Basic Characteristic of West India’s Villages

The 2011 Census data released by Office of Registrar General of India just recently has been further analyzed in order to get characteristic of Indian Village, particularly of Western part of India which comprise of its states namely, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Daman & Diu, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli. There are about fifty nine thousand villages in Western part of India and these house over 96 million people i.e. the average size or occupants per village  comes out to be about 1639. The other characteristics are:

Ø  The villages with population of less than 200 are about three thousand (5.4% of total number) and the average population is only 105 and these house about 0.3 percent of its total rural population. 

Ø  The villages with population between 200 and 500 are over eight thousand (14% of total number) and the average population is only 358 and these house over three percent of its total rural population.

Ø   The villages with population between 500 and 1000 are about 15 thousand (26% of total number) and the average population is only 740 and these house about eleven and a half percent of its total rural population.

Ø   The villages with population between 1000 and 2000 are about 58 thousand (30% of total number) and the average population is only 1426 and these house about twenty six percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population between 2000 and 5000 are about 12 thousand as well (20% of total number) and the average population is only 2954 and these house about thirty six and a half percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population between 5000 and 10000 are about 2.1 thousand (4% of total number) and the average population is only 6689 and these house about fifteen percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population over 10000 are only 477 (0.8% of total number) and the average population is 14623 and these house about 7.2 percent of total rural population.  The bigger villages lie mostly in Maharashtra.

Western India is having variety of villages both small and big.  The following table gives state wise averages of smallest class of up to 200 populations, of biggest class of over 10000 populations and overall average size are as below:

STATE	Average for Below 200 Population Class	Average for Above 10000 Population Class	Average Size of Villages
GUJARAT	109	13044	1944
DAMAN & DIU	0	0	3179
DADRA & NAGAR HAVELI	115	15655	2817
MAHARASHTRA	104	15466	1503
WESTERN INDIA	105	14623	1639