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No, most experts project India to overtake China's population in 20 years, and then continue to grow and finally stabilize (will it happen with fertility rate still hovering around 3?) around 1.8 to 2 billion people. The land of india can not support this many people, no matter how you cut it.
You might want to do some basic research before you spit anything out. India's Total Fertility Rate has seen a sharp decline by some 55% since the 1960's, from a TFR of 5.7 in the mid-60's to a TFR of 2.56 in 2009. It is on a continuous, uninterrupted downward trajectory and will plateau at sustainable levels. Population growth has declined from over 2% in the mid-90's to 1.34% in 2008.
China on the other hand, has hardly maxed out, we are just beginning. never before has China produced so many college graduates, never bofore has China had such first class infrastrucutre and never before has China had so many cutting-edge factories turning out great amount of goods wanted by people around the world. The truth is everyone not calling himself an indian nationalist, agrees that sky is limit for China.
And then, so is India.
Just because you have a few super tychoons (who together own like 20% of india) does not mean you have a better private sector, in fact China's private sector employs far more people, produces fa more goods and has created a GDP that is greater than India's total.
The GINI coefficient for China is greater than that for India, and significantly so. I'm sure you understand that means greater overall inequality in China. That reality is only palatably attenuated because China is at a further stage of economic growth today, as is safeworthy from the fact that China started its reforms a decade and a half before India.
India today has only 1% of people employed in manufacturing, you are not going to become a manufacturing power house any time soon.
Yet, manufacturing is growing at a stellar 18% a year, with accelerating growth rates over the past 5 years. If you think that would not make India a 'manufacturing powerhouse' any time soon, consider the fact that India has leapfrogged 3 places to become the 9th largest industrialized economy, in the last year alone, despite the fact that we are a largely agricultural and service-based economy. 'Course, moving upward will become more difficult, but to us it is only a matter of time.
A lot of indians feel good when looking at India and China's demographic trends. Not so fast, my friend: with added population you have more mouths to feed. If you can not create enough jobs for them (something india has not demonstrated it can), you are only going to do worse, a lot worse. India has more persants than China, both as percentage as well as in absolute numbers, yet india's agricultural products are only a fraction of what China manages to produce. Also India's manufacturing sector repoertedly employs only 1/10th as many workers as in China. These facts suggest strongly that unemployment is a huge problem in India, both in the cities as well as on the country side. The indian friends here would immediately point out at the impressive official 6.8% unemployment rate, but for me this is proof that india's economic data are unreliable and india's unemployment problem is understated. It will only get worse. Also the supposed advantage India in terms of available labour might never come true because in india only half of the population, I mean men, work whereas in China women not only work but will continue to work after giving birth.
India will soon find itself in a situation burdened with 2 billion people yet little jobs to go around.
You have some downright, incredibly weird ideas about India, not atypical of those who have distorted access to information. India's 'unemployed' find ready employment in the massive black sector, estimated to be between 2 and 3 times the size of the regular economy, that often render services and/or goods in a more timely and efficient manner than the manufacturing sectors in many first-world countries. Also because we do not have anything approaching the houkou system, which beneficial in its own right, allows labour to move freely and find employment in avenues where demand exists.
You cannot have 'proof' of the unreliability of "India's statistics" [however farcical this sounds coming from a Chinese] from deductions based on unstatistical estimates of India's unemployment and your inadequate knowledge of the Indian economy.
With 1.2 billion still growing people squeezed into a relatively small land, many of them poor, malnutritioned , illiterate and not particularly bright (see avg IQ), little resouces (water, mineral), little coal, virtually no oil, little industries, menacing muslim jihadis knocking on the door step as well as from within, if I were an indian, I would have sleepless nights, but obviously not the ones here. I admire your guys optimism but I truely fail to see where it comes from.
Rest assured. We think more about it than you do. But we have far more 'usable' land than you do, demonstrable in a comparison of the arable land between the two countries, also more regular climes and tropical topographic landscapes. China has vast land-locked deserts and mountains in the Xinjian region, together with vast ice fields in Tibet, that make such places inhospitable to settle. Infact, evaluations of sub-regional population density, will show you that China has far greater concentrations in its East and south-east sectors, the 'corridoors' of its economy, than does India in any comparable parts of its country.
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