[Reader-list] Demographers say Delhi is bigger (in population) than Mumbai

[Shivam Vij]

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For Release: November 7, 2007

Delhi is India's Biggest City

For more than 20 years, Mumbai has been officially considered the
biggest metropolitan area in India in population.

Now two demographers with the Washington, DC-based Population
Reference Bureau have found that if the same definition for measuring
Mumbai's and Kolkata's population is applied to Delhi, then Delhi is
the biggest city.

In India, an urban agglomeration is defined as a continuous urban
spread constituting the urban population of a town or city and its
adjoining urban outgrowths, or two or more physically contiguous towns
together with their outgrowths.

But  India defines its urban agglomerations in a somewhat quirky way.
They cannot cross state boundaries. This has no effect on the
population size of Kolkata and Greater Mumbai UA, which are located
far from state borders. But it does affect Delhi's official population
size.

Any visitor to Delhi would immediately realize that excluding its
major suburban industrial and residential areas in neighboring states
from the urban agglomeration population leaves the city at a distinct
disadvantage compared to other UAs. When driving from Delhi to
contiguous Faridabad city in Haryana state, one scarcely notices any
change in the surroundings. But even contiguous suburban cities and
towns such as Faridabad and Gurgaon in neighboring Haryana, and
Ghaziabad in neighboring Uttar Pradesh, cannot be included in the
Delhi UA.

Click on http://www.prb.org/Articles/2007/delhi.aspx for the full
article and links to supporting information, including related tables
for Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata.

O.P. Sharma is the Population Reference Bureau's India consultant and
former deputy director of census operations in India. He has been
involved in all aspects of the Indian census, since the 1951 Census.
Carl Haub holds the Conrad Taeuber Chair of Population Information at
PRB.

The Population Reference Bureau is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit
that informs people around the world about population, health, and the
environment, and empowers them to use that information to advance the
well-being of current and future generations.

Sandra Yin | Associate Editor | Population Reference Bureau

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