-migration for work abroad. Haryana has the lowest sex ratio among states, at 879, reflecting deep-rooted son preference and historically weak female child survival in parts of north India. Among Union Territories, Puducherry records the highest sex ratio (1,037) and Daman & Diu the lowest.

Child sex ratio — the number that worries demographers most

The child sex ratio (0–6 years) fell to 919 in 2011, down from 927 in 2001 — a decline even as the overall sex ratio improved. This gap between the two numbers is itself a frequently tested fact: it points to sex-selective practices affecting children specifically, even as improvements in adult life expectancy push the overall ratio up. Haryana again records the lowest child sex ratio among states, while several northeastern states (commonly Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh in exam material) sit near the top.

Memory hook: Think "Kerala Keeps women ahead, Haryana Has the gap" — Kerala tops both overall and reflects the best gender outcomes broadly, Haryana bottoms both the overall and the child sex ratio tables. Locking in this one pair covers a large share of sex-ratio questions.

Why does Kerala's number stand out so much from the rest of the country? Three reasons keep appearing in exam-linked reading, and knowing them helps you reason through unfamiliar questions rather than just recalling a figure. First, Kerala had unusually high female literacy well before independence, going back to progressive education policies under the erstwhile princely states of Travancore and Cochin. Second, Kerala's matrilineal inheritance traditions in some communities historically gave daughters real property and social standing, unlike much of the rest of the country. Third, decades of large-scale male out-migration from Kerala to the Gulf countries for work has literally left more women than men physically present in the state at any given time, which mechanically raises the sex ratio further on top of the underlying social factors. Haryana's low figure, by contrast, is widely linked in exam material to entrenched son preference, historically skewed sex-selective practices before the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act tightened enforcement, and comparatively lower female workforce participation. You don't need to write an essay on this in an exam, but understanding why the numbers sit where they do makes them far stickier than memorising two isolated figures.

4. Literacy — India's 74.04% and the States Around It

India's literacy rate in 2011 was 74.04%, up sharply from 64.83% in 2001. Always remember that Census literacy is defined for the population aged 7 and above — anyone below 7 is excluded from both the numerator and denominator, a technical point examiners like to test directly.

The gender gap remains wide: male literacy was 82.14% and female literacy was 65.46%, a gap of nearly 17 percentage points, though narrower than in 2001.

Kerala is India's most literate state at 93.91%, a position it has held for decades on the back of sustained public investment in schooling going back to the erstwhile princely state of Travancore. Bihar is the least literate state at 61.80%. Among Union Territories, Lakshadweep posts a strong literacy figure and typically ranks at or near the top of that list.

Think of Kerala as the topper who's been first in class every single year, and Bihar as the state working hardest to catch up, with literacy rising faster there in percentage-point terms over 2001–2011 than in almost any other large state, even though its base level remains low. Improvement rate and absolute rank are two different stories, and exam questions sometimes test the "most improved" state rather than the "highest" state, so read the question stem carefully.

There's also a useful pattern hiding inside the male-female literacy gap. States with a large gap between male and female literacy (Rajasthan and Bihar are commonly cited) tend to also show poorer child sex ratios and higher fertility, because an uneducated mother has less say in family size decisions, less access to healthcare information, and less earning power outside the home. States that closed the gender literacy gap early (Kerala, and to a lesser extent Himachal Pradesh) also improved their sex ratio and health indicators earlier. This is why the Census, and exam papers built on it, keep coming back to literacy as the anchor statistic for the whole demography chapter: once you know a state's literacy profile, you can often make an educated guess about its sex ratio, fertility, and urbanisation numbers too, because they all move together.

5. Age Structure and the Demographic Dividend

India's population pyramid is broad at the base and still relatively young — a large share of the population sits in the working-age bracket, conventionally defined as 15 to 64 years. This is the basis of India's much-discussed demographic dividend: the economic growth potential that comes from having a large working-age population relative to dependents (children and the elderly).

India's median age is among the youngest of any large economy, well below that of China, the United States, or most of Europe, and this dividend window is generally described in exam material as lasting roughly until the 2040s, after which India's population will begin ageing the way China's already has.

But a dividend is not automatic income, it's a loan against the future that has to be repaid with jobs. A demographic dividend only pays off if the young working-age population is educated, skilled, and actually employed. If job creation lags behind the number of young people entering the workforce, the same numbers turn into a demographic burden instead of a dividend — rising unemployment, underemployment, and social strain. This is exactly the debate you'll see referenced in current-affairs-linked GS questions about India's economy, so understand the concept, not just the definition.

Exam trap: Don't confuse "demographic dividend" (an economic opportunity from age structure) with "demographic transition" (the broader shift from high birth/death rates to low birth/death rates as a country develops). They're related but not the same term, and both appear as answer options in the same question sets.

A related figure worth holding in your head is the dependency ratio, the number of dependents (children under 15 plus adults over 64) per 100 working-age people. A falling dependency ratio is what actually creates the "dividend": fewer mouths for each earning adult to feed, in theory freeing up more household and national income for savings, investment, and better-quality spending on the fewer children each family now has. India's dependency ratio has been falling steadily since the 1970s and is projected to bottom out sometime around the 2030s, roughly the window when the dividend is expected to be at its strongest, before the population itself starts ageing and the ratio climbs again as more people cross into the 65-plus bracket.

Contrast this with China, a comparison that shows up often in current-affairs-linked GS material. China's working-age population peaked and has already begun shrinking because of decades of low fertility following its one-child policy, while India's has not yet peaked, which is exactly why India is now frequently described as having overtaken China as the world's most populous country and as holding the larger share of remaining "dividend years." The catch, worth remembering as an exam-relevant nuance rather than just an economic aside, is that a young population only becomes a dividend if it finds productive work; a young population stuck in informal, low-productivity, or no employment does not automatically generate growth on its own.

6. Migration — Why People Move, and Where They Go

Migration in India is classified along two dimensions worth knowing cold: by direction (rural-to-urban, rural-to-rural, urban-to-urban, urban-to-rural) and by reason (work/employment, marriage, education, business, moving with family).

Rural-to-rural migration is actually the single largest stream in India numerically, driven overwhelmingly by marriage migration among women, since Indian marriage customs typically move a woman to her husband's village. Rural-to-urban migration, though smaller in raw numbers, is the stream that shapes India's cities and dominates exam and current-affairs discussion, driven by the classic push and pull factors:

• Push factors (driving people out of villages): agricultural distress, landlessness, lack of local employment, seasonal underemployment, natural disasters like drought or flood.
• Pull factors (drawing people into cities): industrial and service-sector jobs, higher wages, better education and healthcare access, the general pull of urban infrastructure.

Major migration corridors tested in exams include flows from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Odisha into Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and industrial pockets of Gujarat and Punjab for construction, factory, and daily-wage labour. This pattern was thrown into sharp national focus during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, when the reverse flow of migrant workers walking back to their home states became a defining image of that year — a real-world event you can hang this entire section on if you need a memory anchor.

Analogy: Think of migration streams like water finding its level. Water doesn't move because it wants to, it moves because of a difference in height between two points. People move because of a difference in opportunity between two places — the bigger the gap, the stronger the flow, exactly like water rushing faster down a steeper slope.

Census and NSSO data classify migration by duration as well as direction, and this is another distinction that shows up in more detailed question sets. A lifetime migrant is someone currently living in a place different from their place of birth, regardless of when they moved. An intercensal migrant is someone who moved during the ten years between two censuses. Seasonal or circular migrants move back and forth for part of the year, typically following the agricultural calendar or festival-linked construction and harvest work, and never fully settle at the destination, which is exactly the group that got stranded and had to walk home during the 2020 lockdown, because they were living in cities without the kind of permanent residence rights that would have entitled them to local rations or housing support.

Interstate migration for work also has clear, well-documented corridors that examiners like to test as a matched-pairs question: labour flows heavily from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh into Punjab and Haryana for agricultural work during sowing and harvest seasons, from the same eastern states into Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Surat for construction and textile work, and from Odisha and Chhattisgarh into industrial belts of Gujarat and southern states for factory and mining labour. Kerala, interestingly, has become a net receiver of interstate migrant labour even though it remains a major sender of international migrant labour to the Gulf, a genuinely two-directional migration profile that's worth remembering precisely because it's unusual.

7. Urbanisation Trends

India's urban population share was 31.16% in Census 2011, up from 27.81% in 2001 — meaning roughly 31 crore Indians lived in towns and cities, a number that itself exceeds the total population of most countries on earth. India is urbanising, but slower than most large developing economies, and remains a majority-rural country even today.

A Class I city / Urban Agglomeration in Census terminology is any urban centre with a population of 1 lakh or more; India had over 50 cities with populations exceeding 10 lakh (a "million-plus city") by 2011. The three largest urban agglomerations by population were Greater Mumbai, Delhi, and Kolkata, in roughly that order, with Delhi's National Capital Region having grown the fastest of the three in the following decade.

Exam trap: A "Statutory Town" (has a municipality, corporation, or cantonment board by law) is different from a "Census Town" (meets urban population, density, and non-agricultural-employment criteria in practice but has no formal urban local body). Both count as "urban" in Census tables, but the distinction between them is a favourite fill-in for GS papers testing whether you actually read the definitions or just memorised the headline percentage.

The states with the highest share of urban population are generally the smaller, more industrialised ones — Goa and the Union Territories (particularly Delhi, Chandigarh) rank at the very top; among larger states, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra lead urbanisation. The most rural states by share are concentrated in the northeast and the Hindi heartland, with Himachal Pradesh and Bihar commonly cited as among the least urbanised large states.

It's worth understanding why urbanisation clusters where it does rather than memorising the list as a flat fact. Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra industrialised early, going back to colonial-era textile mills in Mumbai and Coimbatore, and that early industrial base kept attracting factories, ports, and service jobs long after independence, pulling rural populations into cities decade after decade. Bihar and Himachal Pradesh, by contrast, never built that same industrial base — Bihar because of decades of underinvestment and a partition of its mineral-rich areas into Jharkhand in 2000, and Himachal because its hilly terrain makes large-scale industry and dense city-building genuinely harder to plan and build. Urbanisation, in other words, tracks industrial history almost as closely as it tracks any deliberate government urban policy.

Think of a city like a marketplace on a market day. A few stalls set up first because they're near the main road, and that alone draws more customers, which draws more stalls, which draws even more customers — the advantage snowballs. Mumbai's port, Chennai's port and colonial administrative base, and Delhi's status as the political capital gave those cities exactly this kind of head start, and a century of accumulated advantage doesn't get overtaken quickly, even by cities that industrialise later.

One more data point worth holding onto for GS papers that blend geography with governance: independent India has periodically debated whether the Census undercounts urban growth because so many fast-growing settlements around big cities function as towns in every practical sense — dense housing, non-agricultural jobs, local markets — without ever being formally notified as a municipality. This is precisely the "Census Town versus Statutory Town" gap discussed above, and it means India's real urbanisation is very likely somewhat higher than the official 31.16% figure suggests, a nuance examiners occasionally slip into "which of the following statements is true" style questions.

Quick Revision — One-Line Facts

• India's population, Census 2011: 1,210,854,977 (~121.09 crore).
• Decadal growth rate 2001–2011: 17.64%, the lowest since independence.
• India holds about 17.7% of world population on about 2.4% of world land area.
• Population density, India, 2011: 382 persons per sq km.
• Most populous state: Uttar Pradesh; least populous state: Sikkim.
• Most populous UT: Delhi; least populous UT: Lakshadweep.
• Highest density state: Bihar (1,102/sq km); highest density overall (incl. UTs): Delhi.
• Lowest density state: Arunachal Pradesh (17/sq km).
• India's sex ratio, 2011: 943 females per 1,000 males.
• Highest sex ratio state: Kerala (1,084); lowest: Haryana (879).
• Highest sex ratio UT: Puducherry (1,037); lowest: Daman & Diu.
• Child sex ratio (0–6 yrs), 2011: 919, down from 927 in 2001.
• Lowest child sex ratio state: Haryana.
• India's literacy rate, 2011: 74.04% (population aged 7 and above).
• Male literacy 2011: 82.14%; female literacy 2011: 65.46%.
• Highest literacy state: Kerala (93.91%); lowest: Bihar (61.80%).
• Working-age population for demographic dividend: 15–64 years.
• India's demographic dividend window is expected to last roughly until the 2040s.
• Largest migration stream by volume in India: rural-to-rural, mostly marriage-linked.
• Rural-to-urban migration is driven by push factors (agrarian distress) and pull factors (urban jobs).
• Urban population share, India, 2011: 31.16%.
• A Class I city / UA has population 1 lakh or more; a million-plus city exceeds 10 lakh.
• Three largest urban agglomerations, 2011: Greater Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata.
• A Census Town meets urban criteria in practice but lacks a statutory municipal body.
• Growth rate 1991–2001 was 21.54%, higher than the 2001–2011 figure.
• Meghalaya had among the highest state decadal growth rates 2001–2011.
• Nagaland recorded a negative decadal growth rate in 2001–2011, a widely-discussed anomaly.
• Sex ratio is always expressed as females per 1,000 males, never as a percentage.
• Literacy calculations exclude children below age 7 entirely.
• Urbanisation leaders among large states: Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Memory Tables

Table 1: State extremes at a glance (Census 2011)

Indicator	Highest (state)	Lowest (state)
Population (total)	Uttar Pradesh	Sikkim
Population density	Bihar (1,102/sq km)	Arunachal Pradesh (17/sq km)
Sex ratio	Kerala (1,084)	Haryana (879)
Child sex ratio (0–6)	Mizoram / Arunachal Pradesh (among top)	Haryana
Literacy rate	Kerala (93.91%)	Bihar (61.80%)
Decadal growth rate 2001–11	Meghalaya (highest among major states)	Nagaland (negative)

Table 2: India's key demographic indicators — 2001 vs 2011

Indicator	2001	2011
Total population	~102.87 crore	121.09 crore
Decadal growth rate	21.54%	17.64%
Sex ratio	933	943
Child sex ratio (0–6)	927	919
Literacy rate	64.83%	74.04%
Population density	325/sq km	382/sq km
Urban population share	27.81%	31.16%

Table 3: Migration — types by direction

Migration type	Description	Dominant driver
Rural to Rural	Largest stream by volume	Marriage (mostly women)
Rural to Urban	Shapes city growth most visibly	Push: agrarian distress; Pull: jobs
Urban to Urban	Movement between cities	Better employment, education
Urban to Rural	Smallest stream	Retirement, family reasons, reverse migration events

Practice MCQs

Q1. As per Census 2011, what was India's total population? (a) 102.87 crore (b) 121.09 crore (c) 135.26 crore (d) 110.14 crore

Q2. What was India's sex ratio according to Census 2011? (a) 933 (b) 927 (c) 943 (d) 919

Q3. Which state recorded the highest sex ratio in Census 2011? (a) Tamil Nadu (b) Kerala (c) Puducherry (d) Andhra Pradesh

Q4. Which state had the lowest sex ratio in Census 2011? (a) Punjab (b) Haryana (c) Uttar Pradesh (d) Bihar

Q5. What was India's overall literacy rate as per Census 2011? (a) 64.83% (b) 74.04% (c) 82.14% (d) 65.46%

Q6. Which state ranked highest in literacy rate in Census 2011? (a) Mizoram (b) Goa (c) Kerala (d) Tripura

Q7. Census literacy figures are calculated for the population aged: (a) 5 years and above (b) 6 years and above (c) 7 years and above (d) 10 years and above

Q8. Which state has the highest population density among Indian states (Census 2011)? (a) West Bengal (b) Kerala (c) Uttar Pradesh (d) Bihar

Q9. What was India's decadal population growth rate for 2001–2011? (a) 21.54% (b) 17.64% (c) 19.20% (d) 15.30%

Q10. The "child sex ratio" specifically refers to the sex ratio in which age group? (a) 0–3 years (b) 0–6 years (c) 0–10 years (d) 0–14 years

Q11. Which state is the least populous in India as per Census 2011? (a) Sikkim (b) Goa (c) Mizoram (d) Nagaland

Q12. The working-age population bracket used to define India's demographic dividend is: (a) 10–59 years (b) 15–64 years (c) 18–60 years (d) 20–65 years

Q13. Which of the following is the largest migration stream in India by volume? (a) Rural to Urban (b) Urban to Urban (c) Rural to Rural (d) Urban to Rural

Q14. A "Census Town," as distinct from a "Statutory Town," is defined by which criterion? (a) It has a municipal corporation by law (b) It meets urban population/density/occupation criteria without having a statutory urban local body (c) It has a population above 10 lakh (d) It is the district headquarters

Q15. Which state recorded a negative decadal population growth rate between 2001 and 2011? (a) Manipur (b) Nagaland (c) Mizoram (d) Sikkim

Answer Key

Q	Answer	Reason
1	(b)	Census 2011 recorded India's population as 1,210,854,977, about 121.09 crore.
2	(c)	2011 sex ratio was 943 females per 1,000 males, up from 933 in 2001 — don't confuse the two census years.
3	(b)	Kerala's 1,084 is the highest among states, driven by high female literacy and healthcare access.
4	(b)	Haryana's 879 is the lowest state sex ratio, linked to strong son preference in the region.
5	(b)	74.04% was the 2011 figure; 64.83% was 2001, so option (a) is a decade-mismatch trap.
6	(c)	Kerala tops literacy at 93.91%, a position built on decades of public education investment.
7	(c)	Census literacy excludes children below age 7 from both numerator and denominator.
8	(d)	Bihar has the highest density among states (1,102/sq km); Delhi is higher but is a UT, not a state.
9	(b)	17.64% for 2001–2011 was the lowest decadal growth rate since independence; 21.54% was 1991–2001.
10	(b)	Child sex ratio is always measured for the 0–6 years age group in Census terminology.
11	(a)	Sikkim is India's least populous state, with about 6.1 lakh people in 2011.
12	(b)	15–64 years is the standard working-age bracket behind India's demographic dividend argument.
13	(c)	Rural-to-rural migration outnumbers all other streams, mostly due to women migrating after marriage.
14	(b)	A Census Town functions like an urban area in practice but has no statutory municipal body governing it.
15	(b)	Nagaland showed a negative decadal growth rate 2001–2011, a well-known census anomaly, unlike its northeastern neighbours.