India's population reaches 1.027 billion New Delhi — India's population stood at 1.027 billion as of March 1, making it the second country in the world after China to cross the one-billion mark, the government said Monday.

According to the provisional results of a census conducted once every decade, the country added about 181 million people between 1991 and 2001.

But the rate of population growth slowed during the last decade by 2.52 percentage points to 21.34 per cent over the previous decade, the government said in a statement.

The enumeration exercise by some two million census workers got under way on February 7 and continued until February 28 with the aim of providing a snapshot of the population on March 1.

The census, an exercise which has been conducted every decade since 1872, is also expected to serve as a guide for policy-makers worried about population growth. Reuters

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-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), March 26, 2001