By Bitan Bhadra
Three decades back, Indian and Chinese policy makers and demography experts were worried about population explosion in their respective countries and its consequences. A huge population meant the need of creating more jobs and also creating more resources to feed the expanding population. This in turn would ask for increased growth rates and increased investments. China very successfully introduced the one child per family norm and effectively accomplished it. While all while, India struggled to arrive at two children per family norm and failed at it miserably. Interestingly though, two decades later, today Chinese agencies are concerned about their population while India is not.
Two decades of population checks have deprived china of a young population and its number of youth today is very low in accordance to its total population. Chinas population is aging slowly and the next generation of young working class coming up is only about 30 percent of its total population. What it means is that this narrow population of working class will have to sustain a huge retired elderly class and their next upcoming generation. This will turn out to be a huge complication for the society. Chinese policy makers and researchers are increasingly worried about the same and recently after three decades, finally abolished the one-child policy. Chinese authorities are now encouraging new couples to come up with more than one child, but the Chinese population having realized the merits of small families that include most importantly reduced expenditure and more savings are reluctant to pay heed. The lower count of working class will face not only financial problems, but the reduced numbers will form a crunch in industrial manpower of the hugely industrialized country. This in turn threatens the economy. The future economics and demographics of china both hang in balance.
On the other hand, across the border, India that had failed in its efforts of curbing the menace of population explosion has ended with a huge youth pool. Every third person in an Indian city today is a youth. In about seven years, the median individual in India will be 29 years, making it the youngest country in the world. The burden of past has transpired into a boon of the future. The increased growth rates of the past two decades and the rising economy that aims to be an economic superpower has this huge young population to its advantage. Already a huge market of services, the rising industrialization of the country has population, quality education and huge number of technical institutions to its advantage. The future of India is much secure in terms of demographics that would support its financial aspirations. As a matter of fact Indian policy makers and authorities have loosened up their population control and family planning initiatives considerably.
This is very interesting research of demographics of how a country that successfully carried out its population strategies have to struggle now, while another, which failed miserably, is ironically living on the benefits of failure.
Bitan Bhadra is a mechanical engineering student from KIIT University. His areas of interest include politics, international affairs, social systems and economics. He is optimistic of India and its future. He has previously written in many platforms on various issues. He is also an avid traveler, trekker and chess player.