The population alarm bell is really ringing hard for India to pay heed to, but one wonders whether the powers-that-be are concerned. According to The World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights report published by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the world’s population is expected to increase by two billion in the next 30 years, from 7.7 billion at present to 9.7 billion in 2050, with India projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by around 2027. This means, within the next eight years, India could overtake China in terms of the number of heads to feed! This is portentous. The new population projections also indicate that nine countries will make up more than half of the projected growth of the world population between now and 2050, these being India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Indonesia, Egypt and the US – all of them struggling against poverty, backwardness, hunger, malnutrition, and high infant and maternal mortality rates, except the US.
The report says that the resulting changes in the size, composition and distribution of the world’s population have important consequences for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are the globally agreed targets for improving economic prosperity and social well-being while protecting the environment. These goals are to be achieved by 2030. But this seems remote for India as it confronts the huge challenge of population explosion with the concomitant issues of health, hygiene, agrarian slowdown and water crisis alongside. Our political executives, however, are never tired of informing us of our spectacular economic trajectory, rivalling China quite well as one of the fastest – many say we are the fastest – economies of the world. Can this be really achieved, or how meaningful will all of it be, when we overtake China demographically, with so many to take care of in terms of food, water and other fundamental needs? Where are the resources to sustain such population? Shall we be going around cutting trees and ravaging our biodiversity to feed this swelled-up bulk? What about the sustainability factor in our development then? It is these issues that must inform the political leadership of the day at the Centre far more than what it has been thus far.