Projections made by a UN agency on World Population Day on Monday suggest that India will overtake China as the most populous nation in less than a year. Statistics available with Indian official agencies also suggest a similar outcome. The main reason for this is the rapid decline in China's population growth rate, compared to India. The growth rate in China is expected to decline further by next year when there will be only 1.15 children per woman. Incidentally, 2.1 children per woman is considered the replacement rate, ie the rate at which the population stabilises. Fearful of the population decline, China has abandoned its one-child norm and has been encouraging parents to have two or more children. By the year 2050, India is projected to have a population of 1.6668 billion against China’s 1.317 billion. From 2011 when the Indian population stood at 1.2 billion, it has been growing at roughly 1 per cent per year. Half the growth of population during the next 30 years will be accounted for by eight countries, including India and Pakistan. It is certainly heartening that the world population growth rate has shown the slowest growth since 1950, but world population will still touch 8 billion by November. India has achieved considerable progress in containing the population growth rate, leaving the decision to the people themselves (except in some areas during the Emergency), unlike China, which compulsorily enforced the one-child norm. True, the NDA government has introduced some disincentives but they are too early to make an impact. Clearly, the Indian experiment in “family welfare” proves that education and economic progress are the most effective contraceptives, not any of the usual temporary and permanent methods that doctors suggest. However, the progress has been uneven. For instance, states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh, which have better literacy, have lower population growth rates than laggards like Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
One thing that has been worrying the Chinese authorities is that the decline in population growth rate would reduce the number of the able-bodied, who are more productive than the elderly. The ageing population is a problem affecting developed countries like Japan and Germany, where the population growth rate is far below the replacement rate. China, considered the world’s factory, is especially worried about losing what is called its demographic dividend. True, India can look forward to having the benefit of demographic dividend for some more years, as it has a younger population than China. On the other hand, India has to think of ways to support as large a population as 1.7 billion by 2050. There are, alas, no shortcuts, except the one tried out unsuccessfully by China. The only way out is to increase productivity and the economic growth rate. However, this is easier said than done. Realistically speaking, it is a myth that India enjoys a great demographic dividend. True, India has a large number of young people but what is the percentage of those who are employable? When knowledge is considered power and technology matters much more than physical labour, it is not a great advantage to have a large army of unemployable people who need to be fed. In other words, there would be growing pressure on depleting resources. Two years of Covid-19 have adversely affected the education of tens of millions of poor students. It is a Herculean task to help them make up the educational loss they suffered. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has expressed his apprehension about the high growth rate of a particular community, little realising that the community in question, too, controlled its population growth rate when it benefited from education, as in Kerala.
It is the poor and the uneducated, irrespective of caste or creed, who produce more children. That Bangladesh has succeeded where India has failed is a pointer to the fact that education is the best antidote to the excessive growth of population. If India has to benefit from the demographic dividend, its younger generation has to be educated and skilled so that they become partners in the economic growth of the nation. Every young man and woman should feel involved in this process. The world, especially the Western world, sees India as a storehouse of technical skill and knowledge. A shift of their factories from China to India is possible and is happening. The advantage can however be squandered if the young are misguided by passions that have no bearing in a modern, secular, democratic state. It is pointless to blame the past for the ills of the present, when our focus should be on making the future better for coming generations. A policy that truly takes advantage of the demographic dividend is the need of the hour.
