MMost publications have uncritically accepted the position put forward by the United Nations Organization that India this month became the most populous country in the world. Its estimated population of around 1,429 million is said to be marginally higher than that of China – for the first time since modern census operations began.
The World Bank repeats the UN’s numbers, although it claims to have used multiple data sources – none of which, however, support the UN’s position that India now has a larger population.
Importantly, neither China nor India supports the claim that India’s population has overtaken China’s. India’s population is projected for 2023 at 1,383 million, while China’s census last December put the figure at 1,412 million.
The US Census Bureau used data from India’s Sample Registration System (which tracks things like birth and death rates), migration data, the Covid mortality rate, and possible misreporting of the numbers to arrive at India’s population of 1,399 million in 2023. Matches census numbers with. This is smaller than the bureau’s figure of 1,413 million for China. And Worldometer, an independent digital data company, uses an “expansion” of UN data to give India’s current population of 1,418 million against China’s 1,455 million.
It may sound like a grudge over small differences; If India has not been able to overtake China in terms of population, it will do so in the next few years. “Same difference”, as they say. But it is worth noting that the United Nations has been consistently wrong in its population estimates.
In 2010, it said that India would overtake China by 2021, and that India’s population would exceed 63 million by 2025. Wrong on 2021, and almost certain to be wrong on 2025. In 2015 it said that India’s population would cross 1,700 million by 2050. That’s not likely to happen either. The short point is that the UN numbers on population need to be subjected to scrutiny, not accepted as gospel, because they are likely to be wrong.
More fundamentally, China’s population has peaked while India’s continues to grow. Many observers have therefore pointed to the (potential) benefits India would get in terms of a younger population and larger groups in the working age group, thereby reaping a one-time “demographic dividend”.
But this dividend has been taken advantage of over the past quarter of a century far more than has been talked about. In a country that often touts achievements before they are actually achieved, the tale of a massive waste of demographic dividend is unfortunately likely to continue. China has pointedly remarked that the quality of people matters as much as the quantity.
TeaThe limitation of India’s population growth is itself a result of its failures in education and health care. Even now, an illiterate Indian woman gives birth to more than three children on average, while a literate woman brings this figure down to 1.9. The crude birth rate in UP is twice that of Kerala.
At the other end of the lifespan, the crude death rate in parts of Madhya Pradesh is eight times that of parts of Kerala. High death rates encourage mothers to have more children. This cycle can only be broken by education and good public health care.
A positive development is that the decadal growth rate for the country’s population has declined from nearly 24 percent in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to less than 12 percent in the last decade – and is still low.
Fertility rates in southern and western states are already below replacement level. It is the poorer, less educated, less developed parts of the country whose population will continue to grow for a long time.
But the demographic dividend can be turned to good account only when human capabilities are built up and put to productive use well before the convergence of birth and death rates marks the end of the demographic transition a few decades later. .
By then, going by current trends, India could be an upper-middle-income country moving towards early middle age. For this, it will take at least 20 years for India to achieve the standard of living of parts of Southeast Asia, Latin America, or China, whose current per capita income (using purchasing power parity numbers) is roughly Two is one. Half times that of India.
By special arrangement with Business Standard
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