South Asia Briefing Unit 1

India

The Hunger Project Online Briefing Program
The People and Nations of South Asia
Page 12 of 30

Geography

India: The Land and its People

India is situated at the heart of South Asia, and geographically dominates the region.

With a population of 1 billion, India's people comprise 1/6 of all of humanity.

Population facts

India's population reached 1 billion on August 15, 1999—the 52^nd anniversary of its independence. Its population has nearly tripled since independence.
India's land mass is slightly more than 1/3 the size of the United States.
Its population density--or people per square kilometer/mile--is one of the highest in the world.
The annual population growth rate of India's population is 1.9%. Based on current population, this is a growth rate of 19 million people per year.
India is currently the second most populous country after China. If current trends continue, it will surpass China in total population in the next quarter to half century.
Many of India's states have a greater population than most developing countries. One of India's states, Uttar Pradesh, with over 150 million people, has a population higher than Russia, the world's sixth most populous country.

People

India today is an extraordinary mixture of people of different ethnicities, religions, and languages. Migrations of people stretching back over 5000 years brought with them diverse cultures that India has both assimilated and refined as its own.
73%--or roughly 3/4--of the country's population live in rural areas.
64% of the total labor force works in agriculture.
India's women contribute between 55-80 % of the total farm labor.

Poverty amidst plenty

The extreme contrast between urban and rural India has led to the observation by some experts that there are "two Indias": one of wealth and splendor, and another of grinding poverty and chronic hunger.
India has the largest middle class in the world, estimated at 300 million.
Yet, the vast majority of its people live in rural villages, where resources are scarce and the way of life is in many ways consistent with that of agrarian societies of hundreds of years past.

India

The Hunger Project Online Briefing Program
The People and Nations of South Asia
Page 12 of 30

Geography