Demography of Ganga Basin....

Demography has an important bearing on the stateof the river as it is significantly affected by thepopulation living within the basin. Averagepopulation density in the Ganga basin is 520persons per square km as against 312 for the entirecountry (2001 census). Major cities of Delhi,Kolkata, Kanpur, Lucknow, Patna, Agra, Meerut,Varanasi and Allahabad are situated in the basin.The cities in the basin have large and growingpopulations and a rapidly expanding industrialbase. The summary of urban population in thebasin is given in Table . It can be seen that between 1991 and 2001, urban populationincreased by 32%. This trend is likely to continue.The pollution load is also expected to increasecorrespondingly.

SNo. States No of Towns & Cities Urban Population(1991) Urban Population(2001)
1 Bihar (inc.Jharkhand) 130 6,715,096 8 ,681,800
2 Haryana 106 4,054,744 6,115,304
3 Himachal Pradesh 57 449,196 595,581
4 MadhyaPradesh(inc.Chhattisgarh) 394 12,152,967 15,967,145
5 Rajasthan 222 10,077,371 13,200,000
6 Uttar Pradesh 704 27,544,233 34,539,582
7 Uttarakhand 86 2,179,074
8 West Bengal 373 18,707,601 22,427,251
9 Delhi 1 8,471,625 12,905,780