Burgeoning India Must Reap In Rich Dividends Smartly
On World Population Day, Manu Shrivastava writes on how India's population is poised to bargain hard and grab the best
India has now overtaken China to become the world's most populous nation. And, that could have well happened sometime last year itself, feel experts. South Asia already had a larger population — around 1.8 billion people — than China for at least a dozen years and had the shift from British rule not divided the landscape into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, an undivided India’s population would have already exceeded China’s long back.
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| India has now overtaken China to become the world's most populous nation |
Interestingly, it may be noted that India has now achieved a fertility rate of two children per woman, demonstrating that intended drops in fertility can be achieved without resorting to severe and draconian state measures such as China’s one-child policy.
While two-third of Indians are under 35 years, the nation's population will continue to grow for a while. Also, the decline in fertility rate is not distributed evenly across India’s states. In India’s populous Hindi-speaking northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the fertility rates are 2.35 and 2.98 per woman respectively, whereas in several Southern states, the fertility rate stands below the 2.1 children per woman - the mandatory limit needed for a population to replace itself.
Also, across religious, linguistic, and ethnic groups, contrary to beliefs that some groups have significantly higher birth rates than other groups, fertility has been dropping. Between 1992 and 2005, the Muslim birthrate dropped from 4.4 to 2.6, whereas during the same period, the Hindu birth rate dropped from 3.3 to 2.1 children per woman.
Since 1881, India has held a census every ten years. However, the last census was held in 2011, as the 2021 census was pushed back due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Having notched the status of being the world's most populous, with over two-thirds of India's population being of working age, India must seize this opportunity to grow. Despite the unemployment, India is becoming a manufacturer's hub as most vibrant industries like cell phones and semiconductors opting for the country putting India on track to become the third-largest economy in the world by the end of the decade.
For the first time, on geopolitical positions, India has held on to an independent stance instead of backing either the West or Russia during the Ukraine conflict, which won praise even in Pakistan for pursuing an independent policy. Now, most Indians feel their country should follow its own interests and that other major powers are rivals. This attitude is set to be more pronounced in the next decade as India continues to implement its own agenda. The most populous country in the world, with one of the world’s largest economies and militaries, India will push for its interests, values, and goals on the global stage.
Now, India has a population of 1,425,775,850 according to UN projections calculated through census data and birth and death rates and has surpassed China's for the very first time. Also, it's the first time since UN started keeping global population records that China has been displaced from the top spot.
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| Trends suggest, by 2050, only a few nations will account for all of the world’s population growth |
It was at China’s annual parliamentary meeting in early March, that proposals to help address and boost China’s falling birthrate began to flow in. The All China Women’s Federation called for a national publicity campaign to 'advocate a positive concept of marriage and childbearing,' through film and television.
There have been calls for tax breaks for companies that employ more mothers, opening up maternity insurance to college students, free college education for families who have a third child born after 2024 and allowing unmarried women to access fertility services. A worrisome case in point is, in 2023, China’s birthrate fell to 6.77 per 1,000 people, the lowest on record.
Among pro-fertility policies being rolled out, in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province on the east coast, one health insurance scheme is offering couples 3,000 yuan nearly Rs 35,000 as reimbursements for IVF treatments. Concurrently, Sichuan, with more than 80 million residents, removed all restrictions on birth registrations, and dumped rules permitting only married couples to register newborns.
Others offer newly-weds paid leave in an attempt to encourage marriage and boost the birthrate. Data from the National Health and Medical Commission reveals that, in the five-year period, between 2016 and 2021, the number of medical institutions approved to offer assisted reproductive technology increased from 451 to 539.
India will face dilemmas as its population grows. There will be more Indians of working age in relation to the elderly parents they will have to fund, but the leadership will have to be agile to reap the demographic dividend. The demographic dividend is not an automatic occurrence because it would suppose young working-age people who work will need to have work and be productive too. South Korea and Singapore have managed to seize the opportunity offered by the demographic dividend.
Trends suggest, by 2050, only a few countries will be accounting for all of the world’s population growth, most of them in Africa. According to Swedish physician and academic Hans Rosling, the world’s current 'pincode' was 1114, meaning there are very roughly one billion people in the Americas, Europe and Africa and four billion in Asia. In 2050, the code will be 1145, with four billion in Africa and five billion in Asia.
Now, having peaked in the list, the ball is in India's court. India will need to provide the perfect environment - jobs and opportunities - for the two-third of her population below 35 to be able to reap in the rich dividends.
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