The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) of Washington D.C. released a new projection series in September - and hosted an online discussion on October 17 - about the growing population of India. The online discussion was called Will India’s Population Reach 2 Billion?
Realize that 2 billion is a mind-bogglingly large number. The global population is now about 6.6 billion, with 9 billion expected by 2050.
The question posed by the PRB is whether India will reach a population of 2 billion by 2100 … but realize that by then world population will probably have dropped, with some countries losing as much as 40% of their populations as soon as 2050, according to an earlier PRB study. So if India has a 2 billion population by 2100, does that mean this single land area - only 2.4% of the total land area on Earth - will have more than one-third of Earth’s inhabitants? According to the PRB’s recent report (pdf), India may or may not reach a population of 2 billion by 2100. So, clearly, we’re on speculative ground here. Still, the possibilities are … strange for the future world.
The CIA World Factbook reports that India has a population of approximately 1,129,866,154 people, according to a July 2007 estimate. It’s already the world’s second-most-populated country next to China. The earlier PRB study - described in this BBC article from 2004 - suggested that India will overtake China in population in this century. That would make India the country on Earth with the biggest population.
The culprits in this impending population boom in India are young Indians alive today, under the age of 15. This group represents something like 30% to 40% of people in India. Imagine them at child-bearing age - and their offspring to come - populating India’s future. In other words … tick, tock.
India now supports about one-sixth of the world’s entire population, and India has 32 cities with a population over 1 million. That’s in contrast to only 9 cities for the U.S. with a population over 1 million. And, again, India’s inhabitants and their cities occupy only 2.4% of the world’s land area, a land area that is hemmed in on top by the mighty Himalayas.
Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau answered questions about India’s population online last week. He pointed out that India’s population is being controlled somewhat now, since a population policy instituted in 1952. He said that, in most Indian states, the child-bearing rate for women is now less than 3 children. But there is still a large rural population in India, and Haub said ” … sadly, many women in rural areas have little say on their own childbearing.”
With increasing population, India’s demographics are destined to change. The population should shift increasingly into cities, as has happened elsewhere on Earth. A more urban world is a less populous world, since children are not needed to work on farms.
Among other things, Haub said:
Societies in the south of India are very different from the north.
Son preference is deeply-rooted for reason of support in one’s old age and to officiate at one’s funeral.
Providing really effective reproductive health information and services in the villages, trying to involve men, and providing non-agricultural jobs in certain states should help fertility rates drop.
India’s fertility rate is actually declining now, although slowly.
By the way, don’t forget that India is not far behind China now in having the world’s largest population, with the U.S. is a distant third. India and China both have populations of over a billion already. The U.S. population is just over 300 million. When will India overtake China in leading global population? No one knows, of course, but many online sources seemed to agree it could happen by 2050, or sooner.
The portrait of India’s burgeoning population seems very poignant to me partly because, in recent years, I’ve become a big fan of novels from India. If you haven’t read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth or A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, you should. Almost as deeply as if you had visited, these works of fiction reveal an emotional quality to India, a quality of color and tradition, quiet humor and passion, ancient gods, family, a stratified society where rich, middle class and poor people still seem to encounter each other.
Maybe that’s because India is so crowded.
Picture credits: Mosaic and Taj Mahal by Flickr user foxypard4. Population map of India from Wikipedia Commons.
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Having recently written an Earth & Sky program about the looming water crisis in India, the projected population increase there strikes me as very ominious indeed. The more people in India, the more food farmers must produce to feed them. And that means more groundwater devoted to agriculture and less left over for drinking, bathing, laundry and other basics.
Dear Deborah and Friends,
If the people in India choose to keep doing what they are doing now and have been doing over the past century, is there scientific evidence, reason or common sense indicating that future outcomes will be any different from the results we see now and have been seeing for a long time?
Please explain what you think will occur that results in the stabilization of the population numbers of the human species in India in the year 2050, given the fully anticipated young age distribution of the Indian population at that time?
In the year 2050, what do you suppose hundreds of millions of fertile young people, who are expected to be capable of reproducing, will be doing with their sexual drives and instincts other than what human beings have been doing for thousands of years before them?
Thanks,
Steve
Jeremy, I agree completely.
Steve, I think the same population trends that are now occurring in other countries - which are causing rates of population growth to decline in many places - will occur in India. For example, as Carl Haub pointed out in PRB’s online discussion, as India’s population grows, more people will move to cities. In cities, there are more opportunities for women in the workplace - more opportunities for women generally - and less need for large families to help in the fields. Plus there is more access to health information and birth control. Women see other women taking different kinds of roles in society, from what they saw previously in remote villages. Carl Haub and other population experts speak frequently of the role of women in population increase or decrease. When women have more control over their reproductive futures, population rates will likely begin to fall.
Across the planet at this time, these same factors - increased urbanization, education, health care, access to birth control and women taking on roles as equals in society - are at work now, helping to stabilize world population. I have every faith this will happen in India, too. But first, India’s population is destined to increase … because there are so many young people now … and because these population-reducing trends are not fully in effect yet in India.
Dear Deborah,
It is my fondest wish that things will work out just as Carl Haub, George Martine and many other demographic transition theorists suppose they will; and that absolute global human population numbers will stabilize in the middle of Century XXI. There is a lot riding on their widely shared and consensually validated theory and their equally confident way of anticipating the resolution of the global challenges posed to humanity by the skyrocketing increase of the human population worldwide. They really do need to be proven correct by means of skillful and careful examination because apparently unforeseen scientific evidence directly contradicts what has been so thoroughly disseminated and accepted as true.
Extant, unchallenged scientific evidence predicts that the governing population dynamics of the humans species is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species. If this was so, if the human organisms reproduce like other organisms, then the descriptive theory of the demographic transition could be incorrect.
Please forgive me, but it appears to me that nothing less than life as we know it and the integrity of Earth is at risk. Too many leaders and experts appear to have concluded, perhaps erroneously, that EXISTING population-reduction programs and CURRENT trends toward world population stabilization by 2050 are, by themselves, sources of assurance of a good enough future for our children. While all the planning and programming that is being done now is necessary, I believe our efforts are woefully inadequate and insufficient by any standard. Much too little is being proposed for much-needed policy changes and government action plans with regard to the empowerment of women; to universal, free and immediate access to safe, voluntary means of birth control; to adequate family planning and health education programs as well as other vital interventions. Without new and substantially increased commitments to our present approaches to the world’s human population problem, what is being done across the planet in our time may not achieve the kind of future we intend for our children.
Always, with thanks,
Steve
Education is essential in helping to decrease high fertility rates. In Lao PDR, one of the economically least developed countries, the total fertility rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate) has recently decreased from 4.9 to 4.5 (meaning the average woman has 4.5 children in her lifetime). This rapid decrease in their national fertility rate, over just four years, was due to the combined efforts of their government’s Ministry of Women and Children and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Lao PDR (http://lao.unfpa.org/) holding awareness raising campaigns among other related programs. In Lao’s most recent reproductive health survey (similar to a census but focused on reproductive health related issues (http://www.nsc.gov.la/ReproductiveHealthSurvey.htm)) it was found that over 50% of women in their child bearing years wished to prevent their last pregnancy, and/or would like to prevent any future pregnancies. These statistics shatter the potential misconceptions about the need/want for larger families among couples in the developing world. There are of course many reasons around the world for having/wanting larger families, including economical and cultural, but in the case of Lao PDR, many women have been very grateful for the opportunity to have access to modern forms of contraceptive; along with access to counseling about family planning, maternal and infant nutrition and STI prevent. Education, on so many levels, from sexual education in the educational system, to family planning counseling, to safe birthing facilities; the issue of fertility, population, gender equity, education and secure food sources are intrinsically linked. In the international development and local communities, development workers around the world are keenly aware of population related issues and are working to ensure that especially young people, (those under 25) who now make up nearly 50% of the world’s population, are aware of how to prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and pregnancy. Particularly interesting is the Reproductive Health for Youth in Asia (RHIYA) project, a partnership of the European Union and the UNFPA in Brussels working with pilot groups of young people in 5 Asian countries to promote peer education as an essential mechanism in spreading messages about STI and pregnancy prevention and treatment. (http://www.asia-initiative.org/relatedresources.php?area=3&page=0&option=0) India is one of the participating countries in this initiative, and I am confident that with investment in India, with the success of micro-credit imitative, increased education and awareness raising campaigns, that India will be able to continue to decrease its already declining fertility rate.
It is amazing to me that having worked in Lao PDR, seeing with these issues first hand, that in some ways, through the help of international development organizations and non-profits, Laotian young people have more access, in some respects, to helpful reproductive health information than young people in the US do. This could prove to be even larger issue here in the US in the future.
Thank you, Hope. Fascinating.
To Steve above … as you know, I do not believe that - as you suggest - “the governing population dynamics of the humans species is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species.”
How could this possibly be so? We have education … the global spread of information … birth control. We have cultures in which women can take their places alongside men as fully functioning members of society.
Yes, population is the key issue. It’s a fascinating area. Much is being done. Much is being learned. India seems destined for a huge challenge, because of its burgeoning population. Perhaps other countries will stand by India, and help in multi-faceted ways.
Deborah
I think one encouraging trend is the “a href=”http://www.prb.org/Articles/2001/2001CensusResultsMixedforIndiasWomenandGirls.aspx”>rise in literacy of women in India, from 39 percent in 1991 to 54 percent in 2001, according to the Population Reference Bureau. That’s a big step in alleviating the poverty of India’s poorest states, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, areas with the country’s highest population growth.
Dear Hope and Deborah,
Let’s keep at the vital work at hand. Thanks for all you are doing.
Given the huge scale and fully anticipated growth rate of the human population between now and 2050, it seems to me that the population pressures in Laos and India…and in every other country on the planet are problems for the human community to acknowledge, address, and overcome by choosing to work together.
People have to work much more cooperatively, as you are suggesting above, Deborah, if countries like India are to address and overcome the gigantic challenge posed by having so many people within its borders.
Similarly, it seems China is confronted with a forbidding challenge, produced by unprecedented levels of pollution within its borders, that threatens human and environmental health.
Because the evidence of population growth in India (and elsewhere) and of environmental degradation in China (and elsewhere) is so ‘mountainous’ and dramatic, perhaps people in international organizations, national governments, regional and local groups could be persuaded to work together more willingly and ably than we have in the past.
The sheer magnitude of certain converging global challenges that are already visible on the far horizon suggest that the human community will either accept the global challenges posed to humanity by choosing to do what is needed to protect life as we know it and the integrity of Earth or else suffer dire consequences, ones that could not bode well for our children.
Sincerely,
Steve
Population may rise to 2 billion. I think if there’ll be any world war then the countries with higher population will be survived. as the population is spread across the country in India so it’ll be not possible to eliminate this country from map. On the other hand, countries with low population will be easily targeted with few nuclear missiles as the population resides in few cities only.
pradyumn_shrivastava@yahoo.co.in
Pradyumm,
If there were a nuclear war, as you suggest, its effects would spread far beyond cities. Have you heard of the nuclear winter scenario? It was originally proposed in the 1980s and has been criticized. Perhaps its effects were overstated originally … but it is still being studied. Even a regional nuclear war could be a disaster for people not involved with the actual conflict. In 2006 - at the yearly American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco - Brian Toon at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Alan Robock of Rutgers University in New Jersey, and others, presented the results of a study on nuclear war. They found that:
Here is the original reference to this paper: Science (vol 315 p 1224)
We can only pray this never happens.
Deborah
Wow, big change of topics from population to war. I suppose they are intertwined, though. This makes me think of a quote from one of my favorite scientists:
“I don’t know what kind of weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”-Albert Einstein
I can only hope that mankind has more sense than that, and we don’t destroy ourselves. I really hope that this quote from one of the greatest minds in human history can work as a warning, and not a prediction. This brings on the highly political debates about Bush’s “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, which apparently weren’t there. Also on one’s mind is the current possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons. I know there are many people who don’t like Bush or anything he does but I don’t think anyone can argue that something has to be done to prevent a nuclear war. There’s not really a clear cut line as to who should or should not have nuclear weapons (if anyone at all!) or who would be dangerous and likely to use them for a bad cause. I’m sure there are many people who disagree with the U.S. having nuclear weapons (probably everyone Bush is trying to keep from having them), and some of those people might think that if the U.S. can have them, anyone should be allowed, otherwise it’s hypocritical. To that I would say yes, it seems like a double-standard, but I can’t imagine what life would be like now had Hitler and his Nazi regime had nuclear weapons (considering Einstein was from Germany, as he immigrated to the U.S. after denouncing his German citizenship for political reasons in 1933, I think this possibility was luckily escaped due to Einstein’s moral values). The world may be a better place without any nuclear weapons, but countries have them so we have to deal with this situation.
On the main topic of population growth, I think that George Martíne and Carl Haub’s studies on the subject and ideas of urbanization slowing population growth are valid and give us hope for the future. It doesn’t mean urbanizing the world will solve everything without our help, but it’s a step in the right direction. We as a species have to care for ourselves and our children of the future by realizing the problems of population growth and take the necessary precautions of educating people on sexuality and reproduction and we have to be responsible for our actions and their affects on the environment.
Too bad the Pope still clings to the old “Go forth and multiply” adage that will eventually destroy the planet. The end has taken on a synergystic effect that moves closer each day. Too bad we will reproduce ourselves to oblivion and the religious factions are too stupid to realize or care about it.
Ralph, I agree that the Pope and Catholic Church generally need to come into reality on the subject of birth control. I mean, what are they thinking?
But I don’t believe - not for one second - that the end is near. Population rates are already falling in many countries, and smart caring people everywhere are working hard to make the future a better place to be.
Deborah
Deborah, it’s great to be optimistic, but dangerous to be complacent. What do you think about the many countries today that are subsidizing reproduction in order to reverse their declining birthrates? What if more and more nations jump onto this bandwagon in their quest for ever-increasing GDP?
There have alwys been rich and poor people alike, now there is a middle class.
http://img250.imageshack.us/my.php?image=richaveragepoorcs3.png
Dave, I simply have faith in the human species. Humanity has the technology now to look fairly closely at nearly everywhere at once on our planet. We are connected. I just believe that knowledge of each other and ourselves is power … and that human intelligence will have a (slight) edge over human ignorance.
Hi All,
If India’s population reaches 2 billion, I would imagine the india’s landmass would not be able to sustain the weight on indians, thereby spliting off from himalayas and start to sink into the great indian ocean. This may cause Tsunami on either sides of Indian ocean. This can have a global impact. Other possibility, As population approaches 1.5 billion and surges at night over night due to busy indians at work, there would serious shortage of food and water. The whole massive population exodus will take place from south to north asia, just like a wilder beast buffalo migration in africa. Just a imaginary thought.
Thanks,
TheHit Lerman
Dear Hit,
And so goes the species.
Deborah