Population: A worry no longer?

Actually, I do not have a definite opinion regarding the answer to the question of India's population and its sustainability, though I have stated my preference here. This entry is more in the nature of a public musing. According to the 2001 census, India's population was 102.8 crore (cr). We are poised to overtake China in 15-20 years. Everyone agrees that India is bursting at the seams. So why my title?

Two years later, we will get the preliminary findings of the 2011 census. I expect that it will record India's population as being between 118 and 120 cr. And if that's the case, the tide would have begun to turn. Between 1991 and 2001, India added 18.5 cr people. At a 120 cr population in 2011, the corresponding figure for 2001-2011 will be 17.2 cr. This will be the first occasion since independence when fewer people would have been added in a decade than in the one preceding it.

Also, one of the legacies of the last decade of rapid economic growth has been the massive investment in education. Despite all the inefficiencies of government, we will still end up with a literacy rate greater than 80% in 2011. This has put in place a necessary precondition for rapid decline in fertility.

While the UN still predicts a massive population explosion in India, with a projected population of over 160 cr in 2050 (and still growing), I remain optimistic that we will be able to attain stable numbers of around 150-155 cr by 2050, Population might even decline by the end of the century as the huge numbers of people being born now die off (The highest number of births recorded in a year in India was in the late 1990s).

Is 155 cr a sustainable population for a country of our size and natural resources? Given our woefully underproductive economy (agricultural yields being half or worse than those of developed countries, for example), which can be easily improved, I think we can manage such a population. Obviously we would need to become more urbanised and free up land for forests and wildlife, and remain relatively frugal as a society in our lifestyles. And the impact of global warming (and other presently unforeseen calamities) is a big if. If we had committed sufficient resources to education in the 1960s and 1970s, we would not have been on the path to becoming the world's most populous nation. But we might nonetheless be able to escape with survivable damage.