The steep rise in the population of Bangalore district has seen it top the population growth rate in the country. The Bangalore urban district has grown three times faster than the population of the state as a whole.
Bangalore district’s population ballooned 46.68 per cent over the past decade to around 9.59 million in 2011. The district today houses over 15.69 per cent of the state’s population. This, despite the thrust of the state on deflecting growth towards tier II and tier III cities in the state. Today, 4,378 persons cram every square kilometre space of the district.
On the population growth in the district, K S James, head of department of the Population Research Centre at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), said, “The growth seen in Bangalore district is totally unexpected. It was generally believed it must be a little over 8 million. Migration has contributed significantly to the growth.” ISEC conducts interdisciplinary social sciences research.
On the other hand, the growth rate of Mumbai’s population as per Census 2011 has seen a declining trend over the past 10 years. The island city, India’s most populous metropolitan area, saw its population rise to only 12.4 million from 11.9 million in 2001. Meanwhile, Delhi’s population grew 21 per cent in the past 10 years — from 13.8 million in 2001 to 16.8 million in 2011. “This is far less than the growth of the previous decade, 1991 to 2001, when population of Delhi recorded a growth of 47 per cent. It appears that Delhi’s population growth is showing a tendency towards stabilisation,” the Census Report had said.
In fact, of Delhi’s nine districts, two have recorded a significant decline in population growth — the New Delhi district recorded a decrease of 25.35 per cent and the Central district shrunk 10.48 per cent. Southwest district, meanwhile, emerged as the fastest growing, with a growth of 30.62 per cent.
Hyderabad district too has seen a very low rise in its population. The district comprises the erstwhile Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad (MCH), Osmania University and Secunderabad Cantonment and has a population of over 4 million. It showed a decadal growth rate of 4.71 per cent. This contravenes the generally held belief the city’s population may have increased substantially given the growth of the city as an IT hub.
In Karnataka, Bangalore Rural, which has a density of 441 persons per sq km, has moved up one position to occupy third spot.
Bangalore district, which includes 198 wards of the IT capital, has the highest number of literate females in the state. However, its sex ratio of 908 remains the most skewed in Karnataka, compared to Udupi that has 1,093 females per 1,000 males. In fact, Udupi, Kodagu, Dakshina Kannada, Hassan and Chikmagalur have shown a healthy sex ratio of more than 1,000 females per 1,000 males.
T K Anil Kumar, director of Census Operations, Karnataka, said, “These provisional results are being released in two stages as provisional population totals- paper I of 2011 and provisional population totals-paper 2 of 2011. Paper 2, which is expected to be released in May 2011 will focus on rural-urban break-up.” The provisional population totals are rather raw and not subject to the intensive checks and cross-checks as the usual final census data, he added.
The Census Report 2011 says Chennai has shown a 7.8 per cent growth rate in population during the past 10 years (2001-2011).
While Chennai city’s population in 2001 was 4.34 million, recent figures revealed it had risen to 4.68 million, with an addition of over 337,000 heads.
