India is famously the most populous country on Earth. It's estimated to have overtaken China in April 2023, reaching and surpassing 1,425,775,850 (1.4 billion!) people.
For perspective, the whole world's population is thought to have reached 1 billion for the first time in the mid-19th Century.
18% of the world's population live in India.
With that in mind I wanted to investigate what are the 10 most populous cities in India. You actually get wildly different numbers on this depending on what source you use, and I can make some guesses as to why calculating the population of a city is difficult.
Even once you have your methodology for counting down, where do you draw the boundaries?
As a city grows, the traditional or administrative boundaries break down and it may form conurbations with other nearby towns and cities.
I don't know as much about the complexities of that as I'd like, but I hope to dig into it some time and understand why these sources differ so much.
Some of my sources also differ by >10 years but I don't think this is enough to explain the discrepancies.
The sources in question are:
Are they good sources?
The Wikipedia data comes from a 2011 Indian government report, the Statistics Times get their data from the UN, and World Population Review simply cites 'https://www.geonames.org/'.
Most of the World Population Review numbers are pretty close to what Wikipedia gives, but differs significantly in some cases.
But, closer investigation shows that the table on their website does not agree in all cases with numbers found on the GenoName website.
I'll include them because I took the time to write them down, but they should be regarded with suspicion!
| City | Wikipedia (2011) (Millions) | Statistics Times (2024) (Millions) | World Population Review (2024) (Millions) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mumbai | 12.4 | 21.6 | 12.6 | |
| Delhi | 11.0 | 33.8 | 10.9 | India's capital city |
| Bangalore | 8.4 | 14.0 | 5.1 | India's tech capital |
| Hyderabad | 6.9 | 11.0 | 3.5 | Known to me because of the delicious Hyderabadi lamb shank |
| Ahmedabad | 5.5 | 8.8 | 3.7 | The biggest city on this list I previously hadn't heard of, and the largest which is not a state capital |
| Chennai | 4.6 | 12.0 | 4.3 | |
| Kolkata | 4.4 | 15.5 | 4.6 | |
| Surat | 4.4 | 8.3 | 2.8 | |
| Pune | 3.1 | 7.3 | 2.9 | |
| Jaipur | 3.0 | 4.3 | 2.7 |
So those are the numbers!
I want to focus in on the largest city I hadn't previously heard of: Ahmedabad.
The number varies by source, but it's firmly in the millions.
I think that's part of why population statistics fascinate me.
Every city in the world has its own local culture, character, and problems which are in some ways unique to it.
This is what amazes me.
To think of this huge place filled with people living lives just as busy and important as my own, of whom I have never heard and may never hear of again.
I live in a comparatively tiny city in the UK.
How many people in Ahmedabad have heard of it?
I love to get lost in this observation.
I final fact I found interesting: the smallest state capital in India is Panaji, the capital of Goa. It has a population of 40,017 (according to Wikipedia). The largest city in Goa is Vasco de Gama, with ~100,000 people.