Religious Composition, Working Population, and Gender Sensitivity

India’s diversity runs deeper than language and residence. The faiths people follow shape everything from daily rituals to the skyline of their cities. Equally, the kind of work people do reveals how far the economy has come and how far it still needs to go. This topic traces the religious makeup of the population, unpacks the structure of India’s workforce, and examines why gender equity is not just a social goal but a development necessity.

How Religion Shapes India

Few forces run as deep in Indian life as religion. It influences family routines, community celebrations, political choices, dietary habits, and even the layout of towns and villages. Because faith touches so many aspects of everyday life, studying how religious communities are distributed across the country is essential for understanding India’s social and political geography.

What stands out immediately is how uneven this distribution is. A religion that dominates one region may have almost no presence in a neighbouring state. These patterns have grown over centuries, shaped by historical migrations, cultural exchange, and local traditions.

The Numbers: Census 2011

The 2011 Census captured the following religious breakdown of India’s population:

Religious Group	Population (in million)	Share of Total Population
Hindus	966.3	79.8%
Muslims	172.2	14.2%
Christians	27.8	2.3%
Sikhs	20.8	1.7%
Buddhists	8.4	0.7%
Jains	4.5	0.4%
Other Religions and Persuasions (ORP)	7.9	0.7%
Religion Not Stated	2.9	0.2%

Source: Census of India, 2011

Where Each Community Lives

Hindus, who make up nearly four-fifths of the national population, are the dominant community across most of India. In a typical state, their share ranges between 70 and 90 per cent or higher. The notable exceptions appear along the international borders and in select pockets: districts along the Indo-Bangladesh and Indo-Pakistan frontiers, Jammu and Kashmir, the hill states of the North-East, and scattered zones across the Deccan Plateau and the Ganga Plain show a relatively lower Hindu share.

Muslims are India’s largest religious minority, numbering 172.2 million (14.2 per cent). Their geographical spread is selective rather than uniform. Strong Muslim populations are found in Jammu and Kashmir, parts of West Bengal and Kerala, several districts of Uttar Pradesh, the Delhi region, and Lakshadweep. Of all these areas, only the Kashmir Valley and the island territory of Lakshadweep have a Muslim-majority population.

Christians, at 27.8 million (2.3 per cent), stand out for being predominantly a rural community, unlike most other groups that cluster in both rural and urban settings. Two distinct belts of Christian population exist: one runs along the Western coast through Goa and Kerala, while the other stretches across the north-eastern hills, covering Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, and the hills of Manipur. The Chotanagpur plateau in Jharkhand is another area with a notable Christian presence.

Sikhs number 20.8 million (1.7 per cent) and have one of the most geographically compact distributions of any major Indian religion. Their heartland is Punjab, with significant populations spilling into Haryana and Delhi.

Jains and Buddhists are among the country’s smallest religious groups, but both show sharply defined geographical concentrations. Jains (4.5 million, 0.4 per cent) are found overwhelmingly in the urban centres of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Buddhists (8.4 million, 0.7 per cent) have their single largest base in Maharashtra. Beyond Maharashtra, sizeable Buddhist communities live in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir, Tripura, and the Lahul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.

Other religions, encompassing Zoroastrianism, tribal faiths, and various indigenous belief systems, exist in small, localised pockets scattered across the country.

Religion and the Physical Landscape

The diversity of faiths leaves a visible stamp on the land. Walk through any Indian city and you might pass a grand Hindu temple, a monumental masjid, a gurudwara, and an ornately designed cathedral within a few kilometres of each other. In the countryside, even a small village often has an inconspicuous shrine that anchors community life. These sacred structures differ widely in size, architectural style, and how they use the space around them, but together they give each area its own distinctive character. Beyond built structures, religious expression also shapes the landscape through cemeteries, sacred groves of trees, and assemblages of plants and animals maintained for spiritual purposes.

Composition of the Working Population

From what people believe, let us now turn to what people do for a living. The Census classifies every individual into one of three economic categories depending on how many days they work in a given year:

• Main worker: someone who works for at least 183 days (roughly six months) in a year
• Marginal worker: someone who works for fewer than 183 days in a year
• Non-worker: someone not engaged in any economically productive activity

The Big Picture: More Non-Workers Than Workers

The 2011 figures reveal a striking imbalance. Only 39.8 per cent of the population fell into the worker category (main and marginal combined), which means roughly 60 per cent were non-workers. Such a large non-working share points to a heavily dependent population and suggests that unemployment or underemployment is widespread across the country.

Work Participation Rate Across States

The work participation rate (WPR) tells us what fraction of a state’s total population qualifies as workers. This number swings dramatically from one end of the country to the other:

• Highest WPR: Himachal Pradesh, at about 51.9 per cent
• Lowest WPR: Lakshadweep, at about 29.1 per cent

Other states reporting comparatively high participation include Sikkim, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Meghalaya. Among Union Territories, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu stand out.

A key insight here is counter-intuitive: in India, a high WPR does not necessarily signal prosperity. In regions where farming is labour-intensive and livelihoods hover at subsistence level, more people end up being counted as workers simply because their manual labour is essential for survival. Women, the elderly, and even children may contribute to farm work. So a high WPR may actually reflect lower economic development rather than a thriving job market.

Occupational Structure: What Workers Actually Do

The 2011 Census grouped all workers into four occupational categories:

1. Cultivators: people who farm their own or leased land
2. Agricultural Labourers: people who work on someone else’s farm for wages
3. Household Industrial Workers: people running small-scale manufacturing from their homes
4. Other Workers: everyone else, covering factory workers, traders, construction labour, transport workers, professionals, and service providers

When these four categories are mapped to broader economic sectors, the picture of India’s economy becomes clear:

• Primary sector (cultivators + agricultural labourers): 54.6 per cent of all workers
• Secondary sector (household industries): 3.8 per cent of all workers
• Tertiary sector (other workers, spanning non-household industries, trade, commerce, construction, and services): 41.6 per cent of all workers

More than half the workforce still earns its livelihood from agriculture, while household-level manufacturing employs only a tiny fraction.

Sectoral Composition by Gender

Looking at the absolute numbers reveals a clear gender gap across all three sectors:

Category	Total Persons	Share of Total Workers	Male Workers	Female Workers
Primary	26,30,22,473	54.6%	16,54,47,075	9,75,75,398
Secondary	1,83,36,307	3.8%	97,75,635	85,60,672
Tertiary	20,03,84,531	41.6%	15,66,43,220	4,37,41,311

Men outnumber women in every sector. The gap is narrowest in the primary sector, largely because agricultural work in rural India draws heavily on women’s labour. In the tertiary sector, the imbalance is stark: roughly 156.6 million males compared to just 43.7 million females. That said, recent years have seen some improvement in female participation in secondary and tertiary sector jobs, even though the overall gap remains large.

A Shift Away from Farming

Between 2001 and 2011, the share of workers dependent on agriculture fell from 58.2 per cent to 54.6 per cent. At the same time, both the secondary and tertiary sectors gained ground. This movement of workers from farm-based livelihoods to non-farm activities such as manufacturing, trade, construction, and services represents a sectoral shift, a sign that the Indian economy is gradually diversifying away from its agrarian base.

Spatial Variation in Occupational Structure

The occupational mix differs sharply from state to state, reflecting each region’s level of urbanisation and industrial growth:

• States where cultivators dominate: Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland, where most families farm their own land and agriculture remains the primary source of income
• States with large pools of agricultural labourers: Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh, where many landless workers earn their living through farm wages on other people’s fields
• Highly urbanised areas dominated by service-sector employment: Delhi, Chandigarh, and Puducherry, where limited farmland combined with rapid urbanisation and industrial expansion has pulled the bulk of workers into non-farm occupations

Fig 1.4: India - Occupational Structure, 2011

Gender Sensitivity: The Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao Campaign

Biology divides human beings into male, female, and transgender. But societies go far beyond biology. They assign specific roles, expectations, and restrictions to each gender, and institutions ranging from the family to the legal system reinforce these assignments generation after generation. What starts as a natural biological difference gradually hardens into the foundation for social differentiation (creating hierarchies between genders), discrimination (denying opportunities to one gender), and exclusion (keeping people out of education, employment, or public life).

When over half the population faces these barriers, the consequences for national development are severe. The UNDP’s Human Development Report of 1995 captured this reality in a single powerful line: “If development is not engendered it is endangered.” Gender discrimination is not simply a social issue; it is, in the broadest sense, a crime against humanity.

What Needs to Change

Meaningful progress on gender equity demands action across several fronts:

• Education: ensuring girls have equal access to schooling at every level
• Employment: dismantling the barriers that keep women out of the workforce or confine them to low-paying roles
• Political representation: expanding women’s voice in governance and decision-making bodies
• Wages: eliminating the gap where women earn less than men for performing the same type of work
• Dignity: defending every person’s right to live free from violence, exploitation, and disrespect

Any society that fails to recognise and actively tackle these forms of discrimination cannot genuinely call itself civilised.

The Government’s Response

Acknowledging the deep and lasting harm caused by gender discrimination, the Government of India launched a nationwide initiative called Beti Bachao - Beti Padhao (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter). The campaign works to shift social attitudes, promote the survival of the girl child, and ensure that girls receive quality education as a foundation for empowerment and equal participation in national life.