Opinion UN projections on population underline opportunities and challenges, addressing which will require long-term vision and imagination

The UN Population Division’s (UNPD) projection that India will replace China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023, four years earlier than expected, can be sobering. But an alarmist view would be outdated. A variety of metrics — fertility and replacement rates, sex ratio, proportion of the young and old in the country, intra-regional disparities, migration trends — enable a far more nuanced understanding of demographic dynamics today compared to the 1950s when India embarked on its “population control” programme. The use of such analytical tools has led to significant shifts in demographic studies — the discipline has outgrown its Malthusian moorings and population growth is regarded as a challenge, not an emergency. At the same time, however, terms such as “population explosion” remain in popular parlance and are often invoked — largely, and often selectively, by the political class — to convey the sense of impending crisis. Such pronouncements, then, pave the way for coercive measures to limit families. In coming days, policymakers would do well to avoid knee-jerk reactions to the UN agency’s statistics. An informed debate is needed.

According to the UNPD, a sustained total fertility rate — the average number of children born to a woman — of 2.1 is necessary for a country to achieve population stability. The latest National Family Health Survey puts this figure at 2. In other words, India is on course to achieving population stability if it maintains this rate in the next few years — a significant achievement for a country with a TFR of 6 when it commenced its population control programme. Comparisons with China would be misplaced because force was the leitmotif of Beijing’s three-and-a-half-decade-long one-child policy. Governments in India — except for a brief lapse into forced sterilisation during the Emergency — have, in contrast, deployed persuasion and education as tools. Policymakers have acknowledged the need to give women a greater say in fertility-related decisions. Much more needs to be done on this, of course, in large parts of the country, including in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, whose TFR is higher than the national average and where gender discrimination has deep social roots. If India’s estimated 700 million women are forced to remain on the sidelines, the country loses out on ideas and perspectives that are critical for addressing its several social and economic challenges — including those related to population — as well as harnessing new opportunities. This should be amongst the first concerns in the wake of the UN report.

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A population of more than 1.4 billion will require the unflinching focus of policymakers on areas fundamental to human well-being — education, nutrition, healthcare, housing, and employment. The youth will have to be equipped with skills that are indispensable to the knowledge economy. The climate crisis and other ecological imperatives will mean that the footprints of many activities are kept light. Most importantly, the challenges will spur debate, discussion, even dissension, and require that diverse voices are heard. India’s democratic traditions and the strength of its institutions will be needed to navigate the way forward from here.