India Becomes World’s Most Populous

One, two, three, or eleven….

How many children are born into the average Indian family depends heavily on the region in which the family resides and the level of that state’s economic development. This month India’s total population will surpass that of China making it the most populous country on earth, according to demographic experts at the United Nations. China first became the most populous country in 221BC when Qin rulers unified the territory. Although it lost the title during the height of the Roman Empire, and again for a short period during the British rule in India, it appears that China’s “One Child Policy” has doomed its future generations to long-term secondary status. India, a democracy, reformed its more extreme population control policies in time, long before China recognized its downward trajectory and relented on its draconian rules. Although India’s population curve is flattening like that of many developed countries, it appears to have escaped the dire demographic future facing China.

“This demographic milestone, however, masks dramatically divergent trajectories inside India, with fertility rates varying sharply from state to state,” says Gerry Shih and Karishma Mehrotra in a Friday Washington Post story. In Tamu Nadu, India’s southernmost state, the population rate is similar to that of the United States and Sweden. Families have an average of 1.8 children. The area is known for its factories, car manufacturing plants, and iPhones. The story is quite different in northeast India’s agrarian Bihar state where women have an average of three children and 40% marry as teenagers.

India’s bifurcation between north and south, rural and urban, and small and large families has transformed the country into two very different looking places and frustrated Indian leaders and policymakers. The demographic gap has grown larger over the last 40 years. Today, Indian leaders are addressing the issue.

In the southern region there are more high paying jobs which help provide an improved social status for women and increase the average family’s wealth and living conditions. There is better access to family planning services, too. “The India of the south already resembles East Asia. It’s actually in the early stages of aging. But the Hindi heartland is still very much booming,” says Arvind Subramanian, India’s chief economic adviser between 2014 and 2018. He sees the divergence between north and south as an opportunity for India to apportion its federal spending to provide jobs for the poor in less developed areas. The result, he argues, will grow the Indian economy.

Within the next seven years India is expected to overtake Germany’s economy in size. The European state still faces a gender gap in salaries with women making almost one-third less than men, despite its 1.58 birthrate and developed economic status. India is facing a similar situation. Economic modernization in southern India in the late 1980’s flourished. By 1990’s fear of a population bomb in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala had ended as the region dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family. by 2021, all of India dropped to a rate similar to that of the United States, which has 1.8 children in an average family. India’s population problems are easing. It is not expected to experience a decrease in total population until after 2060. In comparison, it is expected that China’s population by that same time will be less than half of what it is today and with a higher percentage of it retired and not actively contributing to economic production.

Gerry Shih and Karishma Mehrotra note that Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the nonprofit Population Foundation of India, says “Where governance has been good, where women’s education and literacy are better, where public health services are better, you’ll see naturally lower population growth rates.” India’s richer states also pay women to use IUD’s and be sterilized. The argument is that this encourages a woman to become educated rather than married at a young age. Is it working? A 2021 national family survey indicates that in the wealthier states 84% of women are literate, compared to 55% in the poorer northern state of Bihar. The gender preference gap is also narrowing as Prime Minister Modi’s administration created a large campaign to discourage sex-selection abortions.

Today 19.2 percent of married Bihari women are employed outside the home. The government sees education as a major part of the effort to reduce poverty in the future and expand the economic wealth across the country. Cultural change regarding attitudes toward family size takes time, something China ran out of several years ago. Although conservative values still dominate northern India, it appears that there is some hope the government’s message is getting through as family size has decreased over the last five years. Closing the North-South economic gap may be creating short-term contentious domestic politics, as workers in the south dislike their tax dollars leaving the region. In the long run, however, India’s decision to reduce poverty in the north and improve education for women bides well for aiding India’s modernization.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Department

Photo: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

U.S. Nuclear Modernization is Urgent Priority

The undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force, Melissa Dalton, warns that “With two nuclear-armed peer competitors — Russia and China — and with both advancing their nuclear capability, the U.S. now, more than ever, must move at full speed to modernize its nuclear deterrence capability. That effort is not just for U.S. national security, but as well for partners who depend on the U.S.” She stressed that the threat from aggressive, unfriendly nuclear armed nations is unprecedented. “We face for the first time in our nation’s history, two strategic competitors that are nuclear states with large and growing nuclear arsenals. When we look at the [People’s Republic of China] and its breathtaking modernization over the last two decades, we see today they have over 500 operational nuclear warheads, far exceeding prior projections.” Some suspect that China’s nuclear force may even be larger than commonly believed. According to recent Pentagon report, “Over the next decade, the PRC will continue to rapidly modernize, diversify, and expand its nuclear forces. Compared to the PLA’s nuclear modernization efforts a decade ago, current efforts dwarf previous attempts in both scale and complexity. The PRC is expanding the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms while investing in and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support further expansion of its nuclear forces. The Undersecretary noted that in coming years, the U.S. expects China’s warheads to exceed 1,000. Russia, the worlds preeminent nuclear power, also remains a challenge. “We see Russia brandishing its nuclear weapons in the context of the Ukraine conflict and also possessing novel nuclear capabilities that are designed to challenge our escalation calculus.The stakes are incredibly high.” Dalton noted that During the Cold War, the U.S. maintained top-notch nuclear deterrence, and the domestic defense industry stood ready to provide whatever was needed. But since the fall of the Soviet Union, and with the U.S. focused on other parts of the world for the past 20-plus years, the U.S. must now up its game. “We mortgaged our nuclear modernization for 30 years. We had the post-Cold War peace dividend… But the fact is, the bills are now way past due, and in that time, our competitors went to school on us, and they caught up.” With U.S. defense underpinned by its nuclear deterrent, modernization of that capability is a top priority for the Department of Defense, she stressed. Air Force Gen. Anthony Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said that while two-thirds of the nuclear triad, the ground systems and the aircraft-based systems belong to the Air Force — the submarine systems belong to the Navy — modernization is not just an Air Force effort or even just a Navy effort. “It is imperative that we understand that it’s not a Department [of Defense] imperative that we maintain the nuclear security and nuclear triad,” he said. “It is a national imperative. It’s national policy that the foundation of what we hold dear, the framework of that is nuclear deterrence. And to add to that, and I’ve seen this in the last 19 months of being in command, our allies and partners are counting on us more than ever.” Last year, Senator John Kennedy (R-La) warned that “Today, we no longer face just one threat. Russia still maintains the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, but China’s nuclear stockpile is growing rapidly. North Korea continues to threaten our allies with its collection of nuclear weapons. And, thanks to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal, Iran is marching ever closer to developing nuclear weapons of its own. The United States must now counter nuclear superpowers in both China and Russia while also deterring the itchy trigger fingers of unstable dictators like Kim Jong Un and the Ayatollah in Iran. We should be innovating and preparing our nuclear arsenal for this new global dynamic, but instead, our nuclear stockpile remains stuck in the Cold War. Simply put: America’s nuclear stockpile is old and shrinking. And while modernizing our nuclear arsenal should be a top priority, our effort to restart nuclear weapon production has been riddled with delays and poor planning. And we don’t have time to waste.” Photo: A Titan II missile on display inside the missile silo at Missile Site 8 in Green Valley, Ariz. (DoD)