India

With 18 per cent. of the world's population living on 3 per cent. of the world's land area, India1 is one of the earth's four major population concentrations, with an area and population equal to that of Europe (exclusive of the Soviet Union) or to that of agricultural China. It is as large in area as humid eastern United States, but has nearly four times the population. India's average density of some 250 people per square mile is only moderately high, being less than the average densities of most western European countries or of such eastern Asiatic countries as Japan, Korea, the Philippines, or Java. However, those parts of India with level, moist alluvial soils have among the highest densities of population in the world. About a third of India?mainly the Northern Plains and the Coastlands? has relatively excellent resources of level land, soil, and water and supports over two-thirds of the entire population. Another third of India?comprising chiefly the upland areas of the Indian Plateau?has moderately good resources of soil and water and supports most of the remaining third of the population. Only isolated spots in that third of India comprising the Highland Rim and the Thar desert are of much value or support more than a meagre population. These great inequalities in the pattern of India's resources are relatively permanent and will probably always determine the main pattern of rural population distribution. Possible modifications through landscape alteration, drainage, irrigation, clearance, and the use of artificial fertilizers are relatively small, expensive, and generally most feasible in or near the fringes of the present population concentrations. India is among the most rural of the larger countries, with 90 per cent. of the population living in some 658,000 villages and small towns. Only 10 per cent. of India's 390 millions live in the 1021 cities and towns of 10,000 inhabitants and over. With the development of a modern, integrated transport system, urban growth is tending to concentrate in the more accessible of the larger cities and towns. The 58 Indian cities (over 100,000) have more than two-fifths of the total urban population, while the seven largest conurbations have well over a fifth of that total

Economics · Geography · Socioeconomics · Income, Poverty, and Inequality