India is the second most populated country in the world, with a population of over a billion people. Second only to China in terms of population, India's population is predicted to overtake China by the year 2030, according to a UN study. While this immense population pressure had led to problems such as deforestation, congestion in urban areas and pollution, India's young population is seen as a positive asset in the global economy.
India Population: 1,080,264,388 (Estimated as of July 2005)
India Population growth rate: 1.4% (Estimated as of July 2005)
India Ethnic groups: Indo-Aryan 72%, Dravidian 25%, Mongoloid and other groups 3% (2000)
India Religions: Hindu 80.5%, Muslim 13.4%, Christian 2.3%, Sikh 1.9%, other 1.8%, unspecified 0.1% (2001 census)
India Languages: English in understood across all major cities and towns in India. Hindi is the national language of India and Hindi and its variants are spoken widely across North India. It is the primary tongue of 30% of the Indian people. There are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit.
India Migration: India as also home to many migrant populations, including about 100,000 Tibetan migrants. There are also significant populations of economic migrants from Nepal and Bangladesh in many cities and towns of India.
