"There are people everywhere"

I'm going to start today with a quote from Mark's posting yesterday on his web diary...
India really is an amazing place - I have never been anywhere with such a density of people. Even in the middle of the countryside there are people everywhere and the villages and towns have to be seen to be believed. My overall impression is of a very beautiful country with far too many people! If it had half as many it would be busy!

Earlier today Mark's route took him through Bareilly - a city with 3.6 million people (that's 3 times the size of Glasgow) living in an area equivalent to about about one third of Glasgow's area. You get an impression of this high population density when you zoom in close.....

The demographic statistics for Uttar Pradesh (the state which Mark is currently crossing - the big one in the middle at the top on the map below!) are certainly impressive. With a population of 166 million, it is the most populated state in India and also one of the areas of highest population density ....

In fact, if Uttar Pradesh were a country, it would be the sixth largest in the world after China, USA, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil!! Small wonder Mark finds it busy. However, it is an amazing testimony to the fertlity of the Ganges plain that it can support such human numbers.

India last conducted a census in 2001 and the results, which are very comprehensive and easy to access, are available on-line (click banner below to link)

A quick search produced the following data on Saharanpur district , Uttar Pradesh... I would say that the demographic data is fairly typical of what you would expect in most rural areas of India.... high juvenility (43% of the population are under the age of 15 compared to 17% in the UK), the majority of the population still living outside the towns, a sex ratio which is unnaturally balanced in favour of men and many people only educated to the end of primary school with consequent low literacy rates which are particularly low in the case of women.

Statistics are hugely impersonal, however, and you can easily forget that they give information about real people. A search on Flickr produced a lovely set of images of people in Bareilly amongst which the one below particularly caught my attention..This young girl clutching a baby is younger than many of the pupils I teach.....