social services more difficult to arrange

AFPPerhaps the baby with which India overtook China, born Tuesday

NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 19:20

Fleur Kleinhuis

foreign editor

Fleur Kleinhuis

foreign editor

The time has come: India overtakes China as the country with the largest population. The United Nations estimates that more than 1.4 billion people live in the South Asian country. 1 in 5 people in the world is Indian.

There is no exact date on which India will overtake China. The last time the country counted the number of inhabitants was in 2011. Geographer Robbin Jan van Duijne of Columbia University in New York often works with this data from India. “Normally, population data is collected once every ten years. So it had to be done again in 2021, but that was canceled due to covid. Now there is no time planned for the collection to take place.”

The census is about more than just keeping track of the number of people living in the country, says Van Duijne. “A lot of policy is based on the data from the population census, the census. All kinds of decision-making is geared to this, for example welfare policy. That is now based on data from 2011. In those thirteen years, roughly 250 million people have been added. therefore no longer in line with the actual population numbers.”

Big differences

Van Duijne does not find it surprising that India is catching up with China. In absolute numbers, the Indian birth rate is very high, in China it is decreasing.

But the birth rate is not high throughout India, Ajay Bailey, professor of demography at Utrecht University, nuances. He conducts research on the Indian population.

“The growth is mainly taking place in the north of India. In Kerala, a city in the south, for example, the fertility rate is falling. India is very large, despite those large differences, you still end up with population growth with the average .”

India-correspondent Aletta André:

“There are concerns about population growth, such as the future of the children. Youth unemployment is already considerable and the question is whether there will be enough jobs in the future. Many young people want to go abroad, for example to study. The top universities are so competitive that not all smart children can go there.Illegal migration is also increasing.

Those concerns are not voiced by the government. With the elections approaching, that is not in the interests of the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Modi. Politicians prefer to give the impression that everything is under control: the economy is doing well and it will only get better.”

“The young population, early marriage and little access to contraception are driving population growth,” Bailey says. “But that is slowly changing. Policies have been made to allow girls and women to go to school. As a result, women participate in the labor market, postpone marriage and have fewer children.”

One of the challenges India faces due to its large population is the provision of social services, Bailey says. “Health care, education, employment and equal opportunities are difficult to arrange for so many people.”

“In addition, many people migrate from the countryside to the big cities to work, where there are not enough places for them to stay. The pressure on the cities is great.”

One child policy

Since the 1950s, the UN has been tracking the number of people per country, and China has always been at the forefront. India is not only catching up with China by adding more Indians, but China’s population is declining after 60 years of growth since last year.

This is partly due to the one-child policy. It was introduced in 1979 because the Communist Party then saw the growing population as a threat to economic and social stability in the country. As a result, the country has relatively few young people and an old population.

In 2015, the government reversed this and the one-child policy was abolished.

China correspondent Garrie van Pinxteren:

“The Chinese government is dissatisfied with the amount of attention China’s population decline is receiving in Western media. We are getting a higher quality population, is the idea here, it’s not just about quantity.

But the population decline does cause problems: the social security system in China is still weak, and fewer and fewer young people have to pay high hospital costs for an increasing number of elderly people, for example. As a result, they are even less willing to have more than one child and the population is shrinking even faster. It is estimated that there will be less than 600 million Chinese left in 2100, less than half of today.”

With its young population, India has an advantage over China’s aging population. Bailey: “A young population can respond more easily to technology and innovation. If the right environment is created, for example with employment, then India can make use of the demographics and contribute to economic growth.”

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