Tuesday, August 2, 2011

25% of Sikkim now resides in urban areas

GANGTOK, 29 July: 4.55 lakh of Sikkim’s population of 6,07,688 resides in rural areas and 24.97 per cent in urban areas. This, as per the latest ‘Provisional Population Totals’ [paper 2, volume 2 of 2011] Rural-Urban Distribution of Population Sikkim [series 12] released today by the Directorate of Census Operations, Sikkim. The data is on the basis of enumerators abstract and is subject to change, it was clarified. Sikkim has eight statutory and one Census [urban] town with 1,51,726 people [24.97% of the total population].

There are  4,55,962 people [2,42,122 male and 2,13,840 female] living in the rural areas and 1,51,726 [79,539 male and 72,187 female] in urban areas.
East District is the largest urban population in the State with three major statutory and one Census town located in this district accounting for a population of 1,20,750, which is 79.59 per cent of total urban population of Sikkim.
The Percentage Decadal Growth [persons] 2001-2011 stands at 12.36 per cent. Interestingly, while the rural population has fallen by 5.20%, the urban population of the State has shot up by a staggering 153.43%. Before one jumps to conclusion, this increase is primarily because the of the decision of the government to upgrade the existing towns into municipalities by merging a number of villages adjoining these towns. With the urban spaces redrawn to stretch much further, the majority of the population was counted as urban for the first time 2011.
The population of North district has fallen by 2.70 per cent in rural area in the 10 years between 2001 and 2011 while the urban population has grown by 272.44 per cent [mainly because its largest town, Mangan, most of which was recorded as rural in 2001 is now a big Nagar Panchayat], for West District it is 7.93 in rural and 187.23 in urban, for South District it is -1.51 in rural and 434.44 in urban and for East District it is -16.47 in rural and 128.47 in urban.
This statement reveals that the maximum urbanization has taken place in the South District [434.44%] and the minimum in the East District [128.47%], while the growth population in the other two districts, North and West are 272.44% and 187.23%, respectively.
A total of 61,077 persons in 0-6 age group [child population] have been reported in 2011 Census in Sikkim, which is 10.05% of the total population against 14.46% in 2001 [less by 4.41%]. The proportion of children is slightly lower in the urban population at 9.25 per cent, and in the rural population they stand at 10.32 per cent in this category.
The sex ratio [number of females per 1000 males] has also increased from 875 [880 in rural and 830 in urban] in 2001 to 889 [883 in rural and 908 in urban] in 2011. The Literacy Rate [persons] has also improved from 68.81 in 2001 to 82.20 in 2011. While the literacy rate for males in 2001 was 76.04 it went up to 87.29 in 2011 and for females it was 60.41 in 2001 and went up to 76.43 in 2011.
The district wise population divide is East District: 2,81,293 [1,60,543 rural and 1,20,750 urban], followed by South District: 1,46,742 [1,25,653 rural and 21,089 urban], then comes West District: 1,36,299 [1,31,060 rural and 5,239 urban] and last is North District: 43,354 [38,706 rural and 4,648 urban].


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