2011 census of India

15th census of India
← 2001 9 to 28 February 2011 2025 →
President of India Pratibha Patil receiving the 2011 census report from the Census Commissioner C. Chandramouli
General information
Country	India
Authority	RGCCI
Website	censusindia.gov.in
Results
Total population	1,210,854,977 ( 17.70%[1])
Most populous state	Uttar Pradesh (199,812,341)
Least populous state	Sikkim (610,577)
Scheduled Castes	201,378,372
Scheduled Tribes	104,545,716

The 2011 census of India or the 15th Indian census was conducted in two phases, house listing and population enumeration. The House listing phase began on 1 April 2010 and involved the collection of information about all buildings. Information for National Population Register (NPR) was also collected in the first phase, which will be used to issue a 12-digit unique identification number to all registered Indian residents by Unique Identification Authority of India. The second population enumeration phase was conducted between 9 and 28 February 2011. Census has been conducted in India since 1872 and 2011 marks the first time biometric information was collected. According to the provisional reports released on 31 March 2011, the Indian population increased to 1.21 billion with a decadal growth of 17.70%.^[2] Adult literacy rate increased to 74.04% with a decadal growth of 9.21%. The motto of the census was Our Census, Our Future.

Spread across 28 states^[a] and 8 union territories, the census covered 640 districts, 5,924 sub-districts, 7,935 towns and more than 600,000 villages. A total of 2.7 million officials visited households in 7,935 towns and 600,000 villages, classifying the population according to gender, religion, education and occupation.^[3] The cost of the exercise was approximately ₹2,200 crore (US$260 million)^[4] – this comes to less than US$0.50 per person, well below the estimated world average of US$4.60 per person.^[3]

Information on castes was included in the census following demands from several ruling coalition leaders including Lalu Prasad Yadav, and Mulayam Singh Yadav supported by opposition parties Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiromani Akali Dal, Shiv Sena and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.^[5] Information on caste was last collected during the British Raj in 1931. During the early census, people often exaggerated their caste status to garner social status and it is expected that people downgrade it now in the expectation of gaining government benefits.^[6] Earlier, there was speculation that there would be a caste-based census conducted in 2011, the first time in 80 years (last was in 1931), to find the exact population of the "Other Backward Classes" (OBCs) in India.^{[7][8][9][10]} This was later accepted and the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 was conducted whose first findings were revealed on 3 July 2015 by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.^[11] Mandal Commission report of 1980 quoted OBC population at 52%, though National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey of 2006 quoted OBC population at 41%.^[12]

There is only one other instance of a caste count in post-independence India. It was conducted in Kerala in 1968 by the Government of Kerala under E. M. S. Namboodiripad to assess the social and economic backwardness of various lower castes. The census was termed Socio-Economic Survey of 1968 and the results were published in the Gazetteer of Kerala, 1971.^[13]

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