Bharat at 1.3 billion

In July 2016, the population of Bharat will cross one billion three hundred million. In 1937, the population of what was then British India was 300 million. Seventy-nine years later, there are a billion more.

This numerical landmark is based on the 2011 Census of India total population (which was 1.21 billion) and the growth rate of the population, or what demographers refer to as the rate of natural increase.

For a country of the size of Bharat – and for that matter, even for the states with large populations – any ‘total’ or ‘final’ is no more than an estimate that is subject to variability. The population count of any administrative unit (such as a state or district) can be estimated with census data modified by health data (birth rate, death rate) and by seasonal changes (migration).

There are several extenuating reasons why this exercise needs to be done automatically at least every month by the states and the central government ministries and departments. Perhaps the 1.3 billion landmark can goad them into doing so. The carrying capacities of our river basins, the watersheds, the valleys and floodplains, the ghats both Western and Eastern, the plateaus and grasslands, the deltas and the hill tracts cannot be ignored.

Equations that govern these are simpler than they are typically made out to be by science. There is only so much water, land, forest, and vegetation (or biomass) available to support us. The 2001 Census found that the population of Bharat had crossed a thousand million. At that point at least the consequences of a steadily growing population (182 million had been added since 1991, and 345 million – which was the population at the time of Independence – since 1981) needed to have become the subject of monthly reflection and policy.

With Bharat at 1.3 billion being barely three months away, the new state population counts (in the chart) show why such monthly reflection and policy is vital, indeed a matter of urgency. We now have ten states whose population is more than 50 million – the comparisons of the sizes of our state populations with those of various countries around the world are now well-known.

West Bengal in May 2016 has a population of 97.7 million and will cross 100 million by the same time in 2017. In May 2016 the population of Bihar is 111.4 million, Maharashtra is 120.3 million and Uttar Pradesh is 214 million. These are gigantic numbers and it is because they are gigantic that they seem to escape planning notice – but the population of these four states is very much more than the population of the European Union of 28 countries.

The table shows the current estimated population (2016 May) for the age bands (from Census 2011 and adjusted for simple growth), which helps us understand the populations of infants, children, adolescents, youth, early adults, mature adults, the middle-aged and the elderly. About 257 million are under nine years old (19%), about 271 million are between 10 and 19 years old (20%) and about 111 million (8%) are 60 years old and older.

These are aspects that require as much study, comprehension and policy measures as we demand on subjects such as governance, corruption, the price of food, the extent of our forests, the supply of water, and the adequacy of monthly incomes. At the 1.3 billion mark, Bharat’s population is starkly in the foreground.

The year of 1.275 billion Indians

Four years ago the Census of India 2011 completed its count – the world’s largest human counting exercise, which required an army of enumerators to carry out. The final tally – which was fixed in late 2012 although the provisional estimates for India and the states came within a few months of the census having counted the residents of the last remote hamlet – was 1,210,569,573 of us (833,463,448 rural and 377,106,125 urban).

That tally was valid for a particular day only, which was the last day of March 2011. Although the 1.2 billion statistic was used (and continues to be, popularly) to describe India, Bharat, our people and their lives and work, it is of course an incorrect number. The population has been rising from the first day of April 2011 as the daily count of births minus deaths (to give the net addition) adds to that 1.2 billion. Now, the net daily addition is about 40,000 a day!

But remember that those who were counted as net daily additions in 2001 – when the previous Census was done – are today only 14 years old, so the total population tally is not adults, it is infants, toddlers, children, early teenagers, late teenagers, youth, adults, mature adults, senior adults, elderly folk and really old folk.

It would have happened in February 2013, the crossing of the billion and a quarter mark (1.25 billion). What will our tally be in March 2015, two months from now? It depends how complex you want your calculations to be. The simplest method would be to use 1.210 billion as the 2011 tally and multiply that by the yearly population growth rate based on the increase in our population between 2001 and 2011. The result would be an estimate which does not recognise different population growth rates for rural and urban regions, and indeed these differ in every state. Naturally, for states with large populations (such as West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh or Karnataka) the growth rate you apply can change your estimate by a significant number.

The population estimates for India by the Population Division of the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The four estimates use low, medium, constant and high fertility rates as their basis. Source: World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision (http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm)

It was, I had estimated last year, that the 400 million mark was crossed for urban India: “By the end of 2014 June, a group of cities will cross important population thresholds. This upward procession of population numbers – for districts, cities and states – is scarcely observed by administration or by citizens, but continues apace.”

To find the startling numbers in this graphic, I have used the individual growth rates for rural and urban populations in all states and union territories, based on the 2001-2011 period. This helps, but for the demographic purist it isn’t enough (and I haven’t attempted it here) because it does not factor in the changes in fertility rates – and since 2012 there have been reports that the fertility rates have dropped faster than expected for the period after 2011 – and, more minutely, changes in the age at which women marry, the spacing of children and so on; these are the formulae of the careful demographer.

To do so is necessary. It is even vital because so much of public and social provisioning depends on understanding population trends well and preparing for what the next five, ten and twenty years will bring. There is the matter of food and the public distribution system (see ‘India’s 681 million hungry rural citizens’ and the question: “What do and what can rural residents spend on food and the essentials of living in India?”).

There is the question of how much towns and cities can expand, and two years ago, according o the Census 2011 data, India in 2015 would have 63 cities with populations of over a million (ten more than we had in 2011), which led to the question of whether India is ruled for its cities.

But the big picture remains. In 2015 there are a number of population markers that will be reached. The population of rural Bihar will cross 99 million, the population of Rajasthan will approach 73 million, the population of urban Punjab will approach 11.2 million, the combined population of the seven North-Eastern states (excluding Assam) will reach 14.8 million, and the population of rural Gujarat will approach 35.2 million.

Urban populations have grown more rapidly and the consequences of such growth includes cities that are more difficult to live in (see “When the 65 million who live in India’s slums are counted”). But the trend tells us that in 2015 the population of urban West Bengal will cross 30 million, the population of urban Maharashtra will approach 55 million, the population of urban Karnataka will cross 26 million, and the population of urban Tamil Nadu will be more than its rural population. And finally, at some time during 2015, the number of Indians will touch 1,275 million (or 127 crore).

Workers in their districts

What has changed in the numbers of Maharashtra’s workers over ten years, over the period marked by the recordings of two censuses, 2001 and 2011?

This experimental chart shows us the flow and accumulation in Maharashtra of what the Census calls ‘total workers’, and by this the Census enumerators mean those who said they have employment (or have worked for themselves) for more than six months, and those who have had work (or wages) for less than six months. These two divisions are called ‘main’ and ‘marginal’.

Click for an interactive chart

The difference between these two descriptors of working status may be more grey than black-and-white, for the Census records how much time is spent working and not how much is earned (and saved and spent) as payment for that time spent. Hence, a ‘main’ worker who has been employed for 7 to 8 months of the year may have earned through wages, salaries or commissions just as much as a ‘marginal’ worker did by working for 5 months.

This is only to show that ‘workers’ as counted by a Census can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and for those wanting to get a fuller and richer view of the matter, it is best to read the Census data as a layer above or below one or two other sources of data, such as the NSSO and the results of a field study for example in a district.

What then do the districts of Maharashtra tell us? First, that the number of workers increased between 2001 and 2011 in most but not all districts, and that those districts with the largest increases in numbers were Thane (1.312 million more, 41.28% more), Pune (1.094 million more, 37.05% more), Mumbai Suburban (0.582 million more, 18.48% more), Nashik (0.577 million more, 26.43% more), and Aurangabad (0.398 million more, 33.84% more). There are also Beed with 31.12% more workers and Jalna with 29.85% more workers.

Next, that Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban, together with Thane and Pune, have 13.56 million total workers which is 27% of all Maharashtra’s workers! That is a concentration of numbers, but it tells us nothing about the conditions they work in, whether they are paid adequately to support a family and household (the major unions have been asking for a national minimum floor wage of Rs 10,000 for two years now) and whether these earners receive as is their right workers’ benefits. That is why we try as much as is possible to read the invaluable account of India and its districts and villages as described by the Census together with other sources and studies.

The slow counting of village India

On old maps and in dusty histories, our villages have formed the reliable background against which to describe empire and freedom. Many of the names in the humblest level of description found in Census 2011 can be traced back over generations.

M N Srinivas, the eminent sociologist who died in 1999, once wrote that a sociological study of Indian sociologists would yield interesting results. Over a century’s worth of rural enquiry, we have found that sociologists and anthropologists have been preoccupied with their discrete interests. The former consider urban planning, labour, housing, slum and informal economies, social vices, demography. The latter carefully study tribal cultures, ethnography, acculturation and cultural dynamics, evolution and ethnology.

A descriptive table from the excellent ‘Rural Profiles’, which appeared in the ‘Eastern Anthropologist’, Volume VIII, edited by D N Majumdar, 1955

But it is the macro-economists who have meanwhile perfected their techniques (however questionable, and most are) and who have begun to use quantitative data to understand and interpret the socio-economic problems of rural life. These problems have been studied with little or no attention paid to the cultural background, so that the inter-relations that exist between different sets of social phenomena have to a large extent been ignored (they can hardly be included in a computable general equilibrium model, can they?). From the time Srinivas’s work was charting new directions in the 1940s and 1950s, the call has been made over and again for a holistic approach, in which inter-disciplinary participation would be needed. But the macro-economic disequilibrists have thus far had the upper hand.

And so to the numbers. There are 43,264 in Rajasthan, there are 25,372 in Assam and there are 40,959 in Maharashtra. That’s the village count in these states and this count (and the way villages are dispersed in the districts based on the size of their populations) is the focus of the latest data release from Census 2011.

Acknowledging the concern of the socio-economists, can there be an ‘average’ count for district? Yes there can, but finding one has little real use especially for the district concerned. Even so, to help us better understand the way a district is (and has for most of our recorded history) been organised I have used the data to find such an ‘average’. From the set of 631 districts that have villages (the others have none, being fully urban in character) I extracted the middle 505 districts (their villages count was from 138 to 1,817) and the median is 817 – that is, 817 villages in an ‘average’ district.

Where can we find such districts? Here are twelve: Garhwa in Jharkhand with 844, Rajkot in Gujarat with 833, Parbhani in Maharashtra with 830, Barpeta in Assam with 825, Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh with 820, Ashoknagar in Madhya Pradesh with 818, Rangareddy in Andhra Pradesh with 817, Raichur in Karnataka with 815, Sitamarhi in Bihar with 808, Kota in Rajasthan with 805, Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu with 799 and Una in Himachal Pradesh with 790.

The richness of detail in careful village study. This too is from ‘Rural Profiles’, which appeared in the ‘Eastern Anthropologist’, Volume VIII, edited by D N Majumdar, 1955

Although the variation in the villages count is relatively small amongst these ‘average’ twelve (the least has under 10% less than the most) the rural populations in these districts vary widely. Una has a population of 476.000 and Ashoknagar has 691,000 whereas Rajkot has 1,590,000 and Sitamarhi has 3,233,000! In the same way, there are considerable differences in the areas cultivated, the forest cover, the sort of crops cultivated, and the available agricultural labour and cultivators who bring forth the crop from the soil. As I expand on the meaning of these new figures and draw some corelations with other aspects of our district enquiry – 1,670 is the ‘average’ population of a village, for example – we will venture a little closer to the sort of holistic study that Srinivas and his colleagues had called for about six decades ago.

[The new set of data released by Census 2011 has: (1) a note on villages by population, (2) tables by district and by taluka / tahsil / block (excel file), (3) percentage of population living in villages of various population size with reference to the total rural population in 2011, (4) percentage of villages and population by class of villages in 2001 and 2011, (5) the number of villages whose populations are 10,000 and above, 2001-2011, (6) distribution of 10,000 villages of each class, all-India, and 10,000 population in each class of villages, all-India, among states and union territories.]

This quarter, five Indian cities will cross the million mark

This quarter, that is October to December 2013, a number of India’s cities will cross population landmarks. The 2011 Census fixed the country’s urban population at just over 311 million, a population that had grown over ten years by 31.8% (compared with the rural population growth of 12.3%).

What this means is that India’s cities and towns are adding to their numbers every year and every month at roughly the decadal rate seen for 2001-11. Each urban centre has recorded its own rate of population growth but all together, the rate of growth in the populations of India’s urban settlements has raised the number of Class I towns (those with a population of 100,000 and more) to 490 – the category had 394 in 2001!

So, for the last quarter of 2013, here are the new population marks that will be crossed:
* Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu (1,033,000), Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh (1,002,000), Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh (1,065,000), Mysore in Karnataka (1,047,000) and Guwahati in Assam (1,018,000) will all cross the million mark.

And moreover:
* Muzaffarabad in Uttar Pradesh (527,000), Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh (531,000), Vellore in Tamil Nadu (515,000), Udaipur in Rajasthan (504,000) and Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu will cross the 0.5 million population mark.
* Nellore in Andhra Pradesh (627,000), Malegaon in Maharashtra (614,000) and Durgapur in West Bengal (610,000) will cross the 0.6 million population mark.
* Puducherry (union territory, 708,000), Guntur in Andhra Pradesh (733,000) and Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh (714,000) will cross the 0.7 million population mark.
* Warangal in Andhra Pradesh (826,000) has crossed the 0.8 million population mark. Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh (987,000), Bhubaneshwar in Odisha (967,000) and Jalandhar in Punjab (928,000) will cross the 0.9 million population mark.

Counting the Indian land mosaic

India continues to be fed by its marginal and small farmers. Their holdings (those below two hectares) taken together account for 84.97% of total holdings in 2010-11 compared with 83.29% in 2005-06; the combined area under these myriad farmed plots is 44.31% of the country’s total farmed area (it was 41.14% in the 2005-06 census).

India’s Agriculture Census is the largest statistical survey done by the Ministry of Agriculture, which collects data on what the ministry calls “the structural profile of Indian agriculture”. Starting with the first in 1970-71 there have been eight such censuses and the ninth is under way.

The chart illustrates one aspect – a vitally important one – of the first phase of the census (which collects a list of all the agricultural holdings and includes area, gender, social group of the holder, its location code). The classifications of the size of farmed land-holdings are: marginal is up to one hectare, small is one to two hectares, semi-medium is two to four hectares, medium is four to ten hectares, large is ten hectares and more.

The Agriculture Census 2010-11 (Phase-I), All-India report on number and area of operational holdings(provisional) by the Agriculture Census Division, Department Of Agriculture and Co-operation, Ministry Of Agriculture, Government Of India (that’s the full, official and imposing title of the gigantic exercise) has told us, so far, that the numbers of marginal and small holdings continues to rise with every agricultural census (every five years, but the periodicity is less regular).

Some of the most salient findings so far from the 2010-11 census: the total number of farmed plots in India has increased from 129 million in 2005-06 to 138 million 2010-11; there is a small increase in the farmed land area from 158.32 million hectares in 2005-06 to 159.18 million hectares in 2010-11; the average size of a farmed land-holding has declined to 1.16 hectares in 2010-11 compared with 1.23 hectares in 2005-06.

When the 65 million who live in India’s slums are counted

The graph illustrates the 30 largest slum populations in India, using the new Census 2011 data. The scale is logarithmic – not proportional, else showing the largest metros would reduce the smaller cities to being unreadable – so as to better display the trend of growing slum populations in urban centres whose total populations are less than a million (like Guntur and Malegaon) and up to two million (like Kota, Gwalior, Srinagar, Raipur, Jabalpur and Meerut).

We have now one important basis to consider carefully the consequences of the macro-economics of GDP growth and all the programmes to encourage such ‘growth’.

In 2011, 65.49 million Indians lived in slums in our cities and towns (the number was 52 million when recorded in Census 2001). It is important not to allow the immensity of our population numbers (1,250 million now in 2013) to diminish this extraordinary and disgraceful number in any way.

The 65 million who live in slums are all together a population equivalent to the populations of Thailand or France or Britain. This is also larger than the populations of Italy or Burma, South Africa or South Korea.

In Census 2001 the total number of towns that reported slums was 1,743. In Census 2011 the total number of towns and cities that reported slums was 2,613 out of 4,041 ‘statutory’ towns and cities. Here is the guideline for classifying types of slum settlements from Census 2011:

1. All notified areas in a town or city notified as ‘slum’ by state, union territories’ administrations or local government under any act including a ‘slum act’ may be considered notified slums (22.5 million live in notified slums).
2. All areas recognised as ‘slum’ by state, union territories administration or local government, housing and slum boards, which may have not been formally notified as slum under any act may be considered as recognised slums (20.1 million live in recognised slums).
3. A compact area of at least 300 population or about 60-70 households of poorly built congested tenements, in unhygienic environment usually with inadequate infrastructure and lacking in proper sanitary and drinking water facilities. Such areas should be identified personally by the ‘charge officer’ and also inspected by an officer nominated by the Directorate of Census Operations. This fact must be duly recorded in the charge register. Such areas may be considered as identified slums (22.8 million live in identified slums).

[You can get the Primary Census Abstract for slum populations 2011 here as an xls file. There is a very informative presentation on the data available here as a pdf. Consult the primary pages on Census 2011 – India’s 2011 Census a population turning point, India’s 2011 Census the states and their prime numbers and The data vault of the 2011 Census.]

A tiring tale from the FAO that again ignores the global food industry

Cheap processed food advertised in Chengdu, P R China.

Why has the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) not stated what has become painfully obvious to households the world over – that the macro-economics which determines everything from what farmers grow and what city workers pay for food is utterly out of control?

This silence is why FAO’s ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013’ – with its updated estimates of undernourishment and its diplomatic paragraphs about progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and World Food Summit (WFS) hunger targets – remains conceptually crippled.

The roles of the food industry, its financiers, its commodities satraps, the marketers and their fixers in government, the networks that link legislators and food business investors in countries with growing processed foods businesses, all these shape food security at the community and household level. Yet none of these are considered critically by an FAO report that ought to be thoroughly non-partisan on the matter.

The FAO ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013’ (condensed to SOFI 2013) has said that “further progress has been made towards the 2015 MDG target, which remains within reach for the developing regions as a whole, although marked differences across regions persist and considerable and immediate additional efforts will be needed”.

How many more food insecurity indicators are needed to tell governments what their working class households already know? The table of SOFI 2013 indicators.

In the first place, let’s consider the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDG) target concerning hunger. This is to halve the proportion of hungry people in the total population. There is also the World Food Summit (WFS) target, which is to halve the number of hungry people. Both have 2015 as the target year. However, any hunger has no place in a world that today produces more than enough food to adequately feed every elder, child, woman and man.

But there is another aspect, and this is: who does the FAO think is paying attention to ‘global’ targets and placing these targets above any local needs or ambitions? Just as the MDGs are scarcely known and recognised outside the enormous development industry which perpetuates a growing mountain of studies and reports on the MDGs, nor are ‘global’ hunger reduction targets. When alleged leaders of the world gather together in the United Nations General Assemblies and other grand international fora and ask (in a tiresome and repetitive way) how we are going to feed 9 billion people, no individual smallholder farmer listens, because growing and feeding is done locally, and therefore ‘targets’ are also local, just as food insecurity or security is local.

This is why the SOFI 2013 approach – which is to say that “the estimated number of undernourished people has continued to decrease [but] the rate of progress appears insufficient to reach international goals for hunger reduction” – is utterly out of place and does not in any way reflect the numerous variety of problems concerning the provision of food, nor does it reflect the equally numerous variety of local approaches to fulfilling food provisioning.

Next, it is way past high time that FAO and the UN system in general jettison the “developing regions” label. It has no meaning and is an unacceptable legacy of the colonial view. Besides, as I point out a little later, food inadequacy (including insecurity and outright poverty) is becoming more and not less prevalent in the so-called developed regions. And moreover, I object to “considerable and immediate additional efforts will be needed” to reverse food insecurity, as the SOFI recommends, because this is the green signal to the global industrial agri-food industry to ram through its destructive prescriptions in the name of additional efforts.

SOFI 2013 also “presents a broader suite of indicators that aim to capture the multi-dimensional nature of food insecurity, its determinants and outcomes”. Once again, it is way past high time that the FAO ceased encouraging a proliferation of indicators of every description (and then some) that do next to nothing to ensure low external input and organic agriculture supported by communities and local in scale and scope, and in which the saving of seed and the preservation of crop and plant diversity is enshrined. There is not one – not a single indicator from FAO (and not one from any of its major partners, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – for this need that is at the core of the myriad wonderful expressions of human civilisation.

Oxfam has made graphic the growing poverty in the European Union.

SOFI 2013 also said that “recent global and national food consumer price indices suggest that changes in consumer prices were generally much more muted than those recorded by international price indices, often influenced by greatly increased speculation in spot, futures and options markets”. This unfortunately is completely untrue, for even FAO’s own database on national consumer price indexes (supplied by FAO member countries themselves) suggests that the CPI follows international price indices (this blog has pointed out the correlation a number of times in the last two years). And it is the same macro-economics that rewards speculators in “in spot, futures and options markets” which also deepens food insecurity every year.

Now, to return to the question of who is “developing” and who is not. The European Union (28 countries) has a population of 503 million (the early 2012 estimate). The USA has a population of 313 million (mid-2012 estimate). How large a group in both the European Union and the USA are hovering around the poverty lines, or who are plain poor, and who cannot afford to buy enough food for themselves?

In a report released in September 2013, the Oxfam aid agency warned that the poverty trap in Europe, which already encompasses more than 120 million people, could swell by an additional 25 million with austerity policies continuing. The report, ‘A cautionary tale: Europe’s bitter crisis of austerity and inequality’, said that one in two working families has been directly affected by the loss of jobs or reduction of working hours.

The food insecurity problem has been growing in the non-“developing” world just as fast as it has been growing in sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia, south-east Asia and other “developing” regions that the FAO’s flagship reports habitually places in the foreground. In early 2012 news reports in European Union countries were mentioning regularly how “ever more people are threatened with poverty”. The European Commission’s office for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion said so too: “Household incomes have declined and the risk of poverty or exclusion is constantly growing.”

Across the Atlantic, a US Census Bureau report released in September 2013 titled ‘Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012’, poverty was found to be “at a near-generation high of 15 percent, close to the high point since the 1965 War on Poverty, the 15.2 percent rate reached in 1983”. This report found that 46.5 million USA ctitzens (about 9.5 million families) live in poverty and that some 20.4 million people live on an income less than half of the official poverty line of the USA.

FAO’s ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013’ will with its present methods, outlook and biases be useful neither to cultivating communities growing the food we eat, nor to administrators in districts and provinces who must plan and budget to encourage local action that brings about food security, nor to the member countries of the United Nations if it continues to ignore the very large and growing numbers of the poor in the European Union and USA – 170 million poor people, and therefore food insecure, is a population that is considerably larger than that of any country in sub-Saharan Africa which inevitably figures in these reports.

Here are the materials for FAO’s ‘State of Food Insecurity in the World 2013’: The FAO news story. A frequently asked questions document. The FAO page on State of Food Insecurity 2013. The executive summary. The full pdf file and chapters. The e-book. The food security indicators data.

The data vault of the 2011 Indian Census

20140304 – Major update – Extensive new data tables have been made available for public use by the Census of India. These include: (1) Primary Census Abstract tables to the village and ward level, (2) consolidated top level datasheets for Population Enumeration Data, population living in villages, age data, and data on disability.

Here they are:

[Set 1] Primary Census Abstract Data (Final Population); Primary Census Abstract Data for Houseless (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Scheduled Tribes (ST) (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Slum (India & States/UTs – Town Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Highlights – 2011 (India & States/UTs) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Tables (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Tables (India & States/UTs – Town/Village/Ward Level).

[Set 2] Villages By Population ; Village population Tables ; Percentage of population living in villages of various population size with reference to the total rural population: 2011 ; Percentage of villages and population by class of villages in 2001 and 2011 ; Statement showing the number of Villages of population 10,000 and above with their population: 2001-2011 ; Distribution of 10,000 villages of each class in All India and 10,000 population in each class of villages All India among the States and Union Territories.

[Set 3] Single Year Age Data – (India/States/UTs) ; Single Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) ; Single Year Age Data for Scheduled Tribes (ST) ; Five Year Age Group Data ; Five Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) ; Five Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (ST).

[Set 4] Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex For Scheduled Castes (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex For Scheduled Tribes (India & States/UTs – District Level).

20130903 – The Census 2011 as a data source is now two years old for the first indicators and preliminary estimates were released in 2011 June and July. Since then we have had regular releases from the world’s most detailed very large-scale enumeration of people.

The ‘primary census abstract’ is the most important record for a settlement, whether a rural hamlet or an urban town ward. This contains the population, gender ratio, literacy rate, proportion of children, the numbers of scheduled tribe and caste members, and also contains the four-fold break-up of the working population.

The Census of India has released the primary census abstract (PCA) to the district level for all states and union territories. On the website, you can get the tables for individual districts through a series of menus. Here, I have posted the xls data sheets for every state and union territory, and each sheet contains the PCA for all that state’s districts.

In alphabetical order (and with the state census code) they are: Andaman and Nicobar Islands (35), Andhra Pradesh (28), Arunachal Pradesh (12), Assam (18), Bihar (10), Chandigarh (04), Chhattisgarh (22), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (26), Daman and Diu (25), Delhi (07), Goa (30), Gujarat (24), Haryana (06), Himachal Pradesh (02), Jammu and Kashmir (01), Jharkhand (20), Karnataka (29), Kerala (32), Lakshadweep (31), Madhya Pradesh (23), Maharashtra (27), Manipur (14), Meghalaya (17), Mizoram (15), Nagaland (13), Odisha (21), Puducherry (34), Punjab (03), Rajasthan (08), Sikkim (11), Tamil Nadu (33), Tripura (16), Uttar Pradesh (09), Uttarakhand (05), West Bengal (19).

The cereals demand footprint of smaller Indian cities

All those squares need to grow wheat, rice and millets for the residents of this town of 123,286 people.

On this map you can see, near the centre, the town of Amalner, in the state of Maharashtra, in the district of Jalgaon. In 2001 Amalner was a Class II town, as categorised by the Census of India based on its population being under 100,000 people – its population then was 91,490.

In the 2011 Census the population of Amalner was 116,750 which means the town has crossed the 100,000 mark and for the ten years between the two censuses, its population grew at just under 2.8% every year. Although rapid, that still places Amalner comfortably under the 3.4% average annual population growth rate of the 500 towns and cities whose details we have in the 2011 Census.

How much food do the residents of Amalner need every year? Estimating the quantities is relatively less troublesome for cereals, whereas for pulses, vegetables, fruit, dairy and meat it is progressively more difficult and unreliable.

The squares on the map are scaled for the map, and that means each square is 100 hectares large at the scale of the map. They show the land area required to supply Amalner’s residents their wheat, rice and millets mix (I have taken a 40:40:20 mix as typical for Maharashtra). Crop yield data are from the Ministry of Agriculture, Department of Economics and Statistics, averaged, and adjusted for milled quantities of rice and wheat (but not millet).

How much wheat, rice and millet? The unmilled quantities I estimated are, for 2001: 5,940 tons (wheat), 7,630 tons (rice) and 2,670 tons (millets). For 2013 the quantities are: 8,000 tons (wheat), 10,290 tons (rice) and 3,600 tons (millets). The annual cereals requirement is based on the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) 2010 recommended dietary allowance (cereal 400 gm/capita/day).

Now this graphic, plotted on a map that shows the urban extent of Amalner, also shows the land ‘footprint’ of cereals that a typical smaller town requires. We have now much greater interest in urban agriculture than even two years earlier, and while these networks have begun to thrive, this analysis demonstrates the dependence by urban residents on districts to supply them cereals and pulses.

In the graphic, the squares under the caption ‘additional cereals area in 2013’ show the new hectares required to be brought under cereals cultivation to meet the calorie needs and nutritional standards for Amalner’s growing population. The use of these squares on the map serves to show why land use change for urbanisation runs quickly into physical limits – provided those physical limits are recognised and planned for.

There are about 130 such urban settlements with populations of plus-minus 10,000 relative to the population of Amalner. Above this group are the cities with populations of 150,000 and above all the way to the million-plus metropolises. Below this set are the much more numerous small towns with populations of 20,000 to 100,000 and whose demand for food, and therefore on the maintenance of cultivated, is hardly known or measured.

Amalner’s 2.8% population growth rate every year also tells us there are migrants coming into the town. When those additional migrants are also cultivators and former agricultural labour, what will happen to the old and new hectares the cities need to keep cultivated? Where will the food come from?