Shillong: India’s first census taken on the basis of socioeconomic conditions and caste has shown that the northeastern region has the highest percentage of unmarried people.
Rural areas in the region have recorded a high percentage of unmarried people while the percentage of women-headed households is a little above the national average, according to The Telegraph newspaper.
The provisional data of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census, 2011, released last week, showed the percentage of people in rural Northeast who have “never married” is 47.42 percent against the national average of 41.64 percent.
Among the northeastern states, including Sikkim, Nagaland has the highest number of “never- married” people at 55.88 percent.
Meghalaya with 53.33 percent closely follows Nagaland while Mizoram has recorded 50.12 percent of “never married.” In terms of percentage, unmarried people are the highest in the Northeast compared to other regions.
The “never married” in the northern region is 42.18 percent while the corresponding figure for the eastern region is 41.35 percent.
The percentage for the western region is 40.31, southern region is 38.46 percent, central region is 43.84 percent and Union Territories is 43.37 percent.
Moreover, against the national average of 40.05 percent of “currently married” individuals, rural Northeast has recorded 36.61 percent.
Tripura has recorded the highest percentage of “currently married” persons with 41.93 percent. Arunachal Pradesh, with 29.68 percent, has the least.
At the same time, Tripura has the highest percentage of “widowed” persons (4.13 percent), which is much higher than the Northeast average of 3.27 percent and the all-India average of 3.46 percent.
“Separated” persons in the Northeast are the highest in Meghalaya (1.03 percent) against the regional and national average of 0.34 percent and 0.38 percent, respectively.
Mizoram has recorded the highest percentage of divorced persons (1.08 percent). The Northeast region and the all-India average in this category is 0.21 percent and 0.12 percent respectively.
Rural Northeast has recorded 2,198 transgenders while the all-India figure is 74,286.
Rural Assam leads with the highest number of transgenders (1,734 persons), followed by Meghalaya (113 persons).
Sikkim has recorded only one transgender in a total population of 412,574.
While the average household size in the Northeast and across rural India is 4.94 and 4.93 respectively, the corresponding figure for Meghalaya is 5.28.
Like the all-India trend, men head a majority of rural households in the Northeast. The percentage of 86.03 percent is close to the all-India average of 87.15 percent.
However, the Northeast average of women-headed households is slightly higher than the national average.
Meghalaya has the highest percentage of women-headed households at 24.41 percent, which is much higher than the regional and national average.
The provisional data of the socio-economic and caste census was released in New Delhi on Friday.
The federal rural development ministry had kick started the census on June 29, 2011, through a door-to-door enumeration across the country.