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India is one of the most populated countries in the world. In the year 2001 India became the second country in the world after China to cross the one billion mark. About 1,080,264,388 people live today in India. By the middle of the 21st century, India will have passed China in the terms of number of inhabitants. India's population grew by 21.34 % between 1991 and 2000. If the growth continues in the same way, space might be a problem. Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 15% of the world's population. 63.5% of the population are the age of 14-65. The population is growing with an annual speed of 1.44%. About 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities. In every region of the world there are culture and social differences that set countries apart. Each with economic, social and political outlooks on the future that determine the way people live. These endless arrays, even occur in different parts of a particular of every country including one of the worlds most diverse, India. India is separated into 25 states and 7 territories which create 16 major languages and 1,000 minor languages and dialects. This diversity in language creates somewhat of a barrier for India to become one of the foremost leaders in world because of the lack of unity. Although, in the past, the India government has taken steps to correct this matter with promoting Hindi as the national language. However, Indians who cannot speak Hindi frowned upon this notion. They believed the best jobs would go to Indians who spoke Hindi and with their pride of their regional languages kept them from accepting this unity, thus government decided against this idea. Now, the India government recognizes 13 regional languages as official languages. Children in schools learn Hindi as their second language, with English being used primary in higher education.
Growth in Literacy:
With almost two-thirds of Indias population aged 7 years of age and above now literate, India has made very significant progress in this direction. An important finding of the 2001 census count is that more than half of the females are now literate and male-female differential has narrowed down to 21.7 percent from 24.8 percent in 1991. The other important finding of the 2001 census is that, in the country, the absolute number of illiterates in population aged 7 + has declined for the first time by almost 32 million (21.4 million among males and 10.5 million among females).
Democracy is a form of government in which all eligible people have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law. It can also encompass social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination. However, the democratic principle has also been expressed as "the freedom to call something into being which did not exist before, which was not given and which therefore, strictly speaking, could not be known. While there is no specific, universally accepted definition of 'democracy' ,equality and freedom Democracy has its formal origins in Ancient Greece have both been identified as important characteristics of democracy since ancient times.[ Democracy has been called the "last form of government" and has spread considerably across the globe.[25] The right to vote has been expanded in many jurisdictions. Parliamentary democracy in India is much hailed. India is said to be the biggest democracy in the world. This democracy is known to be for the people, by the people and of the people. The past more than half a century proved this democracy to be sham. People of India and all over the world are vexed with the ineffectiveness and misappropriation of the democratic institutions like the court, police, jail and the administrative machinery. Essential services like water and electricity are a point of agitation in many parts of the country almost every day. And it is inaccessible to the adivasi population who constitute one important section of the population of the country. The presence of the parliamentary democratic institutions and minimum medical services are not seen in most of the adivasi areas of the country. It is true that the people in these areas were at a loss, away from the modern world. But for the past few years, things took a different turn in some parts of the adivasi areas. While the North Eastern states and some other areas are fighting for the liberation of their nationalities from the domination of the Indian state, the adivasis of the central part of the country and a few other eastern states sought a different alternative. They started forming a peoples government of their own. Peoples democracy found birth in the most backward, uncivilized areas of the country. It continued to develop in divergent ways and levels. The achievements of this peoples democracy prove that this is a real kind of democracy, a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people in its actual sense. The main principles of this democracy are collective functioning and democratic centralism