The Big Eighteen अठारह बड़े राज्य

India has 28 states and 8 union territories. This page follows the eighteen largest — the two of the East, two of the West, ten of the North (the Hindi belt, with Delhi) and four of the South. Together they contain roughly 93% of the country's population. The remainder — the North-East, J&K, Ladakh, Punjab, Goa and the smaller UTs — sits in the Other bucket of Part I and is not plotted here individually.

Fig. 7 Eighteen state trajectories, indexed to 1901 — population, 1901 = 100 —

Uttar Pradesh 4.3×

Bihar 4.9×

Madhya Pradesh 5.7×

Rajasthan 6.7×

Jharkhand 5.4×

Haryana 5.5×

Chhattisgarh 6.1×

Uttarakhand 5.1×

Himachal Pradesh 3.6×

Delhi 41.0×

Maharashtra 5.8×

Gujarat 6.6×

West Bengal 5.4×

Odisha 4.1×

Andhra Pradesh 4.4×

Tamil Nadu 3.7×

Karnataka 4.7×

Kerala 5.2×

Each tile starts at 1× in 1901 and traces where the state's population multiplied to by 2011. Delhi and Haryana break the scale — Delhi grew roughly forty-fold. Tamil Nadu and Kerala's curves bend earliest — the South was already decelerating when the North was still steepening.

Fig. 8 Where the century landed — vs where it took off — % growth per half-century —

1901 → 1951 growth (first half)

1951 → 2011 growth (second half)

Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi grew four- to six-fold after Independence; Kerala and Tamil Nadu barely doubled. The gap between the two dots is the story of India's uneven second half.

Fig. 9 Who led the country, census by census — ranks 1–10 by population, 1901 → 2011 —

Uttar Pradesh has been #1 for every recorded census. Kerala drops out of the top 10 by 1991. Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh never enter it — their populations are counted but in smaller slices. A line that arrives from below-10 is a state whose rank has risen into the frame.

Set in Fraunces & Tiro Devanagari Hindi ◇ Composed on cream