Population, Urbanisation and Tribes of Rajasthan

This is the one block of the Geography syllabus that cannot go stale before the exam.

Census 2021 was postponed, so Census 2011 remains the operative census — and it has now been the operative census for fifteen years. RPSC has drawn on it in 2016, 2018, 2021, 2023 and 2024, roughly one question in eight of the whole unit. Every figure below is fixed until the next census is taken. Nothing else in this subject offers that.

And it rewards precision rather than reading. Almost every question is a ranking — highest, lowest, descending order — so the districts at the ends of each list matter far more than the state averages.

1. The state totals

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 33, "District-wise Demography, Census 2011" (pages A-46 and A-47), read directly. The table reports 33 districts — the pre-2023 framework, not the current 41 — so it cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the present administrative map.

Two of those need holding against the national figure, because RPSC has asked both and they point in opposite directions.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 33, for Rajasthan; the all-India comparators are Census 2011 as commonly published. Rajasthan's 928 and child sex ratio of 888 are read from the state's own table.

Rajasthan is less urbanised than India and works more than India. Those are not in tension: a heavily rural, agrarian population records high work participation because cultivation and agricultural labour count as work and are counted for women too. The state has more workers and fewer cities.

The child sex ratio is the darker number. At 888, it is markedly worse than the overall 928 — meaning the imbalance among children is sharper than in the population as a whole, and the ratio has therefore been getting worse rather than better.

The full comparison the state itself prints

The Economic Review opens with a single table setting Rajasthan against India on twelve indicators. It is the cheapest high-yield table in this subject, because RPSC has already keyed three of its rows and the rest are built the same way.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table I, "Key Indicators of the State vis-a-vis India" (page ix), read directly.

Three things in that table are worth holding separately.

Rajasthan is the largest state by area and only the eighth largest by population as the 2011 Census counted it, behind Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. On the state list as it stands today it is seventh, because undivided Andhra Pradesh was split in 2014 and both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana now count fewer people than Rajasthan. Both answers are defensible and the basis decides which is right, so read the stem: a question that says "according to Census 2011" wants eighth, a question about the present state list wants seventh. Rajasthan holds 5.66% of India's population, arithmetic from the Census's own totals.

Density is the sharpest contrast in the table. Rajasthan's 200 against India's 382 is a little over half the national figure, and it is the direct consequence of the area figure sitting immediately above it.

Scheduled Tribes are a larger share of Rajasthan than of India (13.5% against 8.6%), and Scheduled Castes are too (17.8% against 16.6%). Taken together, roughly three Rajasthanis in ten belong to a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe.

Religion, which maps onto the state's history

GovtSource: Census of India 2011, Table C-01, Population by Religious Community, Rajasthan (file DDW08C-01 MDDS.XLS), read directly; the shares are the file's own community counts divided by its own state total of 68,548,437.

The Sikh figure is the one that explains itself geographically. Sikhs are 24.11% of Sri Ganganagar and 12.23% of Hanumangarh, and above 1.8% nowhere else in the state. That is the canal colony: Punjabi cultivators settled on the Gang Canal and later the Indira Gandhi Canal, in the two districts the canal reached first. The state's Sikh population is essentially a two-district population.

The Muslim share peaks in Jaisalmer at 25.10%, then Alwar 14.90%, Bharatpur 14.57%, Nagaur 13.74% and Kota 12.51%. Jains are most concentrated in Udaipur at 2.56%, then Ajmer, Chittaurgarh, Pratapgarh and Tonk, which places the Jain population in Mewar and Hadoti rather than in Marwar, as it is often loosely described.

GovtSource: the district shares are computed from the same C-01 file by dividing each district's community count by that district's own total in the file. These are derived percentages, not printed ones.

The century behind the 2011 numbers

Every figure on this page is a snapshot of 2011, and the snapshot is easier to hold once you know the shape of the curve behind it.

GovtSources: population and decadal change from Census of India 2011, Table A-02, Decadal Variation in Population 1901–2011, Rajasthan, read directly. Urban and rural populations to 2001 from Census of India 2001, Table A-2, Statements 4 and 8, Progress in Urban and in Rural Population of States and Union Territories 1901–2001; the urban shares to 2001 are those figures divided by the A-02 totals for the same year and are therefore derived, not printed. Town counts to 2001 from Statement 3 of the same file. The 2011 count of 297 towns is from Census of India 2011, Table A-01, Number of Villages, Towns, Households, Population and Area, and the 2001 count of 222 is confirmed independently in the 2001 A-01 table.

Two rows carry almost all the exam value.

1911–21 is the only decade in which Rajasthan's population fell, by 6.29%. The 1921 count of 1,02,92,648 is marginally below the 1901 count of 1,02,94,090, so two decades of growth were wiped out entirely. 1911–21 is the decade of the influenza pandemic and of famine across northern India, and the same trough appears in every state's series.

1971–81 is the peak, at 32.97%. The fastest decade and the only negative decade are the two ends of the growth story and are asked as a pair.

The 1961 fall in urban share is the standard trap. Rajasthan's urban share dropped from 18.50% in 1951 to 16.28% in 1961, and its town count fell from 227 to 145. The state did not de-urbanise. The 1961 Census applied a strict and uniform statutory definition of a town for the first time, and the Census of India records the same reduction nationally, from 3,060 towns in 1951 to 2,700 in 1961. A question asking in which decade Rajasthan's urban share declined therefore has two correct answers, 1901–11 and 1951–61, and the 1961 one is built on a definition rather than on people.

Literacy over sixty years, and the gap that makes Rajasthan an outlier

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 32, "Literacy Rate in the State" (page A-45), read directly. The table carries its own warning and it matters: the 1951, 1961 and 1971 rates are for the population aged five and above, and the 1981 to 2011 rates for the population aged seven and above. The series is not strictly comparable across 1971 and 1981, which is part of why the later jumps look so large.

Female literacy was 2.66% in 1951. It is 52.12% in 2011. No other number on this page moves that far.

The gap between male and female literacy is where Rajasthan stands alone. At 27.07 percentage points in 2011 it is the widest of any state or Union Territory in India, and it is not a narrow first: the next widest is Jharkhand at 21.42 points, more than five points behind. The all-India gap is 16.3 points. This is the strongest single piece of evidence a Mains answer on gender and education in Rajasthan can carry.

And the gap has a shape. It was 11.22 points in 1951, widened steadily to a peak of 34.55 points in 1991, and has narrowed in the two decades since to 27.07. Female literacy has risen faster than male literacy since 1991, which is the correct thing to say: the gap is closing, from a peak, and it is still the country's widest.

GovtSource: the rank claim was tested by computing male and female literacy for all 35 States and Union Territories from Census of India 2011, Primary Census Abstract, India and States/UTs, State and District Level (file DDW_PCA0000_2011_Indiastatedist.xlsx), taking literates over the population aged seven and above, and sorting. Rajasthan 27.07 points, Jharkhand 21.42, Dadra & Nagar Haveli 20.86, Jammu & Kashmir 20.32, Uttar Pradesh 20.10. The decade-by-decade gaps are arithmetic from the Economic Review's table 32 above.

2. The district extremes

This is where the marks are. Ranking questions come from the ends of these lists, not the middle.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 33, columns 11-13. Verified by sorting the table's own 33 district rows: overall literacy runs Kota 76.6, Jaipur 75.5, Jhunjhunu 74.1, Sikar 71.9, Alwar 70.7, reproducing RPSC's 2024 key exactly; female literacy is lowest at Jalor 38.5, with Jaisalmer and Sirohi tied at 39.7.

Jaisalmer appears at both extremes and that is the fact to carry. It is the largest district by area and the smallest by population, and its density of 17 per sq km is by far the lowest in the state — against Jaipur's 595, a ratio of thirty-five to one. Area and population run in opposite directions across Rajasthan, and almost every density question turns on that.

The sex-ratio pattern is the most instructive. The four highest are Dungarpur, Rajsamand, Pali and Pratapgarh — southern and tribal or hill districts — while the lowest are Dhaulpur, Jaisalmer and Karauli. The tribal south has better sex ratios than the more prosperous north-east, which is the standard counter-example to any assumption that prosperity and gender balance move together.

And the child sex ratio inverts part of that. Jhunjhunu and Sikar have the worst child sex ratios in the state (837 and 848) while having among the highest literacy rates (74.1% and 71.9%). High literacy has not produced gender balance in Shekhawati — a finding worth stating plainly in a Mains answer, because it refuses the easy correlation.

Male literacy has a different leader, and that is the whole question

The district order for total literacy is Kota, Jaipur, Jhunjhunu. The district order for male literacy is Jhunjhunu, Kota, Jaipur. Whoever sets the paper knows that.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 33, columns 11 to 19, sorted across the table's own 33 district rows. The urban literacy list is printed outright in the same document as Table 11.1 of its Urban Development chapter (page 229), and the two agree exactly. State figures: rural 61.4, urban 79.7.

Jhunjhunu leads male, rural, rural-male and rural-female literacy and leads none of the totals. Kota leads total literacy and female literacy. A candidate who has learned one list and is shown the other loses the mark, which is precisely the design.

The urban literacy list inverts the total list completely. Udaipur, Banswara, Pratapgarh and Dungarpur, four of the districts at the bottom of total literacy, occupy four of the top five places for urban literacy. The reason is that these districts are barely urban at all: Dungarpur is 6.39% urban and Banswara 7.10%, so their few towns are administrative and commercial pockets whose populations are nothing like the district around them. Urban literacy in a rural district measures the town, not the district.

Only three districts exceed India's literacy rate of 73.0%: Kota 76.6, Jaipur 75.5 and Jhunjhunu 74.1. Sikar at 71.9 does not, which is the near miss the option sets use.

Rural against urban, on sex ratio and child sex ratio

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Urban Development chapter, pages 228 and 229, which prints the 2001 and 2011 rural and urban figures for both ratios in its own text; the 2011 totals of 928 and 888 are the same document's Table I. The 2001 total sex ratio of 921 is derived from the male and female counts for 2001 in Census of India's Table A-02 for Rajasthan. No 2001 total child sex ratio is printed in either document, so none is given here.

The triple 928, 933, 914 is asked as a triple. Rural Rajasthan has a better sex ratio than urban Rajasthan, and the gap has narrowed sharply because the urban figure rose 24 points in the decade while the rural figure rose 3.

The child sex ratio moves the other way on every measure. It fell in both rural and urban Rajasthan between 2001 and 2011, and rural fell further (22 points) than urban (13). The state improved on the overall ratio and worsened on the children's ratio at the same time, which is the finding a Mains answer should state rather than smooth over.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Figure 11.2 (page 228) and Figure 11.3 (page 229), read from the charts themselves. Jaisalmer's urban sex ratio of 807 is the lowest single figure anywhere in Rajasthan's sex-ratio family. The Economic Review prints no district table for the rural sex ratio or the rural child sex ratio, and none is asserted on this page.

Tonk is the surprise and it is worth the ten seconds. Tonk's overall sex ratio of 952 is unremarkable, but its urban sex ratio of 985 is the state's highest. Nagaur and Bikaner top the urban child sex ratio while sitting near the bottom of every tribal and southern list, so no single district ranking transfers to another.

The density bands, which answer a Mains question directly

State density rose from 165 in 2001 to 200 in 2011. The districts fall into a shape worth memorising as counts rather than as a list.

GovtSource: 2011 densities from Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Statistical Appendix table 33, column 9, sorted and counted across the table's own 33 rows. The 2001 state density of 165 is from Census of India 2001, Table A-01; the 2011 density of 200 is confirmed in the 2011 A-01 table, which also gives the state's rural density as 153 and urban density as 2,570.

Dhaulpur at 398 is the trap in the above-400 question. It is the fifth-densest district and misses the threshold by two.

The five lowest are all western. Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Barmer are the three largest districts by area and the three least dense, which is the same fact stated twice.

Why the map looks like this

Every ranking above resolves into one causal chain, and a Mains answer that states the chain is worth more than one that lists the ranks.

Rainfall sets the outer limit. Density falls away westward with the isohyets: the three districts below 100 persons per sq km, Jaisalmer, Bikaner and Barmer, are the three deepest into the Thar. Jaipur at 595 and Jaisalmer at 17 are thirty-five to one, and the Aravalli line runs between them.

Relief sets the pattern inside the wetter half. The eastern plains carry the four districts above 400, Jaipur, Bharatpur, Dausa and Alwar, while the southern hills carry moderate densities on poor land: Dungarpur is 368 and Udaipur 262, respectable numbers on ground that supports far less per hectare than Bharatpur's alluvium.

Irrigation overrides both, and the canal north-west proves it. Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh sit in the same rainfall band as Bikaner and carry densities of 179 and 184 against Bikaner's 78, because the Gang Canal and the Indira Gandhi Canal reached them. The same canal explains their religious composition, their high Scheduled Caste share and their slow decadal growth, all of which appear separately on this page and are one phenomenon.

Economic activity concentrates the urban half. Kota is 60.31% urban and Jaipur 52.40%, the only two districts where townspeople outnumber villagers, and both are industrial and administrative centres rather than agricultural ones.

Growth rate runs inversely to all of it. Barmer grew 32.5% and Jaisalmer 31.8% from small bases, Sri Ganganagar 10.0% from a settled and irrigated one. Sixteen of the 33 districts grew faster than the state's own 21.3%, and they are overwhelmingly the western and southern ones. Fast growth in Rajasthan signals a low starting point, not prosperity.

3. Urbanisation

Rajasthan is 24.87% urban against India's 31.15%.

The urban population is concentrated where the district populations already are. Kota is the state's most urban large district — of its 19.51 lakh people, 11.77 lakh are urban, the only major district where the urban population exceeds the rural. Jaipur is close: 34.72 lakh urban against 31.54 lakh rural, so Jaipur too is majority-urban.

At the other end, Dungarpur is 6.4% urban and Pratapgarh 8.3% — the southern tribal districts are the least urbanised in the state.

That gives a clean rule for this topic: urbanisation in Rajasthan runs north-east and along the Chambal industrial belt, and thins into the tribal south and the desert west.

The five and five, and the towns behind them

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Urban Development chapter, "Spatial Variation in Urbanisation" (page 230), which prints both lists; the figures reproduce exactly when the urban and total columns of the same document's Statistical Appendix table 33 are divided.

Ajmer at third is the rank a question turns on, because it is neither a divisional giant like Jodhpur nor an obvious industrial town like Kota.

Barmer at second-least is the more interesting one, and it complicates the tidy rule that the least urbanised districts are the tribal south. Barmer is desert, not tribal. Four of the five least urbanised districts are southern and tribal, and the fifth is the largest desert district after Jaisalmer. Both extremes of Rajasthan's settlement geography, the hills and the sand, are under-urbanised, for opposite reasons.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Urban Development chapter, "Cities/Urban agglomeration (UAs) with population of 1 lakh and above" (page 230).

Rajasthan had three million-plus cities in 2011: Jaipur, Jodhpur and Kota, which follows from the table above, Kota clearing the million mark by two thousand people.

These are city figures and the district urban figures elsewhere on this page are not. Jaipur district's urban population is 34.72 lakh; Jaipur city is 30.46 lakh. The difference is the district's other towns. A stem that says "city" and a stem that says "district" want different numbers, which is the same trap RPSC used in 2016 on total population.

Migration, which is what the urban figures are made of

Census 2011 counted 32 lakh rural-to-urban migrants in Rajasthan, about 4% of India's 794 lakh. The reason splits by sex, sharply, and Rajasthan is above the national figure on both halves.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Urban Development chapter, "Migration in Rajasthan (Rural-Urban)" (page 230), citing Census 2011.

This is where the sex-ratio section and the urbanisation section meet. Male migration into Rajasthan's towns is for work and female migration is for marriage, and a town that gains working men faster than it gains women records a poorer sex ratio. That is one reason urban Rajasthan's sex ratio of 914 sits below rural Rajasthan's 933.

Slums, and a figure the state's own table contradicts

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Table 11.2, "Demographic Status of Slums in Rajasthan, Census-2011" (page 231).

The same document gives two different percentages for the same population and does not reconcile them. Its text says slum dwellers are 12.13% of the total urban population. Its Table 11.2 says 16.21%. 12.13% is what you get dividing 20.68 lakh by the state's whole urban population of 170.48 lakh, so the text is arithmetically consistent with the rest of the page. 16.21% implies a denominator of about 127.6 lakh, smaller than the state's urban population, and the Economic Review does not say what that smaller base is. Learn 12.13%, because it is the figure that checks against the state's own urban total, and know that the table row exists.

The concentration is extreme at both ends. Jaipur Municipal Corporation alone holds 3.23 lakh slum dwellers, 15.64% of the state's slum population and 10.62% of the city's own people, followed by Kota 15.44%, Jodhpur 12.29%, Bikaner 5.89%, Ajmer 5.35%, Udaipur 3.13% and Ganganagar 2.44% of the state total. But the highest slum share of any town's population is not in a big city at all: it is Pilibanga at 74.53%, then Jahazpur 63.79% and Kesrisinghpur 61.46%.

On housing, urban Rajasthan is marginally better than India. 68.9% of urban houses are in "Good" condition against the national 68.4%, 29.3% are "Livable" and 1.8% "Dilapidated".

The state's programmatic answer to all of this is on record. Four Rajasthan cities were selected under the Smart Cities Mission: Jaipur, Udaipur, Kota and Ajmer. Against an allocation of ₹3,910 crore, expenditure to December 2025 was ₹3,862.23 crore. Seven urban development authorities (Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Kota, Bharatpur, Bikaner, Udaipur) and twelve urban improvement trusts operate alongside them.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, Urban Development chapter, pages 230, 231 and 239. The four Smart Cities selections are confirmed independently against the Government of India's list of selected Smart Cities. The expenditure figure is up to December 2025 and is part-year.

4. Tribes

Scheduled Tribes are 13.48% of Rajasthan's population — about 92.4 lakh people.

The distribution, which answers three separate questions

The Scheduled Tribe population is 92,38,534, which is 13.48% of the state. It is 8.86% of India's entire Scheduled Tribe population, and Rajasthan ranks fourth among the states on absolute Scheduled Tribe numbers, behind Madhya Pradesh (1.53 crore), Maharashtra (1.05 crore) and Odisha (95.9 lakh), and ahead of Gujarat and Jharkhand.

GovtSource: Scheduled Tribe counts from Census of India 2011, Table A-11 (Appendix), District-wise Scheduled Tribe Population, Rajasthan (file ST-08-PCA-A11-APPENDIX.xlsx), read directly. The percentages are those counts divided by each district's total population in the Economic Review 2025-26's Statistical Appendix table 33, and are therefore derived, not printed. The four districts above 50% are printed outright, to one decimal and with the same values, in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India 2013, Table T 1.20 (page 135). All 33 district rows in the A-11 file were sorted to establish the extremes.

Two districts are not the same fact, and RPSC has already used the difference. Banswara has the highest ST proportion at 76.38%. Udaipur has the largest ST population at 15,25,289, half again as many people as Banswara, because Udaipur is a very large district that happens to be half tribal. Nagaur has the lowest ST proportion at 0.31%. Bikaner has the smallest ST population at 7,779. Four separate answers: a stem that says "highest tribal population" wants Udaipur, a stem that says "highest percentage" wants Banswara.

The 2016 and 2018 key of Bikaner and Nagaur survives the check. Nagaur is lowest by percentage and Bikaner second-lowest by percentage, while Bikaner is lowest by absolute count and Nagaur second-lowest, so the pair is the correct answer whichever way the stem is read. It was never an accident that the same option was keyed twice.

The tribal population is overwhelmingly rural and is growing fast. 86,93,123 of the 92,38,534, or 94.1%, live in villages. Scheduled Tribes grew 30.2% between 2001 and 2011 against the state's 21.3%, and the urban tribal population grew 43.6% against a rural 29.4%, so the small urban share is rising quickly from a low base. The ST sex ratio is 948, better than the state's 928, and it is 951 rural against 893 urban. Dungarpur's ST sex ratio is exactly 1,000, the only figure of its kind in the state; Dhaulpur's is the lowest at 842.

GovtSources: the rural and urban counts, the district counts and the sex ratios are computed from the A-11 (Appendix) file. Decadal growth of 30.2% (rural 29.4%, urban 43.6%), the ST share of India's ST population (8.86%) and Rajasthan's fourth place are from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India 2013. The fourth-place ranking was independently confirmed by sorting the Scheduled Tribe column for all 35 States and Union Territories in Census of India 2011's Primary Census Abstract.

Scheduled Castes are the mirror image, and that is how to learn them

Scheduled Castes are 1,22,21,593 people, 17.83% of Rajasthan, a larger group than the Scheduled Tribes. Their map is close to the inverse of the tribal map.

By absolute numbers the order changes, as it did for the tribes. Jaipur holds the most Scheduled Caste people (10,03,302), then Sri Ganganagar (7,20,412), Nagaur (6,99,911), Alwar (6,53,036) and Jodhpur (6,08,024). The fewest are in Dungarpur (52,267), Pratapgarh (60,429) and Banswara (80,091), the same three districts that top the tribal list.

GovtSource: Scheduled Caste counts from Census of India 2011, Table A-10 (Appendix), District-wise Scheduled Caste Population, Rajasthan (file SC-08-PCA-A10-APPENDIX.xlsx), read directly. The percentages are derived, by dividing by each district's total in the Economic Review 2025-26's table 33; all 33 rows were sorted. The state share of 17.83% is the file's own 1,22,21,593 over 6,85,48,437, which the Economic Review's Table I prints rounded as 17.8.

The rule is one sentence: Scheduled Castes are highest in the canal north-west and the eastern Chambal belt, Scheduled Tribes in the southern hills, and neither is common where the other is. Sri Ganganagar is 36.58% Scheduled Caste and 0.68% Scheduled Tribe. Dungarpur is 70.82% Scheduled Tribe and 3.76% Scheduled Caste.

Two further ratios round out the picture. The SC sex ratio is 923, almost identical in villages (923) and towns (922), against the much wider rural-urban gap on the tribal side. The highest SC sex ratio is Rajsamand's 982 and the lowest Dhaulpur's 863, which puts Dhaulpur at the bottom of the SC list, the ST list and the state's overall list at the same time. Scheduled Castes are 18.5% of rural Rajasthan and 15.7% of urban Rajasthan; Scheduled Tribes are 16.9% of rural and only 3.2% of urban. Rajasthan's towns are, in this narrow statistical sense, very largely not tribal.

GovtSource: the ordering is carried from RPSC's own answer keys and the general southern concentration of Scheduled Tribes. It is not read from a district-wise ST table, because the Economic Review's demography appendix does not carry ST columns and no district-wise ST table has been read directly for this page. Treat the ordering as exam-keyed rather than source-verified, and see the note in Sources & Verification.

RPSC asked for the second highest, not the first — because the first is widely known. The answer is Dungarpur, behind Banswara. And it asked twice, in 2016 and 2018, for the two districts with the lowest ST proportion, keying Bikaner and Nagaur both times.

The whole distribution is derivable from one sentence: Rajasthan's tribal population is southern. Banswara, Dungarpur, Pratapgarh and Udaipur form a contiguous block in the far south, so the lowest proportions must lie in the north and west — which is where Bikaner and Nagaur are.

Correction, 28 August 2026

An earlier version of this page named the Bhil as the largest tribe in Rajasthan and described the Meena as "numerically comparable". That was wrong, and it was wrong on a point RPSC asks directly. Census 2011 records the Mina at 43,45,528 and the Bhil entry, which is a composite of thirteen names, at 41,00,264. The Meena is the largest Scheduled Tribe in Rajasthan and the Bhil the second largest. The corrected figures and their source are below. If you learned the older ordering from this page, unlearn it.

The twelve tribes, and the four that matter

Rajasthan has twelve notified Scheduled Tribes. Two of them account for 91.4% of the state's tribal population and the other ten share the rest.

GovtSource: Census of India 2011, Table A-11 (Appendix), District-wise Scheduled Tribe Population (for each tribe separately), Rajasthan (file ST-08-PCA-A11-APPENDIX.xlsx), read directly. Shares are each tribe's count over the file's own state ST total of 92,38,534. The district concentrations are each tribe's district counts in the same file, expressed as a share of that tribe's state total. The state-level counts are printed identically in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs' Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India 2013 (page 121).

Meena first, Bhil second. The margin is 2.45 lakh people out of 92.4 lakh, under three percentage points, so "numerically comparable" was never the wrong instinct. But the order is fixed and it is asked in that order. Even adding Bhil Mina to the Bhil entry, the combined 42.06 lakh stays below the Mina's 43.46 lakh.

The two tribes are opposites in distribution, and that is the examinable contrast. The Bhil are concentrated: two-thirds of them live in Banswara, Dungarpur and Udaipur. The Meena are dispersed: no district holds even a fifth of them, and they are found from Udaipur in the south to Alwar in the north-east. A Bhil question is a map question. A Meena question is not.

Udaipur is where the two overlap, and that is why Udaipur has the state's largest tribal population. Its 15.25 lakh Scheduled Tribes are 7.18 lakh Mina, 6.52 lakh Bhil and 1.04 lakh Garasia. Udaipur holds more Mina than Jaipur does.

Sahariya remains the anchor for map questions, and now has a number behind it. 1,08,520 of the state's 1,11,377 Sahariya, or 97.4%, live in Baran district, and no other tribe in Rajasthan is held that tightly by one district. They are the state's only Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group. Garasia is nearly as locatable: 97.4% in Sirohi, Udaipur and Pali together, with Sirohi alone holding almost half.

Garasia is also the tribe with the lowest literacy in the state, at 33.1%, against a Scheduled Tribe average of 52.8% and a state average of 66.11%. The highest tribal literacy belongs to the Dhanka group at 70.0%, which is above the state figure. Learn the two ends together: the state's least literate community and its most literate tribal community are both Scheduled Tribes.

GovtSource: tribe-wise literacy from the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India 2013, the Rajasthan block of its Census 2011 individual-tribe table (page 121). All Scheduled Tribes in Rajasthan: literacy 52.8% (male 67.6, female 37.3), work participation 48.3%.

Sansi and Kanjar are not tribes, and the map question conceals it

RPSC's 2013 map question asks a candidate to place Sansi among four "tribal" concentrations. Sansi is not a Scheduled Tribe in Rajasthan. It appears in the state's Scheduled Caste list, at 86,514 persons, with Kapadia Sansi listed separately at 2,600. Kanjar, also commonly taught as a Rajasthani tribe, is likewise a Scheduled Caste here, at 53,816. Neither name appears anywhere in the state's twelve-entry Scheduled Tribe schedule.

GovtSource: Census of India 2011, Table A-10 (Appendix), District-wise Scheduled Caste Population (for each caste separately), Rajasthan, which lists Sansi, Kapadia Sansi and Kanjar/Kunjar among the state's Scheduled Castes; and Table A-11 (Appendix), whose Rajasthan Scheduled Tribe list runs to twelve entries and contains neither name.

This does not make RPSC's key wrong. The question asked which community sits where on a map, and the key stands. It does mean that "tribe" in the stem is being used loosely, and that a separate question asking whether Sansi is a Scheduled Tribe of Rajasthan has the answer no. Keep the two apart: the map placement is examinable and so is the classification, and they are different questions.

What the state actually spends on tribal development

RAS Mains has asked for government policy on tribal upliftment, and the answerable material sits in the state's budget documents rather than in ethnography.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26, "Welfare of people in Tribal Area" (page 75). The utilisation figure is up to December 2025 and is part-year, not a result.

Four programmes are worth naming, because each is tied to a specific tribe or a specific place.

PM-JANMAN reaches the Sahariya and only the Sahariya. The Pradhan Mantri Janjati Aadivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan gives ₹2.37 lakh per house to houseless Sahariya families in eight panchayat samitis of Baran district, made up of ₹2 lakh for construction, ₹12,000 for a toilet and ₹25,290 of unskilled wages through MGNREGA. Against a target of 26,671 houses, 22,416 were approved and 11,411 completed, costing ₹368.18 crore up to December 2025.

Food security is delivered to three named tribes and to nobody else. The Tribal Area Development Department supplies 250 ml of ghee, 500 ml of edible oil and 500 grams of pulses per family member per month, free, to the Sahariya of Baran and the Kathodi and Khairwa of Udaipur. In 2025-26 to December this reached 1.18 lakh Sahariya, 9,066 Khairwa and 3,253 Kathodi.

Maa Badi is the largest tribal education programme by headcount. Against a 2025-26 target of 99,690 students it reached 88,684, alongside 27,925 in Ashram hostels, 4,121 in residential schools and 888 in sports hostels.

Van Dhan Vikas Kendras concentrate on forest produce in eight districts. 517 of them operate in Baran, Banswara, Dungarpur, Jhalawar, Sirohi, Pratapgarh, Kota and Udaipur, with 1.50 lakh women members. Under the Chief Minister's Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, households in 47 Scheduled Tribe blocks get 50 days of employment beyond the MGNREGA hundred, against 25 days elsewhere.

GovtSource: Government of Rajasthan, Economic Review 2025-26: Table 4.4 and the surrounding text on pages 75 and 76 for the schemes, the food security entitlement and Maa Badi; pages 214 to 216 for PM-JANMAN, the Van Dhan Kendras and the Scheduled-Tribe-block employment guarantee. All achievement figures are "up to December 2025" and are part-year.

One boundary is worth knowing, because it defines what the Tribal Area Development Department does not cover. The hill tract of the south-centre around Beawar, Bhilwara, Pali, Chittorgarh and Rajsamand lies outside the tribal area and is locally called the Magra. It has a scheme of its own, the Magra Area Development Scheme of 2005-06, now running in 1,746 villages. If a question asks which southern hill districts fall outside the tribal area, that is the list.

5. Nowadays — what changed in 2026

Covering 1 January to 23 August 2026. Updated every month until Prelims and Mains.

The Census restarted — and this is the biggest development on this page

1 April 2026 — Phase I of Census 2027, the Houselisting and Housing Census, began across India. This is the exercise that will eventually replace every figure on this page.

GovtSources: PIB, Census 2027: World's largest census exercise begins with Houselisting and Housing Census, 1 April 2026; PIB, Registrar General addresses Press Conference on Census-2027, 30 March 2026; PIB, Population Census-2027 to be conducted in two phases along with enumeration of castes; and PIB, Cabinet approves scheme of Conduct of Census of India 2027. The 1 April 2026 release records the exercise as begun, not scheduled — the President completed self-enumeration first and about 55,000 households self-enumerated on day one.

Three firsts worth learning as a set. Census 2027 is India's first digital census, its first with a self-enumeration option, and its first with caste enumeration since 1931. Any one of the three is a clean one-mark question.

Note what began where. Self-enumeration opened on 1 April 2026 in nine States and Union Territories — Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Goa, Karnataka, Lakshadweep, Mizoram, Odisha, Sikkim, and the NDMC and Cantonment Board areas of Delhi. Rajasthan was not in that first batch; its own 30-day window falls within the April-to-September 2026 period, and this page does not state a Rajasthan date because none has been verified here.

The reference date is the fact to carry, and it is not in 2026. The reference moment for Census 2027 is 00:00 hours of 1 March 2027 for the whole country, except the Union Territory of Ladakh and the snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, where it is 00:00 hours of 1 October 2026. Population Enumeration in those snow-bound areas runs in September 2026, ahead of everyone else. Census 2027 is the 16th census in the series and the 8th since independence, which makes Census 2011 the 15th and the 7th.

Rajasthan's own dates are now on record, from the Registrar General's office.

GovtSources: the window is from the Annex to PIB, Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India addresses Press Conference on Census-2027, 30 March 2026, which prints the State and UT-wise Phase I schedule. The commencement is separately recorded in PIB, Field Operations for Houselisting and Housing Census commences in Rajasthan, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and MCD area of Delhi, 17 May 2026, which reports the operations as having begun rather than as scheduled. No release recording the completion of Rajasthan's houselisting phase has been found, so this page states that the work began, not that it finished.

Three further details from the same source are cheap marks. Phase I carries 33 questions, notified in January 2026. Administrative units are frozen from 1 January 2026 to 31 March 2027, which is why no new district or tehsil can be created inside that window. The census covers 36 States and Union Territories, 7,092 sub-districts, 5,128 statutory towns, 4,580 census towns and about 6,39,902 villages as they stood on 1 January 2026. By 17 May 2026, more than 1.44 crore households across 25 States and Union Territories had completed self-enumeration.

What Census 2011 looked like, for the comparison RPSC likes. Its Phase I houselisting ran from 1 April to 30 September 2010 and its Phase II population enumeration from 9 to 28 February 2011, with a reference date of 00:00 hours on 1 March 2011. It counted 640 districts in India, of which 33 were in Rajasthan. Census 2021 was prepared and its field work was to begin on 1 April 2020; it was postponed because of COVID-19 and never held.

GovtSource: PIB, Population Census-2027 to be conducted in two phases along with enumeration of castes, 4 June 2025, for the Census 2011 phase dates, the reference dates and the postponement of Census 2021; the district counts are from Census of India 2011, Table A-01, counted directly. The census is conducted under the Census Act, 1948 and the Census Rules, 1990, and Census is Entry 69 of List I, the Union List, in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution.

What has not changed, and why it matters more here than anywhere else

Every figure on this page is still Census 2011, and that is correct rather than lazy.

Census 2021 was deferred and never held. India's last completed census is 2011, so 68,548,437 remains Rajasthan's official population, 928 remains the sex ratio, 200 the density, 66.1% the literacy rate and 24.87% the urban share. There is no newer census figure to quote, and any source offering one is offering a projection.

This is the single most useful thing to understand about population questions in RAS. RPSC asks Census 2011 figures and expects Census 2011 figures, and it will keep doing so until Phase II data is published after February 2027. Write the year with the number.

The district framework has changed even though the data has not. Census 2011 counted 33 districts; Rajasthan now has 41. The Economic Review still prints the 2011 table on the old 33-district framework, which is why district figures on this page cannot be mapped one-to-one onto the present map.

What RPSC has actually asked

Aggregator Watch

Coaching notes and printed guides carry a good deal of material on this topic that this page does not assert, either because no government source states it or because a government source contradicts it. It is listed here so that a reader who meets it elsewhere knows where it stands.

Practice

• Practice: Population, Urbanisation and Tribes — 44 questions built from this chapter: 36 MCQs, 5 assertion-reason and 3 match-the-following, plus flashcards and rapid one-liners.
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024 — all 78 official questions with RPSC's keys and worked explanations.

More in This Series

• Rajasthan: Location, Extent and Physiography
• Rajasthan's Climate: Characteristics, Regions and the Monsoon
• Soils of Rajasthan: Classification, Distribution and Soil Health
• Agriculture of Rajasthan: Crops, Zones and the State's Standing
• Tourism in Rajasthan: Sites, Visitors and the World Heritage Count — the relief these densities sit on
• Natural Vegetation, Biodiversity and Conservation
• Every RAS Prelims Geography question, 2013–2024
• Caution for Readers

Sources & Verification

Written on 23 August 2026.

The documents themselves

All links were working on 23 August 2026.

The district-wise table is the Government of Rajasthan's own, and this page now cites the current edition. It is Statistical Appendix table 33, "District-wise Demography, Census 2011", in the Economic Review 2025-26 — pages A-46 and A-47 — read directly. An earlier version of this page cited the same table in the Economic Review 2022-23; the table is reproduced unchanged in the current edition, and citing the latest edition is the standing rule. Every district figure on this page — population, rural and urban split, sex ratio, child sex ratio, density, decadal growth and literacy by sex — is from that table, as are the state totals.

The state totals reproduce exactly: 68,548,437 persons (35,550,997 males and 32,997,440 females), 51,500,352 rural and 17,048,085 urban, sex ratio 928, child sex ratio 888, density 200, decadal growth 21.3%, literacy 66.1% (males 79.2%, females 52.1%).

Three of RPSC's answer keys were confirmed against it independently, by sorting the table's own 33 rows. The 2016 population order reproduces exactly — Jaipur 6,626,178, Jodhpur 3,687,165, Alwar 3,674,179, Nagaur 3,307,743. The 2024 literacy order reproduces exactly — Kota 76.6, Jaipur 75.5, Jhunjhunu 74.1, Sikar 71.9, Alwar 70.7. Female literacy is lowest at Jalor 38.5, with Jaisalmer and Sirohi tied at 39.7. The 2023 lowest-growth key (Sri Ganganagar, 10.0%) also reproduces, and the 24.87% urban share was confirmed by arithmetic from the table's own totals.

A conflict between two Government of Rajasthan sources, resolved in favour of the statistical one. The Rajasthan Foundation's demographics page gives the state's literacy rate as 67.06% (male 80.51%, female 52.66%). The Economic Review's Census table gives 66.1% (male 79.2%, female 52.1%). This page carries 66.1%, because the Economic Review is the Directorate of Economics and Statistics reproducing the Census table itself, while the Foundation page is a general profile whose phrasing suggests it was compiled from a secondary description. The commonly taught figure is 66.11%, which agrees with the Economic Review. If an option offers 67.06%, it is following the Foundation page.

Population density is given as 200, which is the Economic Review's figure and also that printed in the India State of Forest Report 2023. 201 is also widely printed; the difference is a rounding of the same quotient and no question should turn on it.

Scheduled Tribe share of 13.48% is as stated in ISFR 2023's Rajasthan profile, which reproduces the Census figure.

Flagged rather than asserted. District-wise Scheduled Tribe percentages are not tabulated on this page — the ordering of Banswara, Dungarpur and Pratapgarh and the identification of Bikaner and Nagaur as lowest are carried from RPSC's own keys and the general southern concentration, not from a district-wise ST table read directly. The Economic Review's demography appendix carries no Scheduled Tribe columns, and no district-wise ST table has been read directly for this page. Precise ST percentages by district are queued for the next revision, and until then the ordering on this page is presented as exam-keyed rather than source-verified. It is flagged in the table itself, not only here.

Added on 28 August 2026

All links above were checked and resolving on 28 August 2026, each verified on its final URL after redirects.

The gap this page flagged is closed. District-wise Scheduled Tribe percentages are now read from the Census's own file rather than carried from answer keys. Table A-11 (Appendix) gives every district's Scheduled Tribe count for Rajasthan, and dividing those counts by the district totals in the Economic Review's table 33 gives Banswara 76.38%, Dungarpur 70.82%, Pratapgarh 63.42% and Udaipur 49.71% at the top, and Nagaur 0.31%, Bikaner 0.33%, Churu 0.55% and Sri Ganganagar 0.68% at the bottom. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs prints the four above-50% districts independently at 76.4, 70.8, 63.4 and 49.7, which agrees to the decimal. RPSC's 2016, 2018 and 2021 tribal keys all reproduce.

A published error is corrected. This page previously named the Bhil as Rajasthan's largest tribe. Census 2011's Table A-11 (Appendix) gives the Mina 43,45,528 and the Bhil entry 41,00,264, so the Meena is the largest and the Bhil the second largest. The correction is stated in the body of the page, immediately above the tribes table, and not only here. The related claim that the Garasia are 6.70% of the state's tribal population is also wrong: the same file gives 3,14,194, or 3.40%, though the Garasia are indeed third largest.

Two rank claims were tested by sorting all 35 States and Union Territories rather than by accepting a compilation. Rajasthan's male-female literacy gap of 27.07 percentage points is the widest in India, with Jharkhand second at 21.42. Rajasthan's Scheduled Tribe population of 92,38,534 ranks fourth in India, behind Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha. Both were computed from the Census 2011 Primary Census Abstract for India and States/UTs.

Where the state's own document disagrees with itself, both figures are printed. The Economic Review 2025-26 gives Rajasthan's slum population as 12.13% of the urban population in the text of its Urban Development chapter and as 16.21% in Table 11.2 of the same chapter. 12.13% reproduces exactly from 20,68,000 over 17,048,085; 16.21% implies a base of about 127.6 lakh that the document does not identify. The same document also prints the 2001 literacy rate as 60.41% in Statistical Appendix table 32 and as 60.40% in its Urban Development chapter; the appendix is the statistical table, and 60.41% is carried here.

On Rajasthan's population rank, two answers are correct on different bases. Census 2011 as enumerated placed Rajasthan eighth, because undivided Andhra Pradesh at 8.46 crore stood fifth. On the state list since the formation of Telangana in June 2014, Rajasthan is seventh. Both are stated on the page with the basis named, and neither is preferred silently.

One derivation is flagged as a derivation. The urban share series from 1901 to 2001 in the century table is not printed anywhere as a percentage: it is the Census's own urban population (2001 Table A-2, Statement 4) divided by the Census's own total population (2011 Table A-02) for the same year. The two files reconcile exactly, rural plus urban equalling the total in every decade, which is what makes the derivation safe. The 2011 figure of 24.87% is not derived and is the state's own.