In the last decade the increase in the population of India, while, of course, very large, was smaller than predicted by official forecasts. With the use of recent census and sample registration data — in the absence of age-specific rates and adequate vital statistics — this paper provides estimates of fertility and mortality through the reverse-survival and forward-projection methods. Birth rates are estimated as 40·5–42, death rates as 18–20, and life expectancy at birth as 45–46 years. Mortality decline had been smaller than forecast but more than during any comparable period in the past, even though current mortality levels, particularly infant mortality, are still high. Males continue to have a longer life expectation than females, with a difference that has widened in the past decade. The decline of between seven and ten per cent in the crude birth rate is largely due to changes in marital fertility and to some extent to changes in age and marital composition. Because of greater decline in death rates than birth rates, the 1961–71 decade shows a higher rate of population growth than previous periods.