“India will surpass China”?

"Perhaps, But at What?. India, which currently has a population of 1.1 billion people, will be the world’s most populous nation sometime in the next few decades. But that may be the only arena in which it overtakes China.

Both countries have large urban-rural gaps and other income and living standard disparities, but China is now well ahead of India on a number of key indicators. China ranks at number 81 of 177 countries on the latest United Nations Human Development Index (in the neighborhood of Armenia or Peru), while India is 126 (below Namibia and just ahead of Cambodia). In China, a person’s chance of dying before the age of 40 is just under 7 percent. In India it’s over 16 percent, higher than in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Eighty percent of Indians live on $2 a day or less, compared with about 46 percent of the Chinese. Almost half the children under 5 in India are malnourished, compared with 8 percent in China.

India’s democratic system prevents it from taking draconian measures, such as China’s one-child policy, to keep population growth in check. India’s population is growing at 1.38 percent a year, a figure that may look low until it is multiplied by more than 1 billion. India adds more than 15 million people a year to its population, nearly twice the population of Austria. Indian leaders are aware that a “youth bulge,” which demographers expect to level off by 2025, can be conducive to economic growth. But countries in this position need to, “broaden the opportunities for young people to develop their human capital and use it productively,” in the words of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2007. That’s the route to prosperity followed by Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea—and now China. The adult literacy rate in China is above 90 percent. In India, it’s 61 percent. About one quarter of primary-school-age Indian children are not in school. In China, the figure is practically zero."

- FP special segment on India- Think Again

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