According to projections made by the United Nations, India will surpass China as the most populous country on the planet in the year 2023. By the beginning of the next year, their combined population will account for over 3 billion of the 8 billion people who will be living on the earth.
According to the estimates provided by the United Nations, India has a population that is somewhat less than China’s, which stands at 1.42 billion.
However, by the year 2050, the nation would have logged 1.66 billion inhabitants, dwarfing its large Asian neighbour, which will lag behind with a headcount of 1.31 billion, according to a statement made by the government on World Population Day.
The UN research rekindled demands for population control in India, where around 67,000 infants were born each day in 2012, compared to just 27,397 in China, which has a GDP that is six times more than that of its more populous neighbour.
“Unfortunately, it is a fact, “As the findings generated media discussions on the need to educate people in India, where the literacy rate is 74 percent, which is roughly 23 percent lower than China’s, researcher Amitabh Kundu remarked the following:
As others advocated for additional employment, skilled education for the teeming millions, and altered attitudes, Mahesh Chandra Mishra, a former head of India’s biggest hospital, adding that “growing population does put strain on all the resources.”
According to an interview he gave to the NewsX television channel, he said that “whatever we develop for X number of people, we then suddenly realise that the number of individuals who would have access to those resources have risen and that is where the issue lies.”
The revelation released on July 11 surpassed the estimates of a state-run body, which believes India would replace China as the most populated country on the planet by the year 2031. This is eight years later than the prognosis issued by the United Nations on World Population Day.
According to the study from the National Commission on Population (NCP), India’s population is expected to remain unchanged at 1.37 billion this year and would not reach 1.41 billion until 2025.
The NCP’s estimates were supported by local experts, who agreed with the organization’s warning that, over the next 14 years, India’s urban areas would see a baby boom while the population of the country’s rural areas will decrease.
“The forecasts made by the United Nations are based primarily on macro concerns, but the demographic projections made by India are far more strong.” “researcher Amitabh Kundu shared his thoughts.
However, economists such as Madan Sabnavis have requested that specialists shift their attention to population-related issues in India, which is plagued by widespread unemployment.
The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has refuted allegations that inflation was making the lives of India’s 269 million impoverished people even more unbearable.
According to Sabnavis, “We are already discussing about how jobs are not being produced at a sufficient pace…that would be the greatest problem for the administration.”
“We have seen the demographic benefits that we speak about might be a demographic catastrophe for India,” he continued. “We have witnessed what could be a demographic disaster for India.”
A furious Hindu monk who is also the chief minister of the most populated state in the nation has warned that “demographic imbalance” might spread anarchy in India, a country where Muslims make up the single biggest religious minority with 204 million people.
Some right-wing Hindu politicians from the BJP, which is the party that is now in power and led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, have the opinion that the local Muslim community has been rising at a greater rate than the other populations in India.
The lawmaker, who did not name the village, was quoted as saying, “The population control programme must go on effectively, but at the same time, a situation of demographic imbalance should not be permitted to exist.”
However, many authorities, such as Santosh Mehrotra, maintained that the rate of fertility among Indian Muslims was comparable to that of other populations.
It is wrong to point fingers at Muslims and say that they are making more babies… It is actually the poor that produce more than the educated class, said Santosh Metrotra, a human development economist, in an online discussion. “It is wrong to point fingers at Muslims and say that they are making more babies,”
According to another forecast from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects report, the world’s population will hit 8 billion on November 15.
According to these projections, the world’s population might reach 8.5 billion in the year 2030, 9.7 billion in the year 2050, 10.4 billion in the decade of the 2080s, and then maintain at that level until the turn of the century.