India: looking ahead to one and a half billion people

India's population passed one billion in 1999 and is growing by nearly 1.8% annually. The United Nations' “medium” projection has the country's population exceeding 1.5 billion in 2050 and reaching over 1.6 billion before it stabilises. 1 2 The assumptions underlying the projections can be questioned: fertility is certainly falling and this may accelerate, and the course of mortality may not be smooth. But clearly substantial growth lies ahead, and a population of 1.5 billion at some point in the next century is plausible.

One might ask how can India possibly cope? But India's population has almost trebled in the past 50 years. Perhaps a more useful question is whether the future will resemble the past. Will adding half a billion in the next 50 years be harder to manage than adding just over 650 million in the past 50?