Lesson 2 ·Class 10 · Population — The Increasing Numbers and Rising Problems · Match Lab
India's Population Growth and Its Causes
The census figures decade by decade, and the seven reasons behind them
Match each census year to the population of India, and each social cause to what it does to family size.
Matched 0/9
Free play — tap an item on the left, then its partner on the right; each link tells you why. Switch to when you're ready to test yourself.
India lost population only once, in 1911-21. Do not read the steep climb after 1951 as a rise in births: both birth and death rates fell, but the death rate fell far more sharply.
What this lesson covers
Challenges to clear
- Match every year and every cause.
- Connect high infant mortality to why it pushes the birth rate up.
The task
Match each census year to the population of India, and each social cause to what it does to family size.
What this lesson covers
- India in 1901 — 238 million (The first figure in the ten-yearly census table. Except for a slight fall in 1911-21, the population has risen at every census since.)
- India in 1951 — 369 million (The turning point. From 1951 onwards the growth rate has been very high, because death rates fell steeply while birth rates did not.)
- India in 1981 — 685 million (In the thirty years from 1951 the population nearly doubled — the steepest stretch of the Indian curve.)
- India in 2011 — 1210 million (Between the 2001 and 2011 censuses the country grew by 17.7%, adding 181.5 million people — more than the whole population of 1901.)
- India in April 2024 — More than 1.45 billion, overtaking China as the most populous country (A few years earlier it had been estimated that India would reach only about 760 million by 2001; the billion mark was crossed well before that, with Aastha designated the billionth Indian on 11 May 2000.)
- Illiteracy — People remain ignorant and superstitious about how the reproductive system works (The bulk of the rural population still cannot read, so the very knowledge that would let a couple plan a family never reaches them.)
- High infant mortality — Poorer families have extra children in the hope that at least some will survive (It is a reasonable response to a real risk, which is why lowering infant deaths is itself a population measure — parents stop hedging.)
- Desire for a male child — Couples go on having children until a son is born, and sometimes never stop (Many families still believe a son is needed to keep up the family name and to support aged parents, so the family grows until one arrives.)
- Economic reasons — Children are treated as helping hands who add to the family income (Where a child earns, another child looks like an asset rather than a cost — which is why poverty and population feed each other.)
Hint
India lost population only once, in 1911-21. Do not read the steep climb after 1951 as a rise in births: both birth and death rates fell, but the death rate fell far more sharply.