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India’s Population Will Be 1.52 Billion by 2036, With 70% of Increase in Urban Areas

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India’s Population Will Be 1.52 Billion by 2036, With 70% of Increase in Urban Areas
The five southern states will account for only 9% of the growth. Put together, they will see a population increase of 29 million – half the increase of UP alone.

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Representative image. Photo: Reuters


13/AUG/2020
New Delhi: India’s population is expected to grow by 25%, with reference to 2011, to 1.52 billion by 2036, according to the final report of the technical group on population projections dated July 2020. The group was constituted by the National Commission on Population (NCP) under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with the mandate to provide population projections for the period 2011 to 2036.

India’s population growth rate is expected to decline to its lowest since the Independence in the 2011-2021 decade, with a decadal growth rate of 12.5%. It will decline further to 8.4% in the 2021-2031 decade, as per the report, which The Wire has seen.

According to these projections, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country around 2031 – almost a decade later than the United Nations projection of 2022.


The projections have been delayed quite significantly. “Ideally, they should have come by 2016. But there were delays in setting up the committee and then more delays at the government’s end even after we submitted the report. We had submitted our report in November 2019,” said a member of the committee wishing to remain anonymous. This was confirmed by two other members as well.

Also Read: Why the 2019 ‘Population Regulation Bill’ Has Dangerous Consequences for India

India’s population was 1.21 billion as per the Census of 2011 and the projections now estimate that the population will grow by 311 million by 2036.


Urban population projected to increase sharply

The report projects that as much as 70% of this increase will be in urban areas. India’s urban population will increase from 377 million in 2011 to 594 million in 2036 – a growth of 57%. So, while 31% of Indians were living in urban India in 2011, that will grow to 39% by 2036.

Consequently, the proportion of the rural population will decline from 69% to 61% as the urban population is projected to increase more than twice the projected increase in the rural population.

The state of Delhi, which was 98% urban in 2011, will be 100% urban by 2036. In addition, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Maharashtra, Telangana and Gujarat will all be more than 50% urban, the report predicts.

The states of Himachal Pradesh, Assam and Bihar will continue to be less than 20% urban.

The report does not include projections of the urban population of the seven Northeastern states (excluding Assam), whose total projections have been made as a whole instead of individually. They will see their total population increase by 24% from 14.5 million to 18.09 million.


The most dramatic population shift from rural to urban will happen in Kerala, according to the report, where 92% of the population will be living in urban areas by 2036. The corresponding figure for the period 2011-15 was 52%.

This projected shift in Kerala is because of the methodology that was used for the projections, according to Amitabh Kundu, a member of the technical group and currently a distinguished fellow at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries in New Delhi.

“That’s because the urban growth rates between 2001 and 2011 were used for the projections and Kerala saw a massive reclassification exercise in that period, which led to an increase in the urban population in that decade,” Kundu said.

Between 2001 and 2011, largely due to the reclassification of existing rural areas as urban areas in Kerala, as Kundu mentioned, the total number of census towns and statutory towns increased from 159 to 520. Thus, Kerala went from 26% urban in 2001 to 48% urban in 2011.

So, the growth rate in Kerala’s urban population between 2001 and 2011 – which has been used to project the population growth till 2036 – came on account of a reclassification, which may or may not happen in the subsequent decades.

Also Read: Modi’s Population Growth ‘Problem’ Is an Old Fallacy in a New Bottle

The role of migration

Migration too will play a role in this demographic change in the country and has been considered as a factor in the projection. The Cohort component model, which has been used by the technical group for the projections, has used fertility, mortality and migration.

The report did not include ‘international migration’, deeming it ‘negligible’. It used interstate migration data of the 2001-2011 decade and assumed the rate of migration to and from states to be constant for the projection period.

In that period, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were the major net out-migration states while Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana and Delhi had positive in-migration.

The net out-migration effect is offset by higher fertility rates and large base populations in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. These two states will account for 34% of the increase in population in the country between 2011 and 2036.

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Migrant workers walk to their native places near the Delhi-UP border. Photo: PTI/Ravi Choudhary Illustration: The Wire

Sharp rise in North India, only marginal in South

Uttar Pradesh, which would already be the eighth-most populous in the world if it were a country, will see its population increase from 199 million in 2011 to 258 million in 2036 – an increase of almost 30%.

Bihar will witness an even more substantial increase in this period, with it population projected to increase by 42% from 104 million in 2011 to 148 million in 2036.

As much as 54% of the growth in population in India between 2011 and 2036 will take place in the five states of UP, Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.

On the other hand, the five southern states of Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu will account for only 9% of the growth. Put together, they will see a population increase of 29 million – which is only half the increase that UP alone in north India will see.

Declining fertility rates

UP and Bihar are also the two states with the highest total fertility rates (TFRs) (average number of children born to each woman) in 2011 with 3.5 and 3.7 respectively. This was significantly greater than India’s overall TFR, which was 2.5. States like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh had TFRs below 2.

In the 2011-2036 period, the TFR in India will decline to 1.73 with the assumption that the current pace of decline is maintained. In fact, according to the report, the only Indian state with a TFR higher than 2 by 2035 will be Bihar at 2.38.

The declining fertility rate will mean that the age demographics of India’s population will change with the median age going up from 24.9 in 2011 to 34.5 in 2036. That will mean that the crude death rate (deaths per thousand population) will increase marginally from 7.2 to 7.3.

At the state level, the crude death rate is projected to go up in states like Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu due to aging populations. While in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, the crude death rate will decline slightly.

In India, life expectancy at birth is expected to increase from 66 for men and 69 for women in 2011 to 71 and 74 respectively. Kerala is once again likely to be the outperformer here and could become the only Indian state with a life expectancy above 80 for women by 2036 and 74 for men.

The seven Northeastern states will see a life expectancy of 77 for women and 73 for men by 2036.

The sex ratio in the country is expected to improve from 943 in 2011 to 952 by 2036. Three southern states of Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are likely to have more women than men by 2036.

https://thewire.in/government/india...nment-report-2036-projections-urban-migration
 
Key take away is the India's fertility has dropped faster then earlier projections forecast. If Indian youth continue their rapid adoption of western culture then India should enter demographic decline earlier then forecast, IMO.
 
This chart is based on older data. This chart shows India overtaking China in population in the early 2020's. New numbers show it will be in the mid 2030's. The article is based on recent GOI information.

Just my casual observation but the rate at which Indian youth are westernizing means that these India's fertility numbers will drop even faster looking forward.
 
This chart is based on older data. This chart shows India overtaking China in population in the early 2020's. New numbers show it will be in the mid 2030's. The article is based on recent GOI information.

Just my casual observation but the rate at which Indian youth are westernizing means that these India's fertility numbers will drop even faster looking forward.
You're underestimating the power of UP'ites and Biharis...they breed like insects
 
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India will face a falling population and an ageing one as well.
Yes. But newer data indicates India's demographic decline will start earlier then previously forecast. My guess is that in the 2040-2050 time frame is when demographic decline will start in India.
 
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Slowing population growth means time is running out for India to get rich
Shrinking global population will have positive implications for the environment. But it also means time is running out on developing nations' clocks.
MIHIR SHARMA 27 July, 2020 10:26 am IST
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Crowd at a railway stattion | Representational image | Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg
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The United Nations currently predicts that by 2027, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country. Estimates suggest India and Nigeria will together add 470 million people in the next three decades — almost a quarter of the world’s population increase to 2050. According to a new study from the University of Washington, however, several developing nations may find their so-called demographic dividend much less of a boon than anticipated.

Published in the Lancet, the UW study has improved on the UN’s model by modelling fertility differently and making its decline more sensitive to the availability of contraception and the spread of education. In many parts of India, for instance, the total fertility rate — the expected average number of children born to each woman — is already well below the replacement rate of 2.1 and dropping faster than expected. The study, which also tries to account for the feedback loops between education, mortality and migration, concludes that populations around the world are going to start shrinking sooner and faster than projected.

South Asia, for example, would have 600 million fewer people in 2100 than previously predicted thanks to lower-than-expected levels of fertility. Instead of growing throughout, India’s population would peak in 2050 and then decline to 70% of that number by the end of the century. By that point, China’s population would be about half its current size. On the other hand, sub-Saharan Africa would continue to grow, with Nigeria entering the 22nd century as the world’s second-largest country, behind India and just ahead of China and Pakistan.

For policymakers in India and several other developing nations, this isn’t good news. As the authors of the UW study point out, a shrinking global population has “positive implications for the environment, climate change, and food production.” But it also means time is running out — indeed, may already have run out — on those nations’ development clocks.

China has been truly fortunate in its demographics; it peaked at the right time. Working-age Chinese people, both in total numbers and as a share of the population, crested just when world trade was most open. This made the possibilities for manufacturing-led growth easier to seize than they had been for centuries.

Those countries that come next — India and Pakistan in particular — will confront a more closed world. And, worse, they now know that it is people currently in the workforce, or children in school, who over their lifetimes will have to lift the country to prosperity. For countries whose populations will begin to decline in the 2040s, this generation of workers and the next is all there is: They must, like their Chinese counterparts in the last two decades, push their countries from farm to factory and beyond.

Right now, India’s boosters tout the fact that its working-age population swells by a million people a month, propelling economic growth. If that demographic push runs out sooner than expected, growth will depend on individual productivity, not sheer numbers. That means education and healthcare and similar “soft” infrastructure no longer look like rich-country luxuries. Unless they are put into place within the next decade, indeed within the next few years, countries such as India, Indonesia and Brazil may never become rich.

There are other dangers, some of which the Lancet article gestures at in passing. It is the spread of women’s education and women’s reproductive rights that are causing these declines in fertility. Unless women gain political clout to match, they might well end up being “blamed” for the loss in national power caused by a greying population. Those hard-won rights might begin to be curtailed. In places with particularly patriarchal societies, like much of South and West Asia, this is even more of a danger than elsewhere.

Even the most fortunate countries will need to be careful. By 2050, as expected, China will be the world’s largest economy. But the study authors predict that, as the Chinese population declines, immigration should in theory continue to bolster America’s workforce. The U.S. could again become the world’s largest economy in 2098 — if the country lives up to its ideals and continues to welcome the world’s migrants. There’s no better way to ensure America becomes great again.
 
This study from University of Washington correlate with recent GOI data. Looks like the previous UN forecasts will be off. Indias "demographic dividend" window will closing very rapidly and it may never be able to catch up to China economically.
 
This study from University of Washington correlate with recent GOI data. Looks like the previous UN forecasts will be off. Indias "demographic dividend" window will closing very rapidly and it may never be able to catch up to China economically.
India will not be able to catch up with China or the US in the next 300 years ... mark my words.
 
India will face a falling population and an ageing one as well.
1.52 billion is quite an embarrassing number.

As an overseas Indian, it makes me cringe when other nationalities discuss India's population numbers. If in my presence, I just sit quietly but want to hide somewhere.

People from countries like Lithuania (5 million people) when they meet any Indians immediately perceive us as a threat. As if all 1.5 billion Indians will invade Lithuania at the same time. I try to ease their mind by telling them:

1) Only 60-80 million Indians have passports which means most will not go out of their country to invade your homeland.

2) Out of the Indians with passports, at least 70 percent have never used it. They are too busy in their own lives to plan how to invade your country.

3) Most Indians who travel overseas for work go to Middle-East, South Africa and USA.

4) Most Indian visitors travel to Dubai, Thailand, Singapore, London, Paris etc. The really wealthy ones go to USA.

5) Only xx thousand Indians visited your Lithuania or Belarus or Switzerland or whatever (I always keep the stats with me ready depending on the nationality).

Only after all this does the other person no longer views me as a potential invader,

Many White people grew up on that racist novel, Camp of the Saints.
 
That means a great humanitarian crisis is looming.
 

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