Kalahandi

With 15,76,869 people at the 2011 Census, Kalahandi was the 317th most populous of India's 640 districts and the 11th most populous of Odisha's 30. That is 3.8% of everyone living in Odisha at the time.

Literacy stood at 59.22%, 13.8 points below the national 72.98% — 13.7 points below the Odisha average. That ranked it 574th of 640 districts nationally. The gap between male and female literacy was 25.2 points, 9.0 points above the national gap of 16.3.

The sex ratio was 1003 women per 1,000 men (24 above the Odisha figure of 979) — one of the minority of districts where women outnumbered men. Among children aged 0–6 the ratio was 957, 39 above the national 918.

47.7% of the population were recorded as workers, 5.9 points above the Odisha rate. Female work participation was 38.6%, 11.4 points above the state figure.

Kalahandi contained 5 towns — 3 with a municipal body of some kind, and 2 classed as census towns, meaning they met the census's urban test without having one. The largest was Bhawanipatna (M), with 69,045 people. That put 7.7% of the district in urban areas, 9.0 points below the Odisha share of 16.7%.