Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],

If you’re from India, you’ve probably noticed this little pattern in Indian dinner table conversations. It usually begins with a simple question: some variation of “Why does this (insert social/economic/environmental concern) exist in India?” 

And it usually ends the same way, with someone eventually saying: “India has too many people.”

It’s a story that has seeped deep into the psyche, fed through the decades by political narrative. 

But it’s a flawed one, as this New York Times piece from a few years ago does so well to sum up:

It’s also a simplistic story, doing little justice to the sheer complexity of such problems in the Indian context. India has been the second-most populous country in the world for a long while. And it’s poised to become the most populous one any day now—or even already, by some measures.

But is that as bad as it’s made out to be? 

Let’s dive in.

The real story behind the villain that’s India’s population

In 2019, the United Nations predicted that India would overtake China as the world’s most populous country by 2027. 

What followed was to no one’s surprise. 

Just two years later, India’s most populous state—Uttar Pradesh—proposed a new population policy. The state, it said, would reward families that limited themselves to two children, and penalise those that didn’t. 

This approach is neither new nor limited to Uttar Pradesh.