Friday, 17 May, 2024
According to a UN Report, India’s population will rise from 1.41 billion to 1.42 billion in 2023.
Any Indian who watches TV news, reads newspapers or digital platforms or engages in social media is now familiar with the fact: India will displace China a the most populous country in the world in 2023. According to a UN Report, India’s population will rise from 1.41 billion to 1.42 billion in 2023. Predictably, there has been the usual noise about population explosion and how it I proving to be an unsustainable burden for the nation. Well meaning Indian worry about the pressure on resources like land, water, electricity, public transport and housing a India become the most populous nation.
The “Muslim baiting” Indians indulge in conspiracy theories. Either ways, a C Voter-India Tracker survey carried out across the nation reveals that 82% of the respondents are convinced that the population of India is becoming out of control.
This feeling gets reinforced when you compare India with other countries. StatsofIndia is a resource tool that makes interesting use of grafix to explain numbers and data. The chart featured here is one example. It shows which country contributes how many children to every 1000 births in the world. India, with 172 children tops the list by a wide margin. It is followed by China with 103. Within Asia, the other significant contributors are Pakistan (47) and Indonesia (31). Overall, Asia contributes 518 children to every 1000 births across the world. Africa comes next with Nigeria emerging as the third largest contributor after India and China with 57 children. Europe I truly an ageing and fading continent, accounting for just 52 of the 1000 births in the world. The eighth largest economy in the world Italy contribute a meagre three children to every 1000 births. North and South America together do a little better by contributing 106 children to every 1000 births.
Source: StatsofIndia.in
What does the data AY in the simplest possible language for India? The number of children born in the country in 2022 will be more than the total number of children born in the entire Europe, North and South America combined. It Is but natural that such a massive and growing population imposes a lot of pressure on resources. No matter how many schools, colleges, clinics and hospitals are created and built, there will always be a shortage. Even if the economy grows at double digits through some miracle, unemployment will remain a problem. Just imagine: the population of Delhi-
NCR is about 30 million while that of New Zealand is 5 million. Even then, New Zealand was overwhelmed by the Covid pandemic and has seen a drastic decline in economic growth. To that extent, India deserves some credit. But as the next story in this series will how: the worry for India is not the sheer numbers; it is harnessing the skills of citizens to reap what is called the “demographic dividend”. That is something deeply worrying for analysts and policy makers.
