![]() India is also starting to reckon with the environmental pressures of such a large population on a rapidly urbanizing landscape. Population is "sort of the elephant in the room," says Mukta Naik, an urban planner and a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. That said, India is still trying to figure out how to turn growth into prosperity for everybody – how to ensure the coming generation gets the education, employment, access to healthcare and amenities for a better life. "I think the fear of India's population is probably larger in the West than in India itself," says Sonalde Desai, a demographer at the University of Maryland, College Park, who studies India's population changes. She and other scholars say that is still where much of the alarm over overpopulation comes from. "We see throughout time that those of the upper classes, those of the elite, being very concerned that those poorer members of society were having so many children that they could not feed and care for them adequately," says Sciubba. India's harsh population control measures of the past were often backed by research and funding from the West, and often targeted the poor and marginalized. But it all depends on how the country manages its own immensity. People are increasingly optimistic that this large cohort of young people will drive further economic growth. "India's total fertility has reached replacement levels, which means that two children replace two parents," says Poonam Muttreja, executive director of the nonprofit Population Foundation of India.Īnd in fact, she says, having a large young population can be seen as an "advantage." ![]() That's in part because the rate of growth has fallen dramatically in recent decades. But the country's perspective on population growth has shifted markedly. With about a sixth of the world's eight billion people living in India, some people do still worry about overpopulation. ![]() "We've got this 1.4 billion people in India, and it's up to India to decide whether or not that becomes a resource or a burden." "I think with India, the story has to be, what will India do with its population?" says Jennifer Sciubba, a scholar at the Wilson Center and author of 8 Billion and Counting: How Sex, Death and Migration Shape our World. ![]()
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