People

India Population and facts.

1,080,264,388 (July 2005 est.)

Age structure:
0-14 years: 31.2% (male:173,634,432; female:163,932,475)
15-64 years: 63.9% (male:356,932,082; female:333,283,590)
65 years and over: 4.9% (male:26,542,025; female:25,939,784) (2005)

Median age: total: 24.66 years, male: 24.64 years, female: 24.67 years (2005)

Population growth rate: 1.4% (2005 est.)

Birth rate: 22.32 births / 1,000 population (2005 est.)

Life expectancy at birth: total: 64.35 years (2005 est.), male: 63.57 years, female: 65.16 years

Ethnic groups: Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other 3% (2000)

Religions: Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001)

Languages:
English enjoys associate status but is the most important language for national, political, and commercial communication; Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; Hindustani is a popular variant of Hindi/Urdu spoken widely throughout northern India but is not an official language

Literacy: definition: age 15 and over can read and write, total population: 59.5%, male: 70.2%, female: 48.3% (2003)

Escaping the city heat. Old Fort, New Delhi.