On Tuesday, the registrar general of India released the final figures for the first phase of Census 2011, known as the Houselisting and Housing Census. The data shows how India lives - how many people to a house, how they light their houses and where they get their water from, and some of the things they own.
The Census measures ownership of five assets - radio/transistors, television, telephone, computer and mode of transport. The proportion of households which own a radio has fallen, almost at the same rate at which the proportion of households with a TV has risen. Yet, there remains a stark difference between TV penetration in rural and urban India: Just one third of rural households own a TV set, while over 75% of urban households own one. TV penetration is highest in Delhi (88%), followed by Tamil Nadu (87%), Punjab, Chandigarh and Puducherry. Bihar has by far the lowest TV penetration of any state at just 15%.
2011 is the first year that the Census is counting mobile and landline use separately, and the numbers show that telephony in India is overwhelmingly about mobile phones. While 63% of households owned a phone, 53% owned a mobile phone only and another 6% owned both a landline and a mobile phone. Over half of rural households and three-quarters of urban households now own a mobile phone.
Here too, there's considerable regional variation; east and north-east India have low telephone density, with Chhattisgarh and Orissa being the country's worst. Delhi, Chandigarh, Goa, Lakshadweep and Kerala all have a tele-density close to 90%
About 20% of urban households and 5% of rural households now own a computer or laptop. Internet penetration at the household level follows further behind - just 1% of rural households own a computer with internet, and 8% of urban households. Chandigarh, Delhi and Goa are the only states or union territories with household internet penetration above 10%; it is under 1% in Bihar.
Close to half of India owns no means of transport. Just 5% of households own a car, 21% own a two-wheeler and 45% own a bicycle (some would own more than one of these).