New Year’s Day in 2021 was a record-breaking day for India, as practically 67,000 infants have been born throughout the nation—the very best variety of births given wherever on this planet that day, according to UNICEF. It’s a quantity that contributed to India’s newest achievement of changing into the world’s most populous nation.

On Tuesday, consultants raised the likelihood that India’s 1.417 billion individuals might have surpassed China’s inhabitants numbers, in accordance with the newest estimates from the World Population Review. The information got here after China’s National Bureau of Statistics introduced that the nation’s complete inhabitants declined by 850,000 between the tip of 2021 and the tip of 2022.

The improvement marks a brand new section in India’s development on the worldwide stage, riddled with the challenges of managing a rising inhabitants but additionally a chance to “reimagine strategies and build on our successes to provide a healthy and happy life for its people,” Poonam Muttreja, the chief director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI), instructed TIME.

What’s behind India’s rising inhabitants?

The largest issue behind India’s large inhabitants is its younger individuals: 650 million Indians—practically half the nation’s inhabitants—are under the age of 25. And consultants estimate that India received’t hit its inhabitants peak till 2065, which implies that even when the youthful demographic produces just one or two kids per couple, the inhabitants dimension will proceed to extend over time earlier than it stabilizes, driving what PFI calls the “population momentum.”

Read More: China’s Shrinking Population: How It Happened and What It Means

What’s extra, many Indian girls aren’t capable of have smaller households because of India’s historic lack of family-planning providers. India was actually the primary nation to undertake household planning as an official coverage again in 1952, however throughout a interval of financial and social stagnation in 1975, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi launched The Emergency, a time frame which suspended all civil liberties within the nation. This included a mass drive to sterilize males compulsorily—a inhabitants management methodology that was so unpopular with the lots that thereafter, subsequent governments didn’t broach the subject of household planning in any respect. Methods of inhabitants management have as an alternative targeted on girls—between 2013 and 2014, India carried out the vast majority of practically 4 million sterilizations on girls, in accordance with authorities statistics. Until 2017, India’s public healthcare system additionally didn’t provide many contraceptive decisions to males or girls.

“We must empower our women to be able to decide if, when and how many children to have,” Muttreja mentioned.

Contrary to fashionable notion, nonetheless, consultants level out that India’s inhabitants development charge has truly slowed down in the previous couple of a long time—from a 24.7% development between 1971 and 1981 to a 17.7% development between 2001 and 2011—as a result of rising ranges of training and healthcare, in addition to the alleviation of poverty. PFI provides that India can study from China’s shrinking inhabitants by reaching low fertility charges with out imposing additional inhabitants management strategies. “India must put an end to the noise around the possible introduction of a two-child norm,” mentioned Muttreja, including that a couple of Southern Indian states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh have already achieved low fertility charges by offering higher entry to training and improvement alternatives.

A big crowd of individuals stroll by a market in Bangalore on October 23, 2022.

Manjunath Kiran—AFP/Getty Images

What affect will India’s inhabitants have on the nation—and the remainder of the world?

Becoming the world’s most populous nation can sign a “paradigm shift” for India’s improvement, Muttreja mentioned. That’s as a result of the nation’s youthful inhabitants additionally comes with an enormous potential to spice up the economic system—what economists often name the “demographic dividend.” In 2021, the working-age inhabitants of India stood at a whopping 900 million, in accordance with OECD information.

Almost 40 years in the past, India’s inhabitants growth was described in menacing phrases like “population explosion” and the “brain drain”—a reference to India’s younger, expert labor pressure that left the nation for the West looking for higher rewards for his or her potential. But SY Quraishi, who authored the ebook, “The Population Myth: Islam, Family Planning and Politics in India,” mentioned that each these ideas have modified over time. Today, this identical labor pressure has as an alternative develop into what he known as “human resources,” or a growth to the Indian economic system: “They are the CEOs of the world, and the source of an economic revolution that gives back 90 billion dollars in remittances from abroad,” Quraishi mentioned.

This group isn’t simply younger, it’s additionally dynamic: it grew up in a market economic system with entry to the Internet and a starvation to compete on the worldwide stage. Two-thirds of the Indian inhabitants has entry to smartphones, because of low cost information plans within the final decade. “This generation of young Indians will be the largest consumer and labor source in the knowledge and network goods economy,” writes the U.S.-based Indian economist Shruti Rajagopalan.

And with rising tensions between China and the West, India has develop into an vital participant on the world stage. It will lead the cost on the G-20 this yr, and as a founding member of the U.N., consultants recommend it might even eye a everlasting seat on the U.N. Security Council, of which China—however not India—is a everlasting member. The nation can be boosting manufacturing capability by attracting worldwide conglomerates like Apple, and turning smaller cities like Pune and Chennai into hubs of producing, innovation, and expertise.

Read More: China’s Aging Population Is a Major Threat to Its Future

What’s extra, a lowering expert inhabitants throughout Europe and America has resulted in a scarcity of manpower, making India’s inhabitants numbers an asset that’s “politically important and indispensable,” Quraishi mentioned. “Other countries may be hating India, but they love our market.”

But India has its challenges, too

Despite the apparent benefits of getting a populous nation, Quraishi added that the Indian authorities has didn’t prioritize the upskilling of its younger individuals, on condition that India’s labor pressure participation charge—which accounts for the way a lot of the nation’s working-age inhabitants works or desires to work—is it a mere 40%.

Millions of younger Indians really feel discouraged by their job prospects and actively resolve to choose out of working, selecting as an alternative to proceed learning or keep residence, or depend on their members of the family for monetary assist. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), India’s excessive unemployment charge has hovered round 7 to 8% within the final yr (rising from 5 to six% in 2021), resulting in a shrinking workforce.

To take up the younger working inhabitants, India might want to create at the least 90 million new non-farming jobs by 2030, a 2020 report by McKinsey Global Institute states. Muttreja and the PFI agree, noting that the federal government additionally must put money into a “time-bound manner” in order that younger persons are productive and may contribute to the nationwide economic system.

“In order to leverage the demographic dividend, the country will have to place the youth at the center of its policies,” she mentioned.

She added that India wants to incorporate those that have historically been excluded from its improvement agenda with the intention to harness the total potential of its younger individuals—notably, girls who proceed to have extra kids than they want to have and, extra broadly, the overwhelming majority of girls—by eradicating limitations to girls’s company and reproductive autonomy.

“India can do better by investing in women’s equity and economy development,” she mentioned.

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