July 11 was globally observed as the ‘World Population Day’ in the backdrop of the global population hitting eight billion on November 15 later this year.
The theme of this year’s World Population Day was — ‘A World of 8 billion: Towards a Resilient Future for All — Harnessing Opportunities and Ensuring Rights and Choices for All.’
This theme is an audacious dream, which, if it comes true, will radically change the future of the Earth. And when it comes to India, harnessing opportunities and ensuring rights and choices to all get a lot more complicated.
Stepping back, when on July 11, 1987, the planet breached the 5-billion population mark, the United Nations observed it as the ‘Five Billion Day’. And inspired by its success, the Governing Council of United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 1989 decided to observe July 11 as the World Population Day.
July 11, 1990, was observed by 90 nations as the first World Population Day.
Let us look at the ominous implications of the fast-growing population, particularly for the two halves of the Indian Nation — ‘Bharat and India’.
BUT FIRST, THE PLANET EARTH: THE EXPLODING BOMB
Over the past 35 years, between 1987 and 2022, the global population increased from five billion to eight billion, with the last billion added in eleven years (2011-2022), as per the United Nations Population Prospects. By 2050, it will be 9.7 billion, much closer to the 10-billion mark.
What is leading to such an increase in population?
It can be partly attributed to the unsustainable birth rate and partly to the declining death rate, the latter reflected in the increased high levels of life expectancy at birth.
The key driver of two-thirds of population growth up to 2050 will be the momentum by the past growth embedded in the youthful age structure of the current population. Such growth would continue even if childbearing in today’s high-fertility countries such as India falls at once to around two births per woman.
However, focussed purposive actions to address the growing population may result in substantive reduction of global population growth in the decades beyond 2050.
This population explosion does not augur well for the planet, and more so for India.
The global population is hitting over the roof, despite the population of developed countries in America, Europe and even Asia and Oceana (Japan, Australia, New Zealand) stagnant or shrinking. Latest to join the shrinking population table is China.
In the coming decades, the bigger chunk of the population growth will come from developing countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, led by India, the 50% population growth up to 2050 will be in just eight countries — the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and the United Republic of Tanzania.
In view of it, accurately estimating population trends and reliable forecasts of its future changes, including size and distributions by age, sex, and geographical location, will be central to policy formulation, implementation and a guide to assist Indian policy makers at the centre and states to pursue the sustainable development path.
The fast-paced population growth led by India, if not properly given the desired direction, will become a key causal factor for fast deterioration of availability of basic amenities for a sustainable life, deterioration in the critical core physical and social infrastructure, fast worsening employment gaps and faster growth of negative externalities such as resource guzzling, pollution, and global warming to name a few.
It is true for the world, but truer for India.
What are the core implications for India as the 34th World Population Day just passed by? What are the positives and negatives and how can it be used to the country’s advantage?
THE EQUATIONS
Let us begin with simple equations: 3 – 1 = 2. This leads to the harsh truth that per second, India witnesses three births and every three seconds one death, thus adding net two persons every second to the country’s population.
Also, India, with barely 2% of global landmass at 1.4 billion population in 2022, is the home to 18% of the global population — 16% in 2011 and likely 20% in 2031.
What an inequitable equation and distribution!
And the travesty is that as early as later this year, or in worst case some time in 2023, India will become the most populous nation in the world leaving China behind.
This has severe implications for sustainability and liveability of the nation.
YAWNING GAP
The birth rate and death rate differential in the country has widened significantly in recent decades. Till 1950, the two moved in tandem with resultant slower population growth.
But in recent decades, due to improvement in living conditions, including accessibility to better health, nutrition, basic facilities and education, the death rate is declining much faster with the resultant high population growth.
THE DICHOTOMY
Another key factor is the total fertility rate (TFR) dichotomy in 2021, based on the country’s decennial census and the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data. Washington-based non-profit Pew research centre estimated India’s average total fertility rate (TFR) was down to 2.2, closer to the replacement value of 2.1 and much lower than 1992 (3.4) or 1951 (5.9).
The Pew report also found the TFR decline is across all major religious groups, although in absolute numbers, every major religious group continues to see population rise with the sole exception to the trend being Parsis whose number is dwindling.
And there lies the catch.
As the Pew study illuminates, religion is by no means the primary factor affecting fertility rates, it is the socio-economic level that is the prime mover now. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have disproportionately high fertility rate of 3.4 and 2.7 (even Jharkhand and Rajasthan were closer to UP) in contrast to the TFR of 1.7 and 1.6 in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, respectively.
Another recent study finds, while the poorest households have TFR around 3.2, the most affluent have TFR around 1.5, comparable to that of USA.
Also, in May 2022, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) revealed that Hindu community’s TFR is down in 2019-21 to 1.94 from 3.3 in 1992-93 (NFHS 1), while Muslim community’s TFR is down from 4.4 (1992-93) to 2.3 (2019-21), Christian fertility rate is down to 1.88, Sikh to 1.61, Jain to 1.6 and the Buddhist and neo-Buddhist to 1.3.
It is key to note that since the beginning of the National Family Health surveys in 1992-93, India’s TFR has drastically reduced by 40% from 3.4 to 2.0, well below the replacement level.
CONSEQUENCES
The fast-rising population is the chief hurdle in effectively addressing core problems of poverty, hunger, malnutrition, better quality of health, education, resources and physical infrastructure to make cities, towns, and villages liveable.
WHY THE RISE?
How fast is India’s population ballooning and why? The devil is in the detail.
As per the United Nation database, India’s current 1.4 billion population will surpass China in 2023. It is also expected to hit 1.5 billion by 2030 and 1.78 billion by 2050.
And my sobering finding is that our population has already overtaken China in 2022 because:
One, we do not count our birth, death and the decadal census properly. Counting of slum dwellers and homeless leaves more and counts few.
Two, China’s population in 2022 will actually decline for the first time in four decades. In 2021, it barely grew by 4,80,000 to 1.41260 billion. The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences predicts by 2100, China’s population will reduce to 589 million, less than half of today.
Contrast it with India. By 2030, the population is set to touch 1.5 billion and by 2047, the hundredth year of Independence, it will hit 1.78 billion before the probable reduction to 1.1 billion in 2100.
What is leading to this growth?
Firstly, the inter-state and interreligious TFR dichotomy. Secondly, the contribution of rampant poverty and illiteracy — illiteracy among women which is double than men, coupled with poverty and destitution, fast-tracks population explosion. Also, in destitute families, the additional child is two more hands to add to the family income. Thirdly, the patriarchal society demands a male child as successor to the family. Fourthly, the country’s family planning programme has been a colossal failure. Lastly, the absence of a social security network means more children in poor family to better take care of parents in old age.
BOON OR BANE
In 2011, one-third of the Indian population living in cities and town contributed to 63% of the country’s GDP. The conservative estimate is by 2031, half of Indians living in cities and towns will contribute to 75% of the GDP and by 2047, two-thirds of the urban population will contribute to 80% of the GDP.
This has been the global trend as countries reach higher level of development, the contribution of cities and towns to GDP gallops. As such, the upcoming fast urban growth is the biggest boon for India as well. But our cities and towns are already tethering to the brink to meet even the basic needs of the current population. If we do not fast-track remedial measures, the boon will fast turn into a bane and subsequently bust.
THE ELUSIVE ROOF
The country is woefully short of liveable houses in both urban and rural parts. The Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) was launched on June 25, 2015 to give housing to all by 2022. If the latest union budget is to be believed, in FY 2023, the country will see construction of 80 lakh houses with the allocation Rs 48,000 crore. This is a massive credit linked subsidy scheme (CLSS) aiming to provide pucca houses with basic amenities to those living in kutcha and dilapidated houses by 2022.
The scheme is ambitious, but lack of housing is so monumental a problem that it cannot meet the housing needs of even the population in hand.
GHETTOISATION
The country has more than 70 cities with million-plus population, with 20 of them being two million plus. Not having enough homes in cities is direct invitation to ghettoisation.
The estimates of Indians living in slums vary. Depending on whose numbers one believes, the estimated slum population is between a minimum of 6.5 crore to 10 crore, the more realistic one. These slums are unliveable and shorn of basic amenities, half of them are despicable informal slums unfit for human habitat and as bad as pigsty.
Unless the nation moves quickly to remove the housing deficit for the fast-growing population, a large chunk of population growth in coming decades will add further to these slums.
The country urgently needs large-scale future-ready best practices in-situ slum development programmes and needs to move away from ‘The Slum Areas (Improvement and Clearance) Act, 1956’ whose main focus so far has been slumming clearance and eradication.
THE UNCOUNTED
While, with difficulty, it is possible to have a rough estimate of the number of slum-dwellers, the counting of the destitute homeless in India is more onerous than counting fish in the Indian Ocean.
India census 2011 defines homeless as “those who live in the open on roadside, pavements, in hume pipes, under flyovers and staircases, or in the open in places of worship, mandaps, railway platforms”.
The beauty of this definition is one can merrily go on adding to the list wherever one finds destitute homeless residing in the country.
As per the 2011 census, India had 1.7 million homeless. The homeless in villages (45%) are fast catching up with those in cities (55%).
These destitute live without dignity, basic amenities and roof over their head.
No one believes these official statistics.
At least 1% of the country’s population, 14 million, is homeless and is growing, worsening their already existing subhuman existential conditions.
India is also ironically home to the world’s largest street children population, but we neither have official data about them, nor schemes tailormade to their needs. Their number, too, is growing fast.
If this is the situation today, one shudders to think of the future.
Worryingly, the Bombay Beggary Act, 1959, applicable in most states, criminalises destitution and indiscriminately hauls up the destitute from the street and after sham of a summary trial, imprisons them up to 10 years, in some cases, 14 years.
UNHEALTHY
The sudden onset of Covid-19 threw the Indian public health system in complete disarray. It also exposed the chink in the armour. It could not have been otherwise because as a nation, we barely spend 1.29% of the GDP annually on health, less than Bangladesh and Nepal. The bulk of the health expenditure is borne by the families. In contrast, China spends 6.7% of its GDP on health, while the UK spends 10%.
Our health infrastructure is not even present-ready, with all round shortage – be it physical or human infrastructure. While conditions in cities are somehow tolerable, in villages, the infrastructure barely exists.
The primary health system barely works.
The recent statistics presented in Parliament (Rajya Sabha, April 5, 2022) show 1:834 doctor per 1,000 population.
It assumes 80% availability of registered allopathic doctors and adds 565,000 Ayurvedic, Unani, Siddha, and homeopathic doctors. More worrisome is the case of hospital beds per 10,000 population, the Human Development Index (2020) with 5 beds per 1000 puts India at the rock bottom 155th position out of 167 countries.
THE SERVITUDE
Circa 1991, in the Mughalsarai division of Indian railways, as member of the committee to recruit sweepers, I was dismayed. A majority candidates were graduates or postgraduates and two had doctorate degrees. The only way we could complete selection process was by throwing candidates to the trade test of cleaning human excreta from the rail tracks.
Back to present, the average starting gross salary of a government office peon is equal to or more than what a fresh engineering graduate gets in India’s famed IT majors.
The subject matter of what ails the education system and how fast increasing numbers will span out needs a book in its own right.
Unsurprisingly then, as I describe below, the great Indian population dividend faces the existential crisis of turning into an unmitigated disaster.
THE CURSE
The demographic dividend is supposed to catapult Indian economy to the level of developed countries. But how we handle this dividend today will decide whether it will be a dividend or the ultimate curse.
What is a demographic dividend?
The demographic dividend of a country is essentially a period of few decades when its birth rates go down, leading to a situation wherein its workforce grows at a rate faster than its population. As these humans enter the workforce, find work, earn and spend money, the economy grows at a faster pace than the past.
It is estimated that every year, 20-25 million Indians enter the workforce, but only 7 million get a secured job. More than 15% of the youth is unemployed in the country today, and around 33% of the youth are neither in employment, education nor training – the highest in the world.
EXISTENTIAL CRISIS
Among the trinity of ‘bijli, paani and makan’, humanity can survive without bijli and makan, but not without paani.
The vanishing of the Indus Valley is often attributed to it having run out of water.
The 2018 report of the Niti Aayog had a stark prediction — 60% of Indians are already on the throes of extreme water crisis. Rampant wastage and pollution of surface water apart, India is the world’s largest extractor and polluter of the ground water.
Cities and towns are close to day zero, when they will run out of water. The major destroyer of water is not even human drinking water and industrial needs, but agriculture.
The travesty is India has only 4% of global fresh water to support the needs of the world’s 18% population.
If this is the problem with population today, what will happen when the population grows to the level it is predicted.
There is plentiful solution available — local and global, both dirt cheap and cost-effective. The Prime Minister’s ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission, to provide potable water by tap to 191 million rural households by 2024, is an oasis in the desert and it has already provided water to 30 million households (more than what was achieved after Independence) at a whopping cost of Rs 3.6 lakh crore.
But even the Jal Jeevan Mission can take the nation only this far.
THE STINK
For every 100 MLD water consumed, 80 MLD results in wastewater /sewage. India’s wastewater and sewage system is grossly inadequate. Suffice to say that a staggering 80% of the country’s generated sewage remains untreated and is disposed of in rivers, groundwater, or lakes, contaminating 90% of all surface water.
While big cities have a modicum of sewage systems, tier 2 and 3 cities have hardly any, and for rural India, sewage system is not a priority at all.
Understandably, one million under-five children annually die due to poor sanitation. And the country loses more than 5% GDP annually already on this count.
THE MUCK
It is impossible to assess how much solid waste India generates daily. The rural scene is an opaque black box; as regards urban India, some indications are available.
A dated government data says urban India generates 62 million tonnes of waste (MSW) annually, and the waste generation is growing steadily at a rate of 4% per annum, with resultant likely annual 165 million tonnes waste in 2030.
The bulk of the generated waste is dumped unsegregated at toxic landfills, which are now within the city limits. In some cities like Kolkata, the situation is so harsh that those who stay close to the landfill Dhapa die young before they turn 50.
Further, a significant portion of the daily waste in urban India is lying on the streets or dumped in the sewage system, choking the drainage.
What will happen if India’s population, instead of growing, remains stagnant or shrinks? Even then, with the economic growth and lifestyle changes, per capita waste will increase – it has already happened in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and Kolkata.
Urban India is already sitting on live volcanos — toxic landfills. Tomorrow will be starker if we do not mend our ways today. Cities and towns cannot take the load of waste generated even now; they will collapse with the future heaps of garbage.
The only solution is a quick transition to the circular economy, where waste generation is substantially reduced.
At least one Chennai ward, Manali, has done it. In 2019, it became the first ward in Chennai with ‘zero waste’. Even today, it sends only 10% of its waste to the landfill; its roads are clean and households have reduced waste by half. The Manali model is scalable.
GRIDLOCKED
As early as 2030, 50% of 1.5 billion Indians will live in cities and towns, contributing 75% to the country’s GDP.
By 2047, it will be much more. Urban India is already transport gridlocked — mobility of both humans and goods is severely constrained. If cities and towns have to be growth engines, the future of urban mobility needs to be rewritten, away from motorisation and towards symbiotic zero polluting hierarchy of urban transport, with adequate attention for pedestrians and cycling and parking.
There is only one way out: sustainability. The other way out of the present choked cities is near certain death of urban India.
MISPLACED PRIORITY
If India has to survive and thrive as the most populous country of the world, it has to quickly move away from the present unsustainable intercity mobility (both human and freight) pathway it is traversing — rampant construction of roads, highways and airports, with total disregard to the most environment friendly solution to mobility which is railroad.
In the past two decades in which India is talking about one Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed passenger corridor, China has created the world’s largest high-speed network. High speed for passengers and semi-high-speed time-tabled for freight, with railway also turning first-mile freight aggregator and last-mile freight disaggregator is the right way to go. This is also the right path to traverse to meet the Prime Minister’s target of ‘net zero’ by 2070.
DARK AT NOON
With 15 of the top 20 globally most polluted cities, India is the pollution capital of the world. Its causes are known and so are the dire consequences to the health of the populace and nation’s economy. If India is choking with present population level, what will happen as early as 2030, when more and more Indians pollute more?
CHALTE-CHALTE
It is time for the governments and key stakeholders to proceed towards a well-researched and planned modularly implementable solution before it is too late to harness the best dividend of population growth.
Also, Indian demography has already become a paradox –it is nowhere near fertility replacement levels in the northern and eastern India, while southern India is gripped by a new crisis of ageing population and western India is fast reaching the southern level.
This has led to the twin crisis of too many young people and too many old people concentrated in different geographies of the country simultaneously.
Different types of solutions have to be devised for different parts of India and it is getting late!
Akhileshwar Sahay is a noted urban transport infrastructure expert and President, advisory services at BARSYL, a consulting firm. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication or the company he works with.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News, watch Top Videos and Live TV here.
Comments
0 comment