Basic Characteristic of South 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 Southern part of India which comprise of its states namely, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Lakshadweep, Puducherry and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.  There are about seventy thousand and a half villages in South India and these house over 150 million people i.e. the average size or occupants per village  comes out to be about 2100. The other characteristics are:

Ø  The villages with population of less than 200 are over six and a half thousand (9.4% of total number) and the average population is only 98 and these house about 0.4 percent of its total rural population. 

Ø  The villages with population between 200 and 500 are about 10 thousand (14% of total number) and the average population is only 348 and these house about two percent of its total rural population.

Ø   The villages with population between 500 and 1000 are about 14 thousand (20% of total number) and the average population is only 735 and these house about seven percent of its total rural population.

Ø   The villages with population between 1000 and 2000 are about 17 thousand (24% of total number) and the average population is only 1442 and these house about seventeen percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population between 2000 and 5000 are about 17 thousand as well (24% of total number) and the average population is only 3086 and these house about thirty five percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population between 5000 and 10000 are about 4.4 thousand (6% of total number) and the average population is only 6710 and these house about twenty percent of total rural population.

Ø  The villages with population over 10000 are only 1656 (2.4% of total number) and the average population is 17297 and these house about 19 percent of total rural population. The bigger villages lie mostly in Kerala.

Southern 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
ANDHRA PRADESH	104	15461	2144
KARNATAKA	94	13622	1368
GOA	101	14041	1724
LAKSHADWEEP	28	0	2357
KERALA	73	20214	17179
TAMIL NADU	102	13395	2474
PUDUCHERRY	0	10745	4391
ANDAMAN & NICOBAR ISLANDS	67	0	599
SOUTHERN INDIA	98	17308	2119