Key Terms

Urban and Rural

(Extract from the Census Bureau of India website) Village or Town is recognised as the basic area of habitation. In all censuses throughout the world this dishotomy of Rural and Urban areas is recognised and the data are generally presented for the rural and urban areas separately. In the rural areas the smallest area of habitation, viz., the village generally follows the limits of a revenue village that is recognised by the normal district administration. The revenue village need not necessarily be a single agglomeration of the habitations. But the revenue village has a definite surveyed boundary and each village is a separate administrative unit with separate village accounts. It may have one or more hamlets. The entire revenue village is one unit. There may be unsurveyed villages within forests etc., where the locally recognised boundaries of each habitation area is followed within the larger unit of say the forest range officers jurisdiction.



It is in defining the Urbans areas that problems generally arise. However for the 1971 Census the definition adopted for an urban area which follows the pattern of 1961 was as follows:-

all places with a Municipality, Corporation or Cantonment or Notified Town Area all other places which satisfied the following criteria: a minimum population of 5,000. at least 75% of the male working population was non-agricultural. a density of population of at least 400 sq. Km. (i.e. 1000 per sq. Mile) The Director of Census of each State/Union Territory was, however, given some discretion in respect of some marginal cases, in consultation with the State Govt., to include some places that had other distinct urban characteristics and to exclude undeserving cases.

Census House, Households or Census Family

(Extract from the Census Bureau of India website) Census House: The term ‘house’ in India covers the greatest diversity of dwellings. In 1872 a house was defined as ‘any permanent structure which on land, serves or would serve for the accommodation of human beings, or of animals, or goods of any description provided always that it could not be struck and removed bodily like a tent or a mud hut’. An attempt was also made to classify the houses as of the ‘better sort’ and of ‘inferior sort’. In the census of 1881 house was defined as the dwelling place of one or more families with thier servants, having a separate principal entrance from the public way. The same definition with slight modification continued till 1951. In 1961 census ‘House’ was defined as a structure or part of a structure inhabited or vacant, or a dwelling, a shop, a shop-cum-dwelling or a place of business, workshop, school etc. With a separate main entrance. In 1971 census, ‘House’ was defined ‘as a building or part of a building having a separate main entrance from the road or common courtyard or stair case etc. Used or recognised as a separate unit. It may be inhabited or vacant. It may be used for a residential or non-residential purpose or both’. Family or Household: The household or family was first defined in 1872 as comprising of those who lived together and ordinarily cooked at the same hearth including their servants and visitors. In 1881 Census it was defined as comprising of all those persons who actually slept in the house or compound on the night of 17th February, 1881. From 1891 till 1941 the term ‘family’ was used in place of Household. From 1951 Census onward again the concept of household was used in Indian Censuses. In 1971 Census a household was defined as ‘a group of persons who commonly live together and would take their meals from a common kitchen unless the exigencies of work prevented any of them from doing so’.