According to the 2011 census Ballia district has a population of 3,223,642,[REF] roughly equal to the nation of Mauritania[REF] or the US state of Iowa [REF].
Languages include Bhojpuri, a tongue in the Indo-Aryan language group with almost 40 000 000 speakers, written in both the Devanagari and Kaithi scripts [REF].