Describe The Rural-Urban Composition Of Population In India

Back to: Contemporary India and Education-Unit 1

Composition

The contents of a particular thing which are measurable in exact ratios or values for future analysis purposes is called composition. In terms of developed and developing countries, the rural-urban composition differs because there is a significant variation in the geographical distribution of the urban and rural populations. The percentage of the rural population is higher in agricultural countries because this population dominantly participates in farm-based activities.

On the flip side, developed countries with more industries accommodate a higher urban population percentage. Europe, North America, Australia, temperate South America, are a few of the most urbanized places in the world that possess more than 75% of the urban population. Africa and Asia fall amongst the least urbanized places across the world with less than 33% of the urban population.

Rural-Urban Composition of Population in India

Male and female composition: In many rural areas of India, there are more males than females due to the society being patriarchal or male-dominated.
In the more developed urban areas of the country, females outnumber their male counterparts.
Almost 83.3 crores of the 121 crore Indians live in rural areas.
The other 37.7 crores reside in urban areas.
These statistics are released by Union Home Secretary RK Singh and researched by the Census of India’s 2011 Provisional Population Totals of Rural-Urban Distribution.

According to the Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner C, Chandramouli.

“For the first time since Independence, the absolute increase in population is more in urban areas than in rural areas. The rural-urban distribution is 68.84% and 31.16% respectively,”

He further added,

“The slowing down of the overall growth rate of population is due to the sharp decline in the growth rate in rural areas, while the growth rate in urban areas remains almost the same.”

As per the 2001 Census, the urbanisation level accelerated from 27.81% to 31.16%.
In the 2011 Census, the rural population proportion had reduced from 72.19% to 68.84%.
In the last decade, however, the birth numbers in rural areas have increased by 9 crores.
According to the statistics, the maximum percentage of the population living in rural areas in a particular state is 15.5 crore in Uttar Pradesh.
With a population of 5 crores, Mumbai is shown to have the highest number of people living in urban areas.
As per this data, it is also reflected that around 18.62% of the rural population of India lives in Uttar Pradesh.
On the other hand, Maharashtra accommodates an estimated 13.48% of the urban population of India.