Demographic milestones hardly ever get extra momentous than this: India is nearly definitely now the world’s most populous nation, having overtaken its neighbour and geopolitical rival China.

Last week the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) confirmed that the long-projected inhabitants crossover between the 2 Asian international locations would occur by mid-year. It projected that India would have greater than 1.428bn individuals, about 3mn greater than China. 

This week one other UN physique, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, put a finer level on the information: it mentioned it believed the inflection level had most likely occurred a while in April, including that it would revise that estimate later due to gaps in data — together with what it may glean from India, which has not held a census since 2011. 

While the UN’s bulletins made headlines around the globe, together with in India and China, response from their governments has been remarkably subdued. 

Analysts say that inhabitants is a politically delicate difficulty for each international locations, and that every had causes to minimize the large crossover level domestically. 

The day the UNFPA revealed its report, China’s international ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin mentioned pointedly that “population dividends don’t only depend on quantity but also on quality”, a reference to China’s robust financial progress and improvement document in contrast with rivals, together with poorer India. 

His Indian counterpart, Arindam Bagchi, declined to supply any response to the UN’s report, and advised a information briefing: “To be honest, I didn’t realise there was a competition on this issue.” 

In India, with a chequered historical past of household planning efforts that in recent times has introduced delivery charges down, the rising inhabitants is often framed as an issue in public coverage debates, and solely hardly ever as a possibility. For some Hindu nationalists, delivery charges amongst minority Muslims are a fixation.

Amitabh Kant, India’s sherpa for the G20 group of enormous economies, was one of many few Indian officers to place a constructive spin on the UN’s bulletins, declaring that India would possibly now leverage its “phenomenal demographic dividend”. 

Writing within the Times of India newspaper, Kant mentioned: “This will position India as a powerhouse of human capital and the largest producer of human resources in the world.” 

The authorities officers’ remarks got here after the UN painted an image of starkly diverging demographic fortunes for the 2 international locations: it mentioned that whereas India’s inhabitants would continue to grow for a number of many years, China’s would proceed to fall and probably drop to lower than 1bn by the tip of the century, with extra individuals retiring and fewer younger individuals coming into the workforce in many years to come back.

“The narrative of China’s economy slowing down due to the structural constraint of a shrinking population is not welcome to a country which still hopes to grow fast enough to achieve ‘rejuvenation’ by 2049, and to catch up with the US even before that,” mentioned Shyam Saran, a former Indian international secretary and president of the India International Centre, a think-tank.

India’s response to the turning level had been “ambivalent”, Saran added, as a result of constructive sentiment in regards to the demographic dividend was being “balanced by an awareness that we still do not have what it takes to enjoy the dividend while it lasts”, together with by creating sufficient jobs for its younger individuals.

For some Indians, different international locations’ responses to the UN’s bulletins reminded them of outdated stereotypes and clichés about their “overpopulated” nation. 

Under the caption “Population: India overtakes China”, Germany’s Der Spiegel revealed a cartoon exhibiting Indians cheering and waving a flag aboard an antiquated prepare filled with individuals, because it overtook a Chinese bullet prepare with simply two individuals inside. The drawing was extensively denounced as racist and offensive in India, together with by IT minister of state Rajeev Chandrasekhar, who reminded the journal that “in a few years India’s economy will be bigger than Germany’s”. 

The UN’s inhabitants announcement additionally fed into resentments and recriminations on India’s deeply polarised political scene. Jairam Ramesh, communications chief for the opposition Indian National Congress, identified that India’s southern states, with their “pioneering” household planning efforts, had been set to lose parliamentary seats in a population-weighted reallocation anticipated in coming years that’s more likely to harm opposition events, whose stronghold is the south. 

Amid the largely damaging spin across the massive demographic second, one main demographer urged Indians to embrace their achievements in bringing the nation’s inhabitants underneath management.

“The government’s silence over this matter is baffling because the government has invested a lot in the healthcare, family planning and other factors that contribute to having a stable population,” mentioned Poonam Muttreja, govt director of the Population Foundation of India. “India should be proud that unlike China, it has reached replacement-level fertility without using any coercive measures.”