How Many Indians Are There Really? India Doesn’t Want to Know
The government hasn’t figured out the demographic makeup of its massive populace because it’s afraid of what the numbers might say.
Safer not to count.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Getty Images
This week, the United Nations informed the world that India was now its most populous nation. According to the UN, there are now 1.428 billion people in India, as opposed to a mere 1.426 billion in China. When asked about this, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson sounded dismissive: “I want to tell you that population dividend does not depend on quantity but also quality.”
I would love to reply in kind — except I don’t even know if the UN’s claim is correct. Are we already the biggest country in the world? Perhaps. But most projections of India’s population are based on decades-old data, because India hasn’t conducted a proper census since 2011.