Number of houses in India increases 32 per cent in 10 years to 330 million in 2011

The number of houses in the country increased around 32 per cent to 330 million in 2011 from 250 million in 2001, figures compiled by the Houselisting and Housing Census 2011 showed.

Union home secretary R K Singh released the final figures of the first phase of Census 2011, known as Houselisting and Housing Census, in New Delhi today.

Over the 10-year period, the number of houses used for residential and partly residential purposes increased by 60 million, which helped the housing gap in the country, data showed.

Also, there was a substantial improvement in the quality of housing - both in rural and urban areas – with the use of better construction material used for roof, wall and floor, the census report said.

The census has found that 87 per cent of households are using tap, tube well, hand pump and covered well as the main source of drinking water while 43.5 per cent use tap water.

However, only 47 per cent of households have source of water within the premises.

Nearly 36 per cent of households have to fetch water from a source located within 500 metres in rural areas and 100 metres in urban areas while 17 per cent still fetch drinking water from sources located more than 500 metres away in rural areas and over 100 metres in urban areas.

Use of electricity for lighting saw an 1 per cent growth in the 10-year period with 67 per cent of the households using electricity as the main source of lighting.

The rural-urban gap in electricity use has reduced by 7 percentage points to 37 per cent in 2011 from 44 per cent in 2001, showing an expansion of the government's rural electrification programme.

Other major highlights of Houselisting & Housing Census 2011 are:

• Fifty-eight per cent of the households have bathing facility within the premises - an Increase of 22 pts over 2001;
  
  
• Around half of the households have drainage connectivity - two-third accessing open drainage and one-third closed drainage;
  
  
• Forty-seven per cent of the households have latrine facility within premises – 36 per cent with water closet and 9 per cent still using pit latrine. Access to latrine has gone up to 64 per cent in 2011 from 53 per cent in 2001.
  
  
• Sixty-one per cent of households have kitchen facility - 55 per cent within the premises and 6 per cent outside the premises.
  
  
• The number of households using LPG for cooking has increased to 29 per cent in 2011 from 18 per cent in 2001. Two-thirds of the households are using firewood/crop residue, cow dung cake/coal etc, while 3 per cent households use kerosene.
  
  
• He number of households with television sets have increased by 16 per cent while the number of households using radios/transistors declined by about 15 per cent;
  
  
• Less than 1 out of 10 households have a computer/laptop while only 3 per cent have access to the internet – internet penetration is 8 per cent in urban areas and 1 per cent in rural areas;
  
  
• Sixty-three per cent of households have telephone/mobile facility (82 per cent in urban areas and 54 per cent in rural areas) while the penetration of mobile phone is 59 per cent against landline's 10 per cent;
  
  
• Forty-five per cent of the households have bicycles, 21 per cent two wheelers and 5 per cent four wheelers. The number of two-wheeler users increased 9 percentage points while the number of four-wheeler users increased 2 percentage points over the 10-year period. The rural urban difference has reduced from 19 to 13 pt while 18 per cent of the households have no such facility.

Census of India 2011 was conducted in two phases. The first phase, called the `Houselisting and Housing Census' was undertaken a few months prior to the second phase termed as ''Population Enumeration''.

In Census 2011, approximately 2.5 million enumerators and 2 lakh supervisors were engaged in a 45-day operation to cover households across the length and breadth of the country. Information was collected on 35 items and 15 million census schedules were canvassed in 16 Indian languages.