Most populous nation: Economic potentials and challenges

In the 1970s, India’s government started seriously promoting smaller families with a Hindi slogan loosely translating into “the two of us and our two children,” first coined in the 1950s.
India now has overtaken China as the most populous country in the world. India’s population surpassed 1.4286bn, slightly higher than China’s 1.4257bn people, according to mid-2023 estimates by the UN’s World Population dashboard.
With roughly 2.4% of the world’s land mass, India is home to nearly a fifth of humanity — over 1.4bn people, or more than the entire population of the Americas or Africa or Europe.
India’s last census was completed in 2011; so current data are based on estimates and projections. India added about 23mn babies in 2022, though its birth rate — the number of live births per 1,000 population — has slowed, to 19.7 in 2019 from 24.1 in 2004.
The country’s population continues to grow, albeit at a slower pace.
Last year, China registered only about 9.56mn newborns, the lowest since at least 1950. Because more deaths were recorded, the population figure there dropped for the first time since the 1960s.
India is predicted to continue on an upward trend until its population peaks in the early to mid-2060s, while the forecast for China is a steady headcount decline.
For sure, there are pros and cons for being the most populous nation on the earth. India’s population boom is an opportunity; it can be an economic threat, too.
Not only does India have more people, it also has one of the youngest populations, UN data shows. More than half its population is under the age of 30, with a median age of 28. That compares with about 38 in both the US and in China.
This youth advantage could play a critical role in unlocking economic growth. With over two-third of its people of working age — between 15 to 64 years old — India could both produce and consume more goods and services, drive innovation and keep pace with the constant technological changes.
Here, then, is the flip side.
India needs to effectively address core problems of poverty, hunger and malnutrition; provide better health and education; build infrastructure and make villages and towns liveable.
Federal and state government spending on healthcare is estimated around 2% of GDP, among the lowest in the world. More than one-third of children below five years are stunted, while half of women in the age group of 15-49 years are anaemic.
The country ranked last out of 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index 2022 released by Yale University.
Close to a third of the nation’s youth are not in any employment, education or training. Only 5% of the country’s workforce is recognised as formally skilled, and country’s schools and universities have poor infrastructure and lack qualified teachers, according to a Bloomberg report.
Proactively, India - with its estimated $3.5tn, 60% consumer-spending-driven economy - is already using its growing market power to position itself as a significant geopolitical player. It has held back against joining global sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and continued to snap up cheap Russian crude.
India’s population can be a selling point to companies looking to diversify production beyond China. India is the only nation with a labour force comparable to China.
With more than half of the population below the age of 25, India enjoys a significant youth population that has the potential to drive economic growth in the future.
Longer term, India’s policy makers need to learn from mistakes committed in the past. The shallow, short-term economic thinking should give way to a sustainable, futuristic growth vision to create jobs, lift millions of Indians out of poverty and ensure social inclusion.