Qué implica para el mundo que India sobrepase a China y se convierta en el país más poblado en 2023

The best-known, and also most controversial, example was the one-child policy that the Chinese government imposed in 1979 and which lasted until 2016. Under this rule, it was punishable with fines, in some cases with loss of employment, to families who had more than one child. And this completely changed the demographics of China. It even encouraged forced abortions in a culture that privileges men, which could also alter the gender ratio that exists in this population. In the case of India, the country added more than 1 billion people since independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Apart from a controversial program of forced sterilizations that occurred in 1975, improvements in salary, health and education conditions are considered of women in the country in recent decades flattened the curve of population growth.

But this process of reduction in birth rates has been slower in India than in China. The Chinese birth rate in 2021 was 7.52 newborns per thousand inhabitants. That same indicator in India in 2021 was 16.42 births per thousand inhabitants. In fact, in   2022 China's birth rate fell to 6.77. Furthermore, for the first time in 60 years, it was reported that the Chinese population decreased in 2022, with a drop of 850 thousand people in the total population. An opposite scenario occurs with the Indian population which is expected to continue increasing over the next 40 years. And what does it mean to become the most populous country in the world?

India could, for example, strengthen its claim to obtain a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, which so far consists of only five countries: the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom and Russia. If it obtains that position, the Asian country would consolidate its influence on global security issues by being able to approve or veto proposals in this matter. An important fact in this aspect is that India is one of the 9 countries in the world that has nuclear weapons. On the other hand, some experts debate how moving to second place in the world population ranking would affect China's image, at a time when the Asian giant is focused on overtaking the United States to become the world's leading economy.

The director of the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Rana Mitter, believes that China's fall to number 2 is likely to mobilize Beijing's political elite to strive to lead other global rankings, as he explains in a article published in the British newspaper The Guardian. Some experts consider that India deserves some recognition for having managed a "healthy demographic transition" to avoid the "population disaster" that was seen in the past when the number of inhabitants was growing explosively. It is considered a true achievement that Indians have flattened their growth curve while being a country with a lot of poverty and educational deficiencies.

But becoming the most populous country in the world will also be a reminder of the great challenges it faces. For example: Only 40% of the population of working age works or can work. And from that data, it is clear that only 10% of working-age women work; In China, this last indicator reaches 69%, for example. Another challenge is internal migration. It is estimated that some 200 million Indians have migrated mainly from the countryside to the cities and this tests the capacity of the State to provide appropriate standards of living. For demographers, something of concern is the skewed sex ratio at birth, meaning that more boys are born than girls.

They also insist that the country must stop child marriages and improve its birth and death registration system, something that will be very necessary when it consolidates itself as the country with the most human beings on earth.