Lucknow, October 31: Somewhere in Uttar Pradesh – Allahabad would be a good bet – a pregnant woman is carrying a baby destined to be the planet’s seven billionth human being.
The historic baby is due to be born on Monday (October 31), the United Nations Population Fund predicts. Experts have made Uttar Pradesh (UP) the hot favourite for the symbolic arrival, possibly for no better reason than that the state has the highest population in the country with 19.95 crore people, giving its mothers a head-start.
If they are right, another reasonable bet would be that the baby will grow up to be part of a historic demographic challenge. India will be grappling with a north-south divide with demographic patterns and migration of unskilled labourers that has the potential to generate a cultural conflict in the country.
India accounting for 17 per cent of the world’s population has significant influence on deciding the demographic future of the world.
Prof. K.S James, head of Population Research Centre at the Bangalore-based think-tank Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), said the southern states were showing faster decline in the population growth rate as compared to the northern states.
“As a result of this, there is scarcity of unskilled labour in the south which is currently filled in by migration from other parts of the country,” he said.
“Developed countries depend upon migration from developing ones to fill in such scarcity. Ironically, India is taking advantage of the demographic divide across states,” he added.
Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad claimed on Saturday it was not a matter of joy that the baby No. Seven Billion would be born in India or for that matter UP. He was right.
“The country is sitting on a time bomb. With too many energetic young people without employment opportunities, it’s very easy for them to move in the wrong direction. But the possible advantages can also be seen. The resiliency of the people as well as the boundless entrepreneurial energy of Indians in general serves as proof,” an expert said.
By mid-2022, there will, for the first time, be more people living in urban areas than in the countryside as a tidal wave of humanity surges towards the cities in search of jobs and a better life, the Asian Development Bank says.
The statistics are startling: India needs to build the equivalent of a city of Chicago every year to provide enough commercial and residential space for its migrants, according to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research.
The seven billionth person will have a lot of people hard on his or her heels competing for that education and that job, while the world’s eighth billionth infant is due to arrive on June 15, 2025. And for the record, the six billionth child – welcomed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on October 12, 1999 – is only 11 years old.
–Agencies–