Population is a more serious issue than generally construed. The managing of populations can become a serious inflection point as can be seen building up in the recent Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. Frequently, discrimination against communities have been placed in religious and ethnic terms, which can be site-specific.
However, Saskia Sassen, professor of sociology at Columbia University, US, places the context of the current turmoil on a more fundamental concept – land.
Sassen says that recent developments point towards a new trajectory in Myanmar’s interaction with its internally much-despised minority population. The Myanmar government decided in 2016 to allocate 3 million acres of rural land in Rakhine as sites for economic development and international investment, with the military having de facto control over these lands. Before this deal, Rakhine was largely ignored as an underdeveloped, and poverty-stricken part of Myanmar, with a significant population of resident Rohingya.
Living mostly in coastal areas, what triggered the Myanmar government’s violent expulsion of Rohingyas could be plans for the development of a 73 billion USD deep-sea port at Kyaukpyu in coastal Rakhine by a Chinese consortium along with plans for an industrial park estimated at about 3.2 billion USD nearby.
Sassen says that freeing the land through the violent expulsion of the Rohingya population might have been the solution in a country where land allocation is controlled by the military.
Rakine is one of the poorest regions of Myanmar. Governments in neighbouring countries are tasked with balancing national interest with human rights. With many nations in a quandary over whether and to what degree to house Rohingya populations, this forced displacement of Rohingyas is an example of how mass migrations can change population dynamics. In a time of global conflict, land claims and climate change, mass migrations might be more frequent than could be assumed.
The World’s Most Populated Nations
The race for the most populated nation in the world is presently a two-horse race between China and India, with countries like the US, Brazil, Nigeria, Indonesia, Pakistan and Russia in comparison a long way behind in terms of total population.
Although China is the world’s most populated country presently, according to an estimate by the United Nations (UN), the total population in India could overtake that of China by around 2024 (UN, 2017). The following is a list of the 10 most populated countries in the world presently, as compiled by the UN in its 2017 World Population Prospects revision –
| Rank | Country | Parent Continent | Population: July 1st, 2016 | Population: July 1st, 2017 | Change (in %) |
| 1 | China | Asia | 1,403,500,365 | 1,409,517,397 | +0.4 |
| 2 | India | Asia | 1,324,171,354 | 1,339,180,127 | +1.1 |
| 3 | United States of America | North America | 322,179,605 | 324,459,463 | +0.7 |
| 4 | Indonesia | Asia | 261,115,456 | 263,991,379 | +1.1 |
| 5 | Brazil | South America | 207,652,865 | 209,288,278 | +0.8 |
| 6 | Pakistan | Asia | 193,203,476 | 197,015,955 | +2.0 |
| 7 | Nigeria | Africa | 185,989,640 | 190,886,311 | +2.6 |
| 8 | Bangladesh | Asia | 162,951,560 | 164,669,751 | +1.1 |
| 9 | Russia | Europe/Asia | 143,964,513 | 143,989,754 | +0.0 |
| 10 | Mexico | North America | 127,540,423 | 129,163,276 | +1.3 |
| Total World Population | 7,466,964,280 | 7,550,262,101 | +1.1 |
Table 1: Top Ten Countries Globally in terms of Total Population by July 1st, 2017.
Source: World Population Prospects, 2017 – United Nations
Geographically the population varies a lot. A map depicting the main geographical region and the top 5 populated country is shown below:
Fig. 1: Population interpolated over various countries showing skewed distribution
Data from the UN in the 1950s showed that total world population at the time was about 2.5 billion. In present times, this number has risen to almost 7.5 billion. By 2050, the UN estimates that the total world population could rise to about 9.7 billion.
Sequential order of ever rising world population estimates is given in figure 2. By 2100 the estimate would touch the 11.2 billion mark.
Fig.2: World population estimates
Source: United Nations
Although presently, China is the world’s most populated nation, closely followed by India, with the top 10 list given above, there are indications that the list could look completely different by 2060. India, with a massive proportion of its population engaged in agricultural activities, and also with densely populated urban areas with high rural-to-urban migration, is expected to overtake China as the world’s most populated nation by 2024. India does not have as strict an implemented family planning regime as China, with its newly placed two-child policy, as opposed to the one-child policy regime of yesteryears.
With enforcement largely falling off the radar, India would need to radically alter its policies to curb its high population growth.
Nigeria, currently on 7th, has a high fertility rate and a huge young population, and based on current indicators, is expected to overtake the US is the world’s 3rdmost populous nation by 2060.
In Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to grow from 12 million people in 1950 to 237 million by 2060. Brazil and Japan (in 11th place) are however are in sharp contrast to the countries in the list, and are expected to witness a population decline in the coming decades.
By 2040, Russia is expected to not figure in the top 10 most populated countries list.
The high estimate of population in Africa by 2060 could be easily interpreted from its current situation. A glance at figure 3 clearly indicates how the population has increased over the past few decades.
Fig. 3: World population increase till 2015
Source: worldbank.org
What becomes an important variable is the ratio of the population that is young as compared to the ageing population. When the numbers of young people are in excess in a country, the country is likely to witness a huge rate of population increase in the coming years. There can be many other precipitant causes for this rise in the young population that can vary across nations, which is set to increase in many nations as one dominant factor – economic growth expands in many nations.
Between 2017 and 2050, 10 countries in particular are expected to house more than half of the world’s population. These countries include India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, and the United States.
World’s densest regions
The current population density around the world reveals a clear picture of the densest regions. South east Asia is among the densest populated regions with parts India and China having density between 1000-1500 or greater than 1500 person per square kilometre. Other dense regions with the density ranging between 200 to 1000 per square kilometre include various parts of Africa, Europe, South America and North America.
Fig. 4: Population Density (2015)
The World’s Least Populated Nations
The same list featuring in the UN’s World Population Prospects revision of 2017 also features a list of the least populated countries in the world if one counts backwards from the bottom (UN, 2017) –
| Rank | Country | Parent Continent | Population: July 1st, 2016 | Population: July 1st, 2017 | Change(in %) |
| 1 | Vatican City | Europe | 801 | 792 | -1.1 |
| 2 | Tokelau | Oceania* | 1,282 | 1,300 | +1.4 |
| 3 | Niue | Oceania | 1,624 | 1,618 | -0.4 |
| 4 | Falkland Islands | South America | 2,910 | 2,910 | 0.0 |
| 5 | St. Helena | Africa | 4,035 | 4,049 | +0.3 |
| 6 | Montserrat | Carribbean | 5,152 | 5,177 | +0.5 |
| 7 | St. Pierre & Miquelon | North America | 6,305 | 6,320 | +0.2 |
| 8 | Tuvalu | Oceania | 11,097 | 11,192 | +0.9 |
| 9 | Nauru | Oceania | 11,347 | 11,359 | +0.1 |
| 10 | Wallis & Futuna | Oceania | 11,899 | 11,773 | -1.1 |
| Total World Population | 7,466,964,280 | 7,550,262,101 | +1.1 |
*Oceania here refers to countries that don’t come under major continents but are surrounded by sea water.
Fig: Top Ten Countries Globally in terms of Least Total Population by July 1st, 2017.
Source: World Population Prospects, 2017 – United Nations
The Vatican City in Europe, Christianity’s holy city, is the least populated city in the world, with 792 people by July 1st, 2017. Out of these over 450 have citizenship of the country, while the rest are people with permission to reside in the country. Many of Vatican City’s residents are people who live in different countries around the world as dictated by their occupational duties. The Vatican City is also the world’s smallest country in terms of area.
Like the Vatican, the Falkland Islands are also predominantly urban, with 81.1 per cent of the people living in urban areas. However, the total population density here is less than 1 per sq km. Immigration policies are tough here and people generally earn well, with modest commercial expansion. The problem in the Falkland Islands is growing a population to support the expansion of its economy. Other than the Vatican City and the Falkland Islands, most other countries in the top 10 are island nations where people predominantly live in rural settlements in villages.
Migration’s Impacts on Population
Migration implies the movement of populations from one location to another. Migration can be temporary or permanent, or it can be voluntary or forced, as in the case of the Rohingyas. Most legal migrations are usually voluntary, and a lot depends on the host country’s political climate and economic capacity.
Many states do not have strong welfare set-ups to support the immigration process, and can struggle with migration that creates problems both for the state along with its host community and the migrants themselves.
Migration tends to radically alter spatial and temporal aspects of the host location, with the first being a sudden alteration of the demographic profile of a location. In such a scenario a well thought out approach becomes necessary as immigration throws up often dynamically unpredictable effects. With the world moving towards an increasing overall population, migration is poised to become an important issue in the times to come.
Many departures among migrants can be involuntary or forced migrations, and can radically alter how population dynamics are distributed, especially in the case of mass migrations, such as those arising out of conflict or event. These forced migrations can occur due to a war and conflict, such as those from Syria in the ongoing Syrian conflict, where huge numbers of Syrians are migrating to other Middle-Eastern countries or to Western countries. Forced migrations can also occur out of natural disasters, such as in the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, which led many Haitians to attempt to immigrate to the US on boat.
In forced migrations, people are left with no choice but to migrate. Faced with the prospect of ethnic cleansing, many Rohingyas in Myanmar are feeling forced to migrate to neighbouring countries such as India and Bangladesh, where governments need to take conscientious stands on the issue, balancing both national interest and human rights.
In this international conventions on managing migration such as the International Migration Law (IML) must be utilized as a component of diplomatic negotiations to establish the rights of immigrants as well as establish frameworks for states in dealing with immigration. In an increasingly interconnected world, governments cannot function entirely in isolation, and must engage diplomatically with international arrangements.
Receive Daily Updates
Recent Posts
Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.