Comment by lenkite
20 days ago
We are 1.48 billion people (and growing) in a nation that is 1/3rd the size of the US. Expected to reach 1.7+ billion in another 20-30 years - which will increase desperation considerably.
The birth rate falling is a VERY good thing. India cannot really support more than 300-400 million people with a high quality of life with its geographic size and exhausted resources. Life becomes cheaper than disposable toilet paper otherwise.
> India cannot really support more than 300-400 million people with a high quality of life with its geographic size and exhausted resources
Source for this carrying capacity?
Glad you asked!
India has roughly ~18% of humanity but only about 4% of global freshwater resources, and agriculture consumes roughly 80–90% of India's water. The World Bank estimates that around 600 million Indians already face water stress. (The number is actually higher in many estimates)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/brief/2026/03/19/how-india-is-a...
There is also substantial pressure on land. Government data report about 97.85 million hectares, or ~30% of India's geographical area, as affected by land degradation/desertification.
https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?lang=2®=...
If you want long-term, sustainable agriculture, we need to heavily move to organic farming. This yields ~30% less food produce. I forgot the popular paper on this - can dig it up.
India has also exhausted its mineral reserves. This is not fully our fault. We were fully strip mined and utterly bankrupted by the British in WW2. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?lang=2®=...
(IMHO that is the real reason why we got independence - the Brits didn't want to keep holding to a distressed asset and immediately liquidated. Look at Bengal famine of 1943)
We are having heavy import dependency on minerals - a ridiculous 80%!!! dependency, which is causing significant problems in our trade/current-account deficit.
So, if we want maximum ecological comfort, and long-term, prosperous standard of living, we need a significantly reduced population. You can get the number by just halving our population simply taking into account high-availability to water and then reduce further for sustainable agriculture and sustainable mineral consumption.
> If you want long-term, sustainable agriculture, we need to heavily move to organic farming
This is deeply unsupported by the evidence I’ve seen. Organic farming tends to look far more resource intensive than modern methods. Often for little discernible gain in flavor and nutrition.
> You can get the number by just halving our population
I agree with your conclusion given the data, particularly around mineral exhaustion. (Though there is also the issue of severe mismatches. Lots of lithium, for example, yet no battery industry to speak of.)
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I am hopeful for India. Each time that I visit every five years or so, it feels like a "new country" -- so many things are changing so fast. While Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are not as water-starved as India, they did a lot to become rich with almost not good "minerals" (I assume that you also include oil & gas). Regarding water stress, look at Israel. They switched to as much "drip irrigation" as possible. For non-ag water uses, again look to Israel: You will need a lot of desalination plants. For the interior regions, you'll need water movement infrastructure like California and China.
India can easily become a green energy super power due to its enormous solar productivity. Think of all the industries in the 21st century that thrive with cheap power.
It is very unfair you got downvoted. Your conclusions might be debatable but sourcing them with so many sources is laudable. I wish all my debate adversaries would drown me in data like you did.
That's very obtuse, there is always time to make more CASH, but there isn't to reverse a culture where having 0 children is normal and encouraged.
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Indians like to blame population for their problems. But India is very big. Mumbai is about as densely populated as Paris.
No, Mumbai is significantly more densely populated than Paris when looking at the entire urban scale and not just a few areas of Paris. This is easily fact-checked.
I mean Mumbai's population is 10x Paris population, so this should be obvious.
Wikipedia lists the core city of both as 50,000 per square mile, though it looks like the Mumbai numbers are somewhat old. More recent numbers say 73,000 per square mile for Mumbai. Which is similar to Manhattan’s residential population density.