India’s first population clock, made up of 10 white numbered cards on a large green metal board, attracts curious passersby who watch it record the story of the world’s most populous nation.
The clock — manually updated every day according to projected estimates, and akin to a cricket scoreboard in appearance — was erected in 1982 when India was home to more than 684 million people, according to the 1981 government census.
That figure more than doubled in the following decades. India grew rapidly to overtake China at the top of the population ranks with more than 1.42 billion people, the UN said in April.
Photo: AFP
“An extra slot had already been made in the clock, expecting that we were going to cross 1 billion,” International Institute for Population Sciences professor Chander Shekhar said in Mumbai, where the clock is.
Overpopulation has long been a concern, with the government establishing a nationwide family planning program in 1952.
However, it was a controversial enforced-sterilization push in the 1970s that sparked public debates and spurred the institute to create the clock, Shekhar said.
Every day, security guards change the numbers using projections of the natural growth rate — the difference between the number of births and the number of deaths per 1,000 a year — derived from government and UN estimates.
“We feel good when we update the board, as passersby can also see the growing population numbers,” 56-year-old security supervisor Salunkhe V.V. said.
The projections estimate that India’s population increases by just under 41,000 people per day — one every two seconds — or about 15 million per year.
India’s fertility rate is two births per woman, just under the replacement threshold of 2.1, and down from government estimates of 4.8 in 1981.
The fertility rate varies across the country, with poorer states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar — boasting a combined population of more than 325 million — having the highest rates, a 2019 government survey showed.
In contrast, the two wealthiest states of Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have fertility rates of 1.56 and 1.54 respectively, far below the average, the survey showed.
Family planning has largely been left to women, with less than one in 10 men using condoms, while female sterilization was at nearly 38 percent, India’s 2019 to 2021 family health survey showed.
Shekhar, 49, was drawn to studying population from a young age, fascinated and “agitated” by large crowds of people everywhere he went.
“I used to hate these numbers,” Shekhar said. “But after I got my master’s in statistics, I thought, ‘Let us understand this, is it a problem? Or can it really be solved?’”
Shekhar said the large numbers do not have to be a ticking time bomb if authorities focus on raising people’s quality of life.
Education and health outcomes — such as falling infant and maternal mortality rates — have improved since 1982, and India’s economy has grown to the fifth-largest in the world.
However, in many cities, residents battle for resources while facing water shortages and air and water pollution.
Youth unemployment for the ages of 15 to 24 stood at 23.2 percent last year, the World Bank said.
The overall jobless rate was 7.7 percent in May, Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy data showed.
Shekhar said a key concern was that “India will become older before it becomes richer.”
“For that [not to happen], we need to have people be skilled, and have employment opportunities for a huge, young, bulge of population,” he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS