Can India cope with a population of 1.5 billion?

Robert Cassen, Project Syndicate

India's population is now a little over one billion; it will almost certainly surpass 1.5 billion by mid-century, overtaking China's population along the way before it stops growing. But, as worrying as this might appear, this actually represents a considerable demographic slowdown: India's population more than tripled during the past sixty years. Moreover, the economy is growing much faster than before. So will India be able to provide a comfortable home for 1.5 billion people?

I recently co-authored a study (with Tim Dyson, Leela Visaria and others) that concludes, with modest optimism, that while India can manage its population growth, it also faces a number of major difficulties.

True, poverty fell in the 1990s, while literacy rates and school attendance rose. But they did so unevenly. Most of India's big poor states -- Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh -- suffer from a combination of relatively slow economic growth and rapid demographic growth. Only Rajasthan's economy has kept pace with the rest of the country; the other four have not benefited much from trade and regulatory liberalization.

Similarly, states where birth rates fell earlier, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, are already enjoying shrinking school-age populations, whereas school-age numbers in Bihar will still be rising until around 2025. But the majority of children in Kerala and Tamil Nadu are already in school, while in Bihar they are not.

These five poor states contain 45 percent of India's population, and 56 percent of its poor. Our projections indicate that in 20 years they will account for more than half the population and 75 percent of the poor. Unless recent trends can be reversed, the growing economic and demographic gulf between India's North and East and its South and West will pose a serious political threat.

The environmental impact of 1.5 billion inhabitants forms the other major challenge. India's past population growth has been accompanied -- if much too slowly and unequally -- by improving health, education, and economic welfare. But the environment has been suffering.

Our study concludes that India can have faster economic and industrial growth, higher rates of energy consumption, and a cleaner environment. But this is not what has happened so far. Air, soil, and water pollution has been growing, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths every year.

The key to a clean future is clean technologies, whose costs have been falling steadily, and will continue to do so. Sometimes these technologies pay for themselves and will be adopted. But Indian producers and transporters will not invest in them if they bear the costs, while the public at large receives the benefits. In these cases, government will have to provide incentives, or regulate and tax. Unfortunately, however, when the main beneficiaries are the poor, corporations are powerful, and governments are weak or corrupt, good environmental practices are far from guaranteed.

There are nonetheless some notable success stories. Delhi's barely breathable air has become tolerable, following a big move to compressed natural gas in public transport, retirement of old vehicles, and higher emissions standards in new ones. Delhi's cleaner air hasn't cost much, yet other cities have been slow to follow suit.

The biggest problem is water pollution, with discharges into canals and rivers growing faster than treatment capacity. At the same time, India's growing population will make increasing demands on water supplies -- mainly for agriculture, which absorbs more than 80 percent of all the fresh water India consumes. If the population grows by 50 percent, the country will need to grow 50 percent more food, if it is to continue to feed itself.

But there won't be any more water. In fact, there could well be less water than there is now, owing to pollution and climate change. So India will need huge increases in water efficiency.

Here, too, there are examples of improvement. But there is also far too much populist politicking, with promises of free water for farmers. Doing what has to be done to ensure sustainable water supplies -- controlling pollution, encouraging conservation, regulating and charging where necessary -- is politically tough. Eventually, however, India has no choice: There are already sporadic riots over water shortage, while water tankers move under armed guard in some cities, and virulent conflicts arise between communities over water-sharing.

In questionnaires, the poor say that an adequate water supply is their foremost need. But one fears that something more dreadful than the daily misery must occur before India's politicians decide to act. Our study quotes three national water surveys. Each concludes that India can have a satisfactory water future. As with the other challenges posed by population growth, the issue is not whether the future can be managed, but whether it will be.

India may or may not be the world's next economic wonder; but it will have to solve its age-old problems, as well as its new ones, if it is going to be a good place to live for the vast majority of its citizens.

The writer is Professor of Economics, London School of Economics, and editor and co-author of 21st Century India: Population, Economy, Human Development and the Environment.