Balaghat

With 17,01,698 people at the 2011 Census, Balaghat was the 289th most populous of India's 640 districts and the 16th most populous of Madhya Pradesh's 50. That is 2.3% of everyone living in Madhya Pradesh at the time.

Literacy stood at 77.09%, 4.1 points above the national 72.98% — 7.8 points above the Madhya Pradesh average. That ranked it 217th of 640 districts nationally. The gap between male and female literacy was 16.3 points, level with the national gap of 16.3.

The sex ratio was 1021 women per 1,000 men (90 above the Madhya Pradesh figure of 931) — one of the minority of districts where women outnumbered men. Among children aged 0–6 the ratio was 967, 49 above the national 918.

52.5% of the population were recorded as workers, 9.0 points above the Madhya Pradesh rate. Female work participation was 47.0%, 14.4 points above the state figure.

Balaghat contained 13 towns — 6 with a municipal body of some kind, and 7 classed as census towns, meaning they met the census's urban test without having one. The largest was Balaghat (M), with 84,261 people. That put 14.4% of the district in urban areas, 13.2 points below the Madhya Pradesh share of 27.6%.