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Page added on June 16, 2013
India set to overtake China in population
India’s population is set to outstrip China’s as much as 15 years earlier than previous estimates, according to a new United Nations report. But the real concern is that the scary UN numbers could trigger a drastic and counterproductive government response.
“This is bound to cause a kneejerk reaction,” said demographer A.R. Nanda, a former secretary in India’s ministry of health and family welfare. “[But] a state-directed, top-down, targeted approach of sterilization creates more problems, as well as adverse outcomes for women’s health.”
According to the 2012 revision of World Population Prospects, released by the UN on Thursday, India’s population will overtake China’s around 2028. Previous forecasts had suggested that India wouldn’t catch up until 2035 or even 2045.
By 2028, both countries will have around 1.45 billion people, the UN said in a press release. Meanwhile, the world as a whole will be groaning under 9.6 billion people by 2050, as developing nations continue to display high fertility rates.
In India, the danger is that policy makers will see the new numbers as evidence their present efforts to control the population aren’t working and push for more aggressive sterilization targets, Nanda said.
Already, India’s National Population Stabilization Fund has brought back controversial, incentive-based sterilization — which critics say have turned operating theaters into veritable assembly lines. According to a recent Bloomberg report, a stunning 4.6 million women were sterilized in India last year, many of them cut open with rusty scalpels and left to recover on concrete floors.
These programs are founded in the logic of the 1980s, reinforced by the perception that China’s “one-child policy” is yet another example of the great benefits of its enviable totalitarian government.
But Nanda points out that China’s fertility rates were plunging long before the one-child policy was drafted, thanks to the greater speed with which the communist government provided access to health care and education. India’s fertility rates remain higher essentially because it started that process later and has been slower in improving the lives of its people.
“Our voluntary family planning program in India has not been backed up by a base of social development — access to health, access to education, access to employment has been slower [to emerge] than in China. That has been the substantial difference between the two countries,” Nanda said.
12 Comments on "India set to overtake China in population"
Juan Pueblo on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 2:16 pm
I think paying people to sterilize them is an excellent idea. I had to pay to get my Vasectomy and have always thought it should be free. Giving people money or gifts to get sterilized is a major step forward.
Save the world, get a Vasectomy!
Kenz300 on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 2:48 pm
The poorest people are having the most children.
If they can not provide for themselves they can not provide for a child.
Access to family planning services needs to be available to all that want it.
Over populations is the worlds greatest environmental problem and make every other problem harder to solve.
DC on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 3:03 pm
India, the open pit toilet of the world. A festering sinkhole in every sense of the word. India gets my vote for the 1st country to completely collapse, and will probably be the trigger for a much wider crisis around the world. The only sterilization that would be effective for that many Hindus, would be, nuclear sterilization.
BillT on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 3:13 pm
Perhaps religion is part of the problem? It is here in the Philippines where the Catholic Church fights every government measure to promote family planning and condoms. But, if you think this is just a way stop on your path to heaven, why would you care if all your kids starve?
Feemer on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 3:30 pm
I think if the world or at least individual countries want to prevent collapse, then the government is going to become totalitarian. Over population isn’t as bad as climate change from a purely damage perspective, but it is driving climate change and food shortage and resource depletion. Only a totalitarian government will be able to survive because it WILL limit population, FORCE recycling and conservation, and will operate faster without pesky checks and balances *cough* congress *cough*
Plantagenet on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 3:51 pm
Totalitarians like Feemer are creepy. The history of genocide and mass murder carried out by totalitarian states clearly shows they are not something that anyone thinking clearly would wish for.
DC on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 3:58 pm
Do people still believe that the so-called ‘congress’ in the US exists to enforce some kind of ‘check and balance’? All three ‘branches’ in the US of War work in tandem to protect, promote and expand corporate power and wealth, at home, and around the world, mainly through military-backed terrorism. Additionally the notion that the US corporate state works ‘slowly’ is also a quaint one. The US system, when it comes to waging war, gaming the economy, and facilitating the upwards transfer of wealth, moves very quickly and efficiently. It only appears that the US govt is ‘gridlocked’ when it comes to solving problems that the majority of citizens actually care about.
Since the US corporate\oil\military elite have zero interest in any of those policies you refer to Freemer, your ‘govt’s progress(to you) appears glacial, and it is. But that is a feature of your system-not a bug. They dont want to ‘fix’ any of those things, and they wont want to even when circumstances leave no other options.
When the day arrives and the US becomes a formal dictatorship, as opposed to the cloaked one that exists right now, that dictatorship will the same people running the show now. It will exactly the same as now, except with even more mailed fist. There wont be any population controls in the US, or conservation, but corporate rule-pervasive surveillance and all taxes diverted to the war-police-prison-agri-corp-oil. Basically like right now. Who knows, they might even allow your sham congress to keep meeting. They are best political theatre and distractions money can buy.
kervennic on Sun, 16th Jun 2013 6:09 pm
Human have three holes. Two for sex and one for reproduction. You do not need surgery to respect nature.
BillT on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 1:19 am
Well said, DC. Mother Nature is going to do the mass killing this time, I think.
dashster on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 3:04 am
““This is bound to cause a kneejerk reaction”
Better to keep your overpopulation getting worse until you can figure out what to do about it?
BillT on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 6:20 am
Better to not try to change the world until you have done your part.
J-Gav on Mon, 17th Jun 2013 8:03 am
If the article’s 2028 forecast comes true, it means that net energy per capita will be sinking faster than previously expected. Does that sound like a recipe for mainstream economists’ “grow-baby-grow” scenario?