India has overtaken China as the world’s most populous country, according to latest UN population estimates. The projections are calculated through a combination of factors including dated census data and birth and death rates. The exact figures show India having a population of 1.4286 billion against 1.4257 billion for China. This is the first time since 1950, when the UN first began keeping global population records that China has fallen from the top spot.
This is a dubious distinction that India has attained. The reason is while Indian population has been increasing phenomenally, its economic growth is declining. The exact size of India’s population is still not known because the present government has delayed carrying out the census. It was due in 2021, but was postponed presumably due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason for the delay seems to be more political than anything else. The BJP-led government at the Centre is yet to announce the date census will commence. This only strengthens suspicion that the Narendra Modi government is obstructing the census process to disguise data that could be politically disadvantageous for the BJP.
One may remember the huge nationwide protests in December 2019 against implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC). The protests against NRC and CAA had touched almost every corner of the country, with many protestors alleging the CAA violates the secular identity of the country while others feared it will endanger their linguistic and cultural identity while alienating certain sections of society. Many would remember Shaheen Bagh in New Delhi which stood as the face of peaceful protests, violence in JNU and Jamia Milia and unrest in Assam and the Northeast. As the protests threatened to throw India into turmoil, Prime Minister Modi contradicted Home Minister Amit Shah’s rhetoric that a nationwide NRC will definitely be implemented by 2024. In a public rally at New Delhi in late December 2019, PM Modi backtracked on the Centre’s earlier stance and said that his government had never discussed about implementing NRC anywhere except Assam, perhaps to calm the nerves of a country on boil. Thereafter, NRC and CAA have been on hold. A nationwide census will definitely bring back the ghost of NRC and CAA, without which it might be difficult for the government to move forward. There also lies the demand of Opposition parties to implement a caste-based census to which the government has not yet responded.
The government’s explanation that the delay is due to an ongoing effort to incorporate technology into the process is not convincing at all. Experts believe the latest release of population figures by the UN could put pressure on the Indian government to undertake the census. According to latest figures, the population has grown by almost 200 million since the last census in 2011. The lack of vital data is hindering policymaking and welfare programmes.
What is worse, as UN figures show, India’s demography is not at all uniform across the country. One third of the projected population growth over the next decade will come from just two states – Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
These two states are among the poorest and they mostly depend on agriculture. Uttar Pradesh alone already has a population of about 235 million.
That population control becomes possible with greater education and economic growth is evident from the examples in India’s southern states. These states are prosperous and have far higher rates of literacy compared to their northern counterparts. The population rates have also already stabilised and begun to fall. In the next decade, states in the southern region such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu are likely to be faced with the problem of an ageing population. By 2025, one in five people in Kerala will be over 60.
This disparity in population growth between India’s north and south may have far-reaching political implications. The country’s electoral constituencies are to be redrawn in a few years from now, based on census data. Many politicians in southern states have expressed concern that their successes in bringing down population numbers, through family planning and high literacy, could ironically turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing for electoral reasons. The southern states may suffer a reduction in their political representation (number of seats) in Parliament and a further political domination of Hindi states that continue to have a population boom may prevail.
Another important aspect of the latest UN population figures is that the average age in India is just 29 and the country will continue to have a largely youthful population for the next two decades. China turned a similar demographic development into a boon using the youth power for an economic boom, particularly in manufacturing. But, India continues to struggle with high youth unemployment with less than 50 per cent of working-age Indians being in the workforce. The figure for women is even lower. Just 20 per cent of women are participating in the formal labour market. This figure is further decreasing as India develops.
It is a sad commentary on India’s growth trajectory that until 1990 its per capita income was higher than that of China, but now it is only about a fifth of China’s. It is ironic that India has become a member of the G20 for its economic growth, while its citizens are the poorest in the group. The richest 5 per cent of Indians can consume the same goods as the average Briton. It is a sign of the times that the latest Lamborghini sports car models, which cost £400,000, are already sold out in India. But 350 million Indians went hungry in 2022, up from 190 million in 2018.
It is time to call the government’s bluff about India’s target of a 5-trillion dollar economy or ‘Vishwaguru’ for the simple reason that in such a scheme of things, monopoly houses, crony capitalists and manipulators of share markets such as the Adanis become rich at the cost of the poor.