Demography is the "statistical study of human populations". Demography constitute a huge area where it studies the different population that changes over a certain time or space, also it is concerned with the structure, size and distribution of populations, and how they are affected by birth, death, ageing and migration. Indian population is diverse with more than two thousand ethnic groups, religion, major families of languages and so on.

Salient features of Indian demography:
Demographies of India shows that the Indian population constitutes approximately one-sixth of the world`s population. According to 2007 census it has a population of 1.2 billion people. India provides for over 16% of the world`s population though it occupies only 2.4 % of the world`s land area. Indian demography indicates that 550,000 villages are inhabited by 72.22% of the people whereas 2000 towns and cities are occupied by the rest. This is recorded by the 2001 census. India is a home to many religious sects, hindus almost occupying the largest share of 80.5% and the Muslims 13.4%. , hence this makes India home to the third largest Muslim population in the world. Apart from these two major religious communities India has largest section of world`s Zoroastrians, Sikhs and Jains.

Census:
Census is the procedure in which information about every member of the population is obtained. This was very recently held in 2001 as par Indian demography is concerned. This census is the 6th census after India became independent in 1947, excluding Assam, which was not figured in the 1981 census. Under the British regime there were eight censuses done out of which the first one was carried throughout the 1860s and got over in 1871. On 1st March 2001, total population recorded was 1,027,015,247, which made India home of more than a billion. This was found that there was a hike in the percentage of population by 21.34% compared to the 1991 total. Percentage of the females also seen to be risen by 0.3 percentage points to 48.4%. among the cities, Mumbai and Delhi stand as the most urbanised.

Keydata:
In the year 2001 the figured population was 1,027,000,000, and in july 2006 it is estimated to be 1,095,351,995. out of which the rural population was 742,617,747(72.2%). There has been a rise since 1960 in which year the population was 443,000,000, 1980 recorded 684,000,000, year 2000 had the marked 1,004,591,054 figure which in 2007 increased to 1,129,866,154. Population growth rate that is estimated in the present year of 2007 is 1.606%. Literacy rate in the year 2001 was 65.38%. Religious scenario according to 2001 census records the percentage of Hindus to be 80.5%, Muslim 13.1%, Christian 2.31%, Buddhists 1.05%, Sikh 1.93%, Jains 0.41 %, Others or not stated 0.76%. coming to the languages in India, Hindi scores the maximum with the largest number of speakers, 337 million, out of the ,652 languages and dialects in total.

Religious breakdown:
Religious breakdown shows the percentage of the population on religious grounds. The year 2001 had 80.46 hindus , 13.43 Muslims, 2.34 Christians, 1.87 Sikhs, 1.05 Buddhists, 0.41 Jains and 0.65 other religious communities. There was a subsequent rise in the growth rate since the year 1991, 20,3 % in case of Hindus, 36.0% for Muslims, 22.6% for Christians and so on. Hindus do not just speak the national language Hindi but only 40% speak Hindi, rest of them speak Bengali, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu, and other languages. Same in the case of Muslims out of which only 70% speak Urdu and the rest speak Kashmiri, Malayalam, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, and other languages.

Ethnic groups:
Ethnic groups as such are not recognized in India but there are many groups that are considered backward as well as many tribal groups. like the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. They are also included in the study of the demographies of India.

State wise demography:
Some of the important cities according to their socio-economic characteristics deserve a mention in the statewise demography in India. Delhi the capital of India has a population of 13,782,976, with a literacy rate of 81.82%, primary languages spoken are Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, English etc. Delhi is the heart of the country buzzing with political activities and influx of people from far and wide. Mumbai being the commercial capital has a population of 96,752,247 and a literacy rate of 77.27%, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, English being the important languages. Kolkata home of 80,221,171 people has a literacy rate of 69.22%, have Bengali, Hindi, English spoken widely.

Hence the demographies of India is a detailed study in the population, literacy rate, language and their respective growth rates over the years.