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Direction: Read the given passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

With 1.21 billion people, India is currently the world's second largest country. India crossed the one billion mark in the year 2000; one year after the world's population crossed the six billion thresholds.

Demographers expect India's population to surpass the population of China, currently the most populous country in the world, by 2030. At that time, India is expected to have a population of more than 1.53 billion while China's population is forecast to be at its peak of 1.46 billion.

India's 2011 census showed that the country's population had grown by 181 million people in the prior decade. When India gained independence from the United

Kingdom sixty years ago, the country's population was a mere 350 million.

Since 1947, the population of India has more than tripled. In 1950, India's total fertility rate was approximately 6 children per woman. Nonetheless, since 1952 India has worked to control its population growth. The U.S. Census Bureau does predict a near-replacement total fertility rate of 2.2 to be achieved in India in the year 2050.

India's high population growth results in increasingly impoverished and sub-standard conditions for growing segments of the Indian population. As of 2007, India ranked 126th on the United Nations' Human Development Index, which takes into account social, health, and educational conditions in a country.

Population projections for India anticipate that the country's population will reach 1.5 to 1.8 billion by 2050. While only the Population Reference Bureau has published projections out to 2100, they expect India's population at the close of the twenty-first century to reach 1.853 to 2.181 billion.

Thus, India is expected to become the first and only country on the planet that will ever reach a population of more than 2 billion.

The census of 2011 reflects that the population of India had grown by:

A) 1.53 billion

B) 350 million

C) 1.46 billion

D) 181 million

E) None of these