The Indian marriage ceremony season is upon us, and uncles and aunts in all places have gotten their eyes as soon as extra on single millennials. “When will you get married and have kids?” one in every of them grumbled to me not too long ago.

In all equity, the extra hopelessly romantic one is, the longer one is prone to keep single (simply ask Hollywood). But it’s the second a part of that query that’s spooking many millennials, whether or not single or married.

Born right into a world of wars and pandemics, many millennials are beginning to frown upon child-rearing as a ghastly burden. The anti-child motion is turning into so widespread in India that an entire new assist group was based a number of years in the past — provocatively named, “Child-Free India”. That group has since obtained endorsement even from the previous. “I always had the feeling that I was not ready to become a parent,” grumbled one grandmother from Pune. “But I never had the courage to go against society.”

You would possibly name child-free millennials lazy, however they do get pleasure from credible assist. For a long time now, greater than a handful of Indian policymakers and economists have been arguing that inhabitants development portends India’s doom.

Last month, India overtook China because the world’s most populous nation, with a whopping 1.425 billion individuals. India added 300 million within the final 20 years alone — nearly as a lot as the complete inhabitants of the United States (a rustic whose ‘tiny’ inhabitants is freaking out about ‘growing immigration’). And although fertility charges have been falling throughout India, the juggernaut rolls on.

Few would contemplate India’s inhabitants development sustainable in the long run. If you suppose that India is already ridiculously crowded and chaotic, you’re statistically appropriate. India is, the truth is, thrice as crowded as China already: China has about 153 individuals for each sq. kilometre. India has 453.

Meanwhile, unemployment continues to develop. Food stays scarce. And scientists now say that greater than 90 per cent of the nation will roast below heatwaves within the years forward.

Yet, if Indians cease having youngsters now, that may arrange the prospect of a complete different catastrophe. If fewer infants are born right now, fewer staff can create wealth a technology from now, whilst many people age and turn out to be extra depending on them for healthcare and social safety.

Take China once more — a rustic that’s in all probability the identical as India, solely 20 years forward. In 2000, China spent $55 billion on healthcare. By 2021, it was spending practically $1.2 trillion, as a result of Chinese individuals lived longer and obtained older. The drawback is that because the Chinese obtained older, a lot of them additionally inevitably stop working. But there have been progressively fewer staff to exchange them and sustain financial development. Last yr, China registered a decline in inhabitants for the primary time in a long time.

If China is struggling, India’s impending troubles look manner scarier. Today, the Chinese financial system produces 5 occasions what India does, and the common Chinese particular person earns nearly thrice the common Indian (even after accounting for worth variations). If India is to catch as much as at the very least China’s (frankly insufficient) degree earlier than its individuals get previous, it’ll require a development price ramp-up that may make M S Dhoni appear a boring finisher.

So, ought to Indians have youngsters, in order that there might be extra staff, however in an impossibly crowded and impoverished financial system? Or ought to they put a cease to the cycle and simply collapse to the child-free motion? I don’t actually have a superb reply, however should you do, be at liberty to supply it to a confused millennial on the subsequent marriage ceremony you attend.