Where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, all work hard

NEW DELHI: There are lies, damn lies and statistics. But there is also census. What distinguishes census from statistics is the rigour and precision involved in the former. While statistics are extracted out of projections and analyses, census is a count of the population of an area. Literally. Little wonder, when the census results are out, most of us sit back and take note.
The findings detailing the religious communities of Delhi are interesting.There are findings, which are obvious, not so obvious, interesting and curious.
It may not come as a surprise that a majority of the city''s population are Hindus — a high 82%. The lowest percentage is that of Buddhists, who constitute a mere 0.2% of the population. If that''s tricky take this — out of a total of 13,850,507 persons of all religions in the city, only 23,705 are Buddhists. For Hindus, this figure is 11,358,049. In simpler terms, Hindus are almost 5,000 times bigger than Buddhists.
This may not come as a surprise to many. However, if you learn about the Sikhs, it may be a little curious. Sikhs constitute just 4% (55,5602) of all religious populations. For all those, who thought that Sikhs and Punjabis were the same, this is a big bit of news. Punjabis are not a religious community; majority of Punjabis are of the Hindu religion. The census for the city, which in many ways represents the national trend, does not throw many surprises when it comes to population of Muslims. They are 11.7% (1,623,520) of the total population. The population of Jains is higher than Christians and Buddhists. They number 155,122 or 1.1% of the total population, which in totality is a small number though.
However, Jains have the highest literacy rate of 85.9%. The lowest literacy level of 54.3% is registered among Muslims. Hindus have 71% literacy. In fact, Christians and Sikhs have high levels of literacy at 83.2% and 82.2% respectively. Among Buddhists, a reasonable 72.4% of the persons are literate.
Looking at the working population, we find that majority in all communities barring Sikhs work. In other words, 82.6% of total working population is Hindus, 11% are Muslims, and 3.8% are Sikhs. It may not come as surprising though that more Christian women work than men. Whatever may be the figures on an all-India basis, in city and this is certainly revealing — the proportion of Sikhs among working women is higher than among working men. In other words, 4.1% of total women workers belong to Sikh as compared to 3.8% men workers.
The low literacy rate among Muslims is partly explained by the fact that they constitute 21.5% of the total household industry workers. This does not require a person to acquire any educational qualifications. Among Christians, this figure is very low — 0.3%, while for Sikhs this is 5%. As expected, the ratio of Christians among agricultural labour is very low (0.5%) as compared to other communities Sikhs (3.8%), Muslims (8.5%) and Hindus (86.7%).
If that was a high dosage of figures and calculations, here is an interesting fact for you to digest: Delhi is certainly among the most prosperous and diverse communities in the country.
The geographical location and abundance of opportunities make this an attractive destination for many. Little wonder, sociologists term the city as a melting pot of cultures where diversity and vivaciousness exist together. And of course, Hindu, Muslims, Jain, Sikh, Isai...