233. Population and Demographics of Rajasthan

Rajasthan Population (Census 2011) is the first number to fix because almost every district ranking, sex-ratio table, literacy sequence and social-group share still refers back to that base. The Primary Census Abstract records 6,85,48,437 persons in the state: 3,55,50,997 males and 3,29,97,440 females. The rural population is 5,15,00,352 and the urban population is 1,70,48,085, so Rajasthan remained predominantly rural even while Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota, Bikaner, Ajmer and Udaipur formed major urban nodes. The state accounted for roughly 5.66 percent of India's population in 2011, but it covered 10.4 percent of India's area. That mismatch explains why a large state can be mid-ranked by population but sparse by settlement. The old 33-district Census 2011 frame remains important: Jaipur was the most populous district, followed by Jodhpur and Alwar, while Jaisalmer was the smallest by population. Rajasthan District Reorganization (Demographic Impact) changes administrative mapping after Census 2011, but it does not retroactively change the old district data. New-district questions must therefore separate administrative lists from census baselines. This distinction matters in budget allocation, school mapping and health sub-centre planning because a newly created district may inherit villages from two or three old census districts. A district headquarters can be new, but the comparable population series remains old until an official census re-tabulation is released. The same base also fixes denominators for literacy, social-group share, urbanization and work participation, so a wrong total population quietly corrupts several later percentages. It is also the denominator behind per-capita water, health and education planning across Rajasthan. Population distribution is therefore read with settlement area, not only headcount, because sparse Thar villages and dense eastern plains create very different service-delivery loads.