India's Population Bump
and Its Consequences
Is India's growth rate sustainable and equitable?
by Moses Seenarine
(This article was published on
OpEd News on 08/04/2017)
Growth for Who?
India is a young country
with a fast growing annual GDP of above seven percent in 2016, up
from two percent at Independence in 1947. India's per capita income
rose from Rs. 7,513 from 1950 to Rs. 69,959 to 2014, yet according to
the
World
Bank, it had the largest number of poor people in any country in
2012.
The country's economic
growth is lauded by the ruling class, but is India's growth rate
sustainable and equitable? What is the cost of decades of growth in
terms of environmental degradation and social exclusion? India is
portrayed as one of the world's top greenhouse gas polluters, but
India’s extended period of economic growth is driving energy
consumption, not necessarily its people.
Economic growth has
remained positive since the mid-1970s and has hovered above five
percent since the 1990s. Exports grew from $59 million in 1958 to
over $30 billion in 2013, while food grain production rose from 51
million tonnes in 1950 to 257 million tonnes in 2012. Widespread
belief in a raising GDP is viewed as a solution for all India’s
social and political problems, and the growth rate is the only
indicator of progress to which all Indian politicians pay homage. But
there is an annual negative balance of trade of $13 billion, and
total external debt of $470 billion.
The youth unemployment
rate hovers around 13 percent officially, but the actual figure may
be much higher. The
Rangarajan
study estimated that 363 million, or close to 30 percent of India’s
1.2 billion people lived in poverty in 2011-12. The study considers
people living on less than Rs 32 a day in rural areas and Rs 47 a day
in urban areas as poor. A vast majority of the poor come from Dalit
and other disadvantaged communities.
Population Bump
The median Indian age is
under 27 years, slowly raising from its low of 19 years in the 1970s.
It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29
years, compared to 37 for China and 48 for Japan. The population
growth rate is falling, and the pace of the decline has increased in
the last few decades. The first decade of the new millennium saw
fewer people added to India’s population than in the previous
decade.
Women are the main reason
for this decrease in growth rate. Indian women are having fewer
children, and they are choosing to stop having kids early, so the
mean age at childbirth is falling. The average fertility is 2.3
children, well down from 5.9 births per female in 1951, and is
expected to further decline to the replacement rate of 2.1 by 2025.
The rural fertility figure is 2.5, and in urban areas it is 1.8,
close to the European Union’s 1.6. The urban population is around a
third of the total, around 400 million people. The number of female
births for every male birth in India is very low and just above that
of China, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The sex ratio was 944 females for
1000 males in 2016, but this disparity should start to improve by
2020, when male and female child mortality is expected to be similar.
While the tremendous
decline in fertility rate means that India does not represent a
population bomb, there is a significant bump ahead due to demographic
momentum that can still lead to resource problems and ecological
crisis. Indians already represent a fifth of the world's humans,
totaling over 1.3 billion in 2016, so the current slight value above
the replacement rate translates into hundreds of millions of people
in the coming decades. According to a
2017
United Nations' report, India will overtake China to become the
world's most populous country within the next seven years. And,
India's population will continue to grow until 2061 to over 1.7
billion people, by which time China's numbers is expected to decline
to 1.2 billion.
Consumption Bulge
In 2012, India had the
tenth-largest economy in the world but was the fourth-largest energy
consumer, trailing only the United States, China, and Russia. Primary
energy consumption more than doubled between 1990 and 2011. India was
the fourth largest consumer of oil and petroleum products in the
world in 2011, after the United States, China, and Japan. India
relies heavily on imported crude oil, mostly from the Middle East,
and became the world's sixth-largest liquefied natural gas importer
in 2011.
India's power capacity
increased from 1,323 MW in 1947 to 240,000 MW in 2013. Coal is
India's primary source of energy; the power sector accounts for more
than 70 percent of coal consumption. India's dependence on imported
energy resources and its inconsistent energy sector reform may make
it difficult to satisfy rising demand. Because of insufficient fuel
supply, the country suffers from a shortage of electricity
generation, leading to rolling blackouts.
Due primarily to
religious restrictions, vegetarianism is widespread in India, but
very few Indians follow a plant-based diet in which all animal
products are avoided. Milk and other dairy products are avidly
consumed across a large portion of the country. There are high levels
of meat consumption in Indian states such as Goa, Mizoram, Meghalaya
and Kerala. In Bengal, even Brahmins, whose dietary restrictions are
pronounced, are allowed to eat fish.
India is the largest milk
producer in the world by a good margin, having recently surpassed the
entire European Union, and Pakistan ranks fourth. Milk is India’s
leading agricultural commodity, produced on some 75 million dairy
farms, most of which are quite small. Urban dwellers, being wealthier
on average, tend to drink more milk than rural dwellers. Ghee, or
clarified butter, is an essential component of many Indian dishes.
To appease Hindu
conservatives, 18 states have banned the slaughter of cattle. Three
states require permits for the slaughter of cattle and seven states
allow cattle to be killed. These tough restrictions did not stop
India being a major player in world beef markets. According to the
USDA India was
the
largest exporter of beef in 2014, ahead of Brazil and Australia.
India exports mostly buffalo meat which largely fall outside of the
cattle bans, plus the animals are needed to keep India's huge
domestic dairy industry going. Beef earns India more export dollars
than basmati rice. Further, the country's leather trade accounts for
13 percent of the world market.
Sales of beef, lamb and
chicken in India have all increased steadily over the past six years
and rising wealth is a big reason for the growth. India's disposable
income has surged 95 percent since 2009, and meat consumption has
nearly doubled over that time.
Climate Change Ahead
India occupies 2.4
percent of the world's land area but supports close to 20 percent of
the world's population. India is already experiencing a warming
climate and 13 of the country’s hottest 15 years on record has
occurred since 2002. The former union environment minister,
Jairam
Ramesh, admitted that India is the most vulnerable country in the
world to climate change. For one, no country in the world has the
demographic expansion which India is currently experiencing.
Around 60 percent of
India's agriculture is rain-fed and the number of rainy days have
decreased which lessens ground water recharging. India is subjected
to irregular monsoons, flooding, and higher temperatures. The
Himalayan glaciers are receding which impacts the perennial rivers of
north-India. And rising sea-levels will adversely affect millions of
people living along the country's 7,500 km of coast line.
The reason India is so
vulnerable to climate change is because it is a large country with
many living in poverty, inadequate infrastructure, and lack of
government planning to deal with complex weather systems. Climate
change will exacerbate the risks faced by the country's poor,
including storms, droughts and heat waves. Warming temperature trends
over the last three decades have already been responsible for over
59,000
suicides
throughout India.
High temperatures in the
growing season reduce crop yields, putting economic pressure on
India’s farmers. Crop losses could permeate throughout the economy,
causing both farming and non-farming populations to face distress as
food prices rise and agricultural labor demand falls. With no limit
on global warming, about 30 percent of the region could see dangerous
wet bulb temperatures above 31 degrees C (88 degrees F) on a regular
basis within just a few decades.
By the end of the
century, wide swaths of northern India, southern Pakistan and parts
of Bangladesh may become so hot and humid it will be
deadly
just being outdoors. Such conditions would threaten up to a third
of the 1.5 billion people living in these regions. Most of those at
risk are poor farm workers, outdoor construction laborers, women and
children.
The poor lack air
conditioners, and up to 25 percent in of India’s population still
has no access to electricity. In some areas that have been deforested
for industry or agriculture, the disenfranchised may not even have
very much shade. Women and girls from Dalit and other marginalised
communities are disproportionately affected since they have to go
outdoors to search for firewood, fetch water, wash clothes, and so
on.
Floods and other natural
disasters can affect affects crops, livestock, infrastructure, roads,
electricity, communication links, and more. Abrupt climate change in
South Asia may necessitate cooperation and fraternity with India's
traditional rivals, China and Pakistan. And a belligerent Hindu raj
posturing for votes may prove disastrous for tens of millions of
climate refugees. India needs to remain democratic and collaborative
with its neighbors to mitigate this unprecedented crisis.
The Indian diaspora will
also be significantly impacted by climate change. A vast number of
overseas Indians reside on islands and in countries below the sea
level. Will India allow millions of climate migrants to return from
overseas communities? Diaspora organizations should include climate
change in their agenda and help communities in affected countries to
become more climate resilient.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's
emphasis on liberty, equality and fraternity points the way forward
for India and its diaspora. As he stated, "These principles of
liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate
items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to
divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of
democracy.”
