Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

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A_Gupta
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by A_Gupta »

According to the South China Morning Post, Yi suggested that China had only 377.6 million new births from 1991 to 2016, far less than the official figure of 464.8 million. This meant that China's official population estimate, currently at 1.38 billion, was wrong, Yi said. Instead it should have been 90 million lower — a gap roughly the same as Germany and Belgium's population combined.

That would make it 1.29 billion, and lower than India's estimated 1.32 billion population, according to Yi.
Is Yi saying that China's one child policy was even more successful than it was thought, and many people did not have any children?

PS: Elsewhere Yi makes the claim that China's TFR is 1.05, not the 1.7 that China's official statistics claims.

PPS: Wiki on China's 2010 census: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Nat ... c_of_China
Last edited by A_Gupta on 28 May 2017 04:01, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

KaranM, that's correct. The EPFO corpus is anywhere between $110-150 billion (I cannot find up to date figures. Anyone else who can, please post reference).

In general, large institutional investors have substantial power to enforce several things, from basic financial accounting standards to information disclosure and securities fraud mitigation. For example, the largest American corpus fun manager is CalPERS. In fact, back during NDA1 era, there was a push to attract CalPERS to invest in India:
2007 news: India gives excellent returns; Calpers may expand exposure
2015 news: CalPERS’ India exposure rose 34% to $1.7B in FY14; global PE allocation shrinks

Similarly EPFO would be a huge player in the Indian domestic equity market, stabilizing equity returns, damping down on volatilty and taking on vestiges of wild west lax accounting and reporting standards through their money power.

Today, both the equity and debt markets in India are in high demand from foreign institutional investors. This is a moment where it's actually important that the biggest player of all, be the Indian government. Our equity and debt markets serve us, and the biggest institutional player must be our own, not outsiders.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

A_Gupta wrote:
ldev wrote: So I cannot understand that if the fertility rate reaches replacement levels as early as 2020, why will the population grow by another 350 million to peak at 1.75 billion in 2060.
Because there is a huge cohort of young women who haven't had their 2.1 children yet.
But just as these young women are reaching child bearing age, an older group of women, numerically as large given the higher growth rates of of the population 25 years ago are moving out of the child bearing stage. So in reality by definition a replacement fertility rate means that if there is no change in life expectancy the overall population should stabilize. That is not happening and so the fertility rate figures are wrong.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

A_Gupta wrote:
Is Yi saying that China's one child policy was even more successful than it was thought, and many people did not have any children?

PS: Elsewhere Yi makes the claim that China's TFR is 1.05, not the 1.7 that China's official statistics claims.

PPS: Wiki on China's 2010 census: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixth_Nat ... c_of_China
Xi JInping relaxed that one child policy some years ago. But the Chinese population has not responded by having more children. And yes that means that one child policy was more successful than anticipated.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

ldev wrote:So I cannot understand that if the fertility rate reaches replacement levels as early as 2020, why will the population grow by another 350 million to peak at 1.75 billion in 2060. Increases in life expectancy cannot account for that. I think the fertility rate numbers are fudged. Plus I do not see the the champion states in the fertility race in the table i.e. UP, Bihar etc. where the rates will be much higher. The only real number is the actual population which will continue growing at least until 2060.
Indian TFR data has been discussed at length earlier in this thread, back when the NFHS-4 data was released in 2016. I don't see any substance in the argument that the data is fudged, and loosely making such a claim against institutions is not a good idea. Here's the official NFHS-4 data:
National Family Health Survey - 4 , 2015 -16 (pdf)
Comparative data against NFHS-3 (2005-06) is also listed. To summarize:
TFR(urban): 1.8
TFR(rural): 2.4
TFR(total): 2.2
TFR(NFHS-3): 2.7
Per-state data is listed too:
NFHS-4 state specific data lookup
Please use it to look up any state of interest. For example:
Bihar
TFR(urban): 2.4
TFR(rural): 3.6
TFR(total): 3.4
TFR(NFHS-3): 4.0
UP
TFR(urban): 2.1
TFR(rural): 3.0
TFR(total): 2.7
TFR(NFHS-3): 3.8
WB
TFR(urban): 1.6
TFR(rural): 1.9
TFR(total): 1.8
TFR(NFHS-3): 2.3

In other words, urban UP is already at replacement fertility. Urban Bihar is close. UP TFR dropped a full person in the past decade. Bihar almost did too. WB has fallen below replacement level for both urban and rural populations.

Now on to the question of 'why is the population projection so high ?' , IMHO that's an inexact estimate that does not take into account the fact that Indian TFR has dropped like a rock in the last decade+. While it's true that the combination of the youth bulge having kids and the ones alive living longer will cause an increase in population for at least another decade, I think the growth will end up being even less than the low end of the estimate. Already, decadal population growth has fallen to pre-independence level between 2001-11, and the current decade (2011-21) will probably report ~10% or less.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

Suraj wrote: Indian TFR data has been discussed at length earlier in this thread, back when the NFHS-4 data was released in 2016. I don't see any substance in the argument that the data is fudged, and loosely making such a claim against institutions is not a good idea. Here's the official NFHS-4 data:
National Family Health Survey - 4 , 2015 -16 (pdf)

UP
TFR(urban): 2.1
TFR(rural): 3.0
TFR(total): 2.7
TFR(NFHS-3): 3.8

In other words, urban UP is already at replacement fertility. Urban Bihar is close. UP TFR dropped a full person in the past decade. Bihar almost did too. WB has fallen below replacement level for both urban and rural populations.

Now on to the question of 'why is the population projection so high ?' , IMHO that's an inexact estimate that does not take into account the fact that Indian TFR has dropped like a rock in the last decade+. While it's true that the combination of the youth bulge having kids and the ones alive living longer will cause an increase in population for at least another decade, I think the growth will end up being even less than the low end of the estimate. Already, decadal population growth has fallen to pre-independence level between 2001-11, and the current decade (2011-21) will probably report ~10% or less.
There is another interesting study I have been referring to and it dates back to 2007. What is striking is the TFR projections and underlying assumptions in that study. Their TFR projections are higher compared to the data you have posted and the actual population numbers since then have outpaced even their projections. Now, if their higher TFR projections have resulted in higher actual population numbers, how can the supposedly lower TFR numbers which official Indian statistics come up with and posted by you have higher numbers?

The Future Population of India - A Long Range Demographic View

Two population scenarios, labeled A and B were prepared. These differ in only
one respect, the “target” TFR, used as a final value. Scenario A, the higher of the
two, makes the assumption that 2.1, the classic replacement level fertility value, will
be the final value for states where it is currently above 2.1. In Scenario B, the target
is 1.85 for those states above that value. For states with very low TFRs, such as Kerala
and Tamil Nadu, the TFR was assumed to remain constant throughout the
projection period.
Having decided on the target values, it is then necessary to determine the path
that the assumed fertility decline will take. Will it remain at a higher level and decline
suddenly to a lower level? Will it decline only very gradually? As a low value, such as
2.1, is approached will the decline slow? Since the pattern of decline cannot be fully
anticipated, a standard curve used in population projections was employed. The
logistic curve has often been observed to give a useful approximation of how fertility
has declined worldwide. Once decline has begun, it often continues at some steady
pace, slowing as lower values are approached. This pattern has also been observed in
the low fertility states of India.
The U.S. Census Bureau software utilizes the past trend in a state’s fertility
decline pattern to project future decline along the logistic curve. Figures 3 and 4
illustrate this process for two states, Karnataka, a state with relatively low current
fertility, and Uttar Pradesh, a state with relatively higher fertility. The past trend in the
TFR was taken from India’s Sample Registration System (SRS), a data collection programme
virtually unique among developing countries. Since the early 1970s, the
SRS has sampled millions of households each month to inquire about the number of
births and deaths that had occurred. As a result, the SRS is able to produce estimates
of India’s annual birth, death, infant mortality rates and TFRs as well as recurring sets
of life tables.
It is useful to compare the results obtained in this exercise with results obtained by
other organizations. The 2006 National Commission on Population Projections
projected the population of India and bigger states to the year 2026. The 2026
projected population that resulted is 1.40 billion
So the 2011 census figure was at 1210 million, the estimate for 2016 is 1320 million i.e. a growth of 9% in 5 years. How can one postulate that the decadal growth will be less than 10%? These folks, back in 2007, with a higher TFR assumption made a projection of 1.4 billion by 2026. India is already at 1.32 billion in 2016.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

I'd rather go by 2021 census data than estimates from third parties, none of whom came anywhere close to identifying the fall in TFR prior to NFHS data.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by A_Gupta »

ldev wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:
Because there is a huge cohort of young women who haven't had their 2.1 children yet.
But just as these young women are reaching child bearing age, an older group of women, numerically as large given the higher growth rates of of the population 25 years ago are moving out of the child bearing stage. So in reality by definition a replacement fertility rate means that if there is no change in life expectancy the overall population should stabilize. That is not happening and so the fertility rate figures are wrong.
Yes, a replacement fertility rate means that the population will stabilize. The question is how soon?
Since 40% or so of India's population is under 18, they are yet to have their two children. The older women live on as grandmothers or great grandmothers.

As a simple example, let's take a simple model. We count women only. Let's say women have all their children at age 20, all women survive till exactly 60 years etc. The first generation of women have 2 girls each, and very later generation has only 1 girl each - the replacement rate.

Let's start with 100 women all of the same age.

Year 1 = 100 generation-1 women
Year 20 = 100 generation-1 women + 200 generation-2 baby girls.
Year 40 = 100 generation-1 women + 200 generation-2 women + 200 generation-3 baby girls
Year 60 the generation-1 women die.
Year 60 = 200 generation-2 women + 200 generation-3 women + 200 generation-4 baby girls
Year 80 the generation-2 women die.
Year 80 = 200 generation-3 women + 200 generation-4 women + 200 generation-5 baby girls.
Year 100 the generation-3 women die.
Year 100 = 200 generation-4 women + 200 generation-5 women + 200 generation-6 baby girls.
etc.

"Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is defined as, “the average number of children a women would have assuming that current age-specific birth rates remain constant throughout her childbearing years.” Simply put, total fertility rate is the average number of children a woman would have if a she survives all her childbearing (or reproductive) years. Childbearing years are considered age 15 to 49.""

Applying this definition to our simple model, the replacement rate was achieved in year 40, when the population was 500. Year 40 is when the current age-specific birth rate is 1 girl per woman at age 20.
The stable population is 600 women.
The stable population was achieved in year 60.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

A_Gupta wrote:Let's start with 100 women all of the same age.....
Your example assumes beginning with a zero base. That is not the case.

Secondly, you assume TFR at the replacement level not exceeding 2.0-2.1 from the beginning. In India's case the TFR has been above the replacement rate for generations and is now trending now. What that means is that the incremental annual inflow into the child bearing cohort now should be lower than the incremental annual outflow from the child bearing cohort. Assuming constant life expectancy the population should therefore decrease after 2020 if GOI TFR rates are to be believed. But nobody is forecasting any plateau in India's population till 2050-2060. So either the population numbers are wrong or the TFRs are wrong. Or Indians have suddenly got an extra long life expectancy.

Look, there is no doubt that the TFR is trending down, what is not clear is the rate at which it is decreasing and that unfortunately has big implications for the size of the overall population. If India's current population was 130 million it would not matter much if the plateau was reached in 2050 or 2100. But when the current population is already ~1300 million, a few decimal points can make a difference of hundreds of millions 40-50 years out and that has implications for food, water and energy resources as well as jobs.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by A_Gupta »

ldev wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:Let's start with 100 women all of the same age.....
Your example assumes beginning with a zero base. That is not the case.
Not sure what you mean. In any case it is meant to be a simple example to illustrate that the population growth does not stabilize immediately upon achievement of replacement TFR.
Secondly, you assume TFR at the replacement level not exceeding 2.0-2.1 from the beginning.
Please read the example again. I'm counting the female sex only, to simplify bookkeeping. My initial TFR is 2 girl children per woman, which would translate to a little over 4 children per woman in the real world.

That is, my example uses an abrupt drop from twice the replacement rate to the replacement rate, and shows how it still takes some time for the population to stabilize. The real world typically, and in India most certainly, does not show such an abrupt drop and so the time it takes for the population to stabilize is even more.
In India's case the TFR has been above the replacement rate for generations and is now trending now. What that means is that the incremental annual inflow into the child bearing cohort now should be lower than the incremental annual outflow from the child bearing cohort.
No. The incremental annual inflow into the child bearing cohort is very high because of the youth bulge. E.g., in 2014, the women in the 40-44 year age group soon to leave the child bearing cohort are about 40 million; the women in the 15-19 age group number around 55 million, and the younger age groups are similarly large. My example was constructed to show a one-generation youth bulge.
Assuming constant life expectancy the population should therefore decrease after 2020 if GOI TFR rates are to be believed. But nobody is forecasting any plateau in India's population till 2050-2060. So either the population numbers are wrong or the TFRs are wrong. Or Indians have suddenly got an extra long life expectancy.
No. Either do the math, or demonstrate with a model. Or perhaps sharpen your understanding of what TFR means. I showed you this in an example of an abrupt TFR drop from twice the replacement rate down to the replacement rate, and "momentum" carried the population to increase some more before stabilizing.
Look, there is no doubt that the TFR is trending down, what is not clear is the rate at which it is decreasing and that unfortunately has big implications for the size of the overall population. If India's current population was 130 million it would not matter much if the plateau was reached in 2050 or 2100. But when the current population is already ~1300 million, a few decimal points can make a difference of hundreds of millions 40-50 years out and that has implications for food, water and energy resources as well as jobs.
Yes! And conversely, the TFR is falling faster than the UN population projections (which do all the math needed, including the life expectancy changes, the continuous rather than abrupt drop in TFR, etc., etc. and which are updated on some schedule as new data comes in.) and therefore we already have an upper bound for what the population is going to be in 2020 and 2050 and so on.

In the "medium" variant of the UN's population projection for India, India's population peaks at around 1.754 billion around 2068, and is around 1.659 billion at 2100. But the "medium" variant has India's TFR at 2015-2020: 2.32. The "low" variant has India's TFR 2015-2020: 2.09, and in the "low" variant, India's population peaks at 1.517 billion in 2045 and is 1.494 billion in 2100.

Notice, the "low" variant has India at replacement TFR in 2015-2020 and population peaks in 2045.

The other point is that at present, India's demographics is going to somewhere between the UN's "low" and "medium" variants; and if the TFR continues to fall faster than the UN's "low" variant anticipates, then the future will be better. I'll put it this way - during 2000-2010 it looked like India was following the UN's "medium" variant projection; and now it appears India may be approaching the UN's "low" variant. And the downward momentum may be such that India may beat the UN's "low" variant.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

Thanks, A_Gupta!
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

A Gupta,

Understood,

those leaving the child bearing age have already done the damage and moved on!!

But if in the Indian context one looks at 75% of births happening when the female is aged 20-30, and if one assumes a plateau at year 2050, with a median female age of 30 for child bearing then those females will only be born now and in fact all the way upto 2030 for them to fit that 20-30 age group.

Anyway, the fact is that a population of of 1.7 billion or even 1.3 billion is far too much. And a country which has had to cope with adding the entire population of the US, Brazil and Indonesia to it's existing population over the last 46 years is, well, what can I say.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Supratik »

@ldev,

Google up something called "population momentum" and you will get your answer as to why population will still grow for some more time even when TFR has reached 2.1.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

Supratik wrote:@ldev,

Google up something called "population momentum" and you will get your answer as to why population will still grow for some more time even when TFR has reached 2.1.
Thanks.

Also the numbers now add up. If one assumes a 10% decadal growth with about 50% females, then there will be about 200 million females added to the population over the next 20 years who even at a replacement rate TFR of 2.0-2.1 will add about 400 million to the Indian population, to that add the existing 1.32 billion which will result in a stabilized population of about 1.70-1.75 billion. At least according the middle of the road projections.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by srin »

On the topic of EPFO and market investment ... LIC has been doing this for ages and (I think) its AUM is bigger than EPF's.
As long as the I get ~8% compounded taxfree (EEE) returns and the corpus with sovereign guarantee, I won't really complain. I don't need EPFO to take market risks on my behalf - I can do equity MF investment on my own and LTCG is taxfree.

That said, I haven't been a great fan of EPFO's operations. Routine things like changing jobs require applying for transfer, approvals etc keeping a lot of HRs and babus employed. Things have become a lot better recently that transfer is actually a better option than withdrawl upon change of jobs. If this is the brain trust that does equity investments (even if is just indexing), then we will have a US64-like situation.

Honestly, if they iron out the kinks (taxation, annuity and non-withdrawl) in the NPS, I'd happy to switch to it and invest in just gilts.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by srin »

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/busi ... 875704.cms

Finally, some movement on Air India. But I still don't get why the Govt calls it "disinvestment" (and other allied words "privatization" etc). It is only going to rile up the labour unions, which is only going to lead to lower price. They should instead call it "public ownership" (or even "nationalization" :D )- chance for indian public to own the airline shares. Result is the same, but if you keep the unions quiet, you'll hopefully get a better price.

As you can see, getting better price for AI is all I care about :mrgreen:
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Karthik S »

ETMarkets‏Verified account @ETMarkets
#EPFO to invest Rs 20,000 crore in equities in 2017-18: @Dattatreya
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by A_Gupta »

ldev wrote:A Gupta,

Understood,

those leaving the child bearing age have already done the damage and moved on!!

But if in the Indian context one looks at 75% of births happening when the female is aged 20-30, and if one assumes a plateau at year 2050, with a median female age of 30 for child bearing then those females will only be born now and in fact all the way upto 2030 for them to fit that 20-30 age group.

Anyway, the fact is that a population of of 1.7 billion or even 1.3 billion is far too much. And a country which has had to cope with adding the entire population of the US, Brazil and Indonesia to it's existing population over the last 46 years is, well, what can I say.
Yes, it is a dire situation. The one bright spot is that India may come in lower than even the current most optimistic projections.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Marten »

Karthik S wrote:
ETMarkets‏Verified account @ETMarkets
#EPFO to invest Rs 20,000 crore in equities in 2017-18: @Dattatreya
Gurus, how does it affect disinvestment in PSUs? $4bn cannot stanch any outflows in case of war. How does it affect EPF? In fact buying sovereign bonds would help an infra and defence production aka war effort. Is this understanding incorrect?
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by JohnTitor »

India should never have exceeded a population of about 150-160m.

That would put the population density at about 50 persons / km2. Anything over 150p/km2 is overcrowded. India is at over 400 persons/km2. To put this in perspective, the US is at about 30p/km2 and the UK is at 270p/km2. Even china is at less than 150p/km2

The question is - what is being done about it? I don't really see any programs that are in place to check population control. I think Assam (?) recently announced something that stated if you had more than 1 kid you can't get a govt job or something. But India has no population control measures in place. We need something strong in place if we are to make it habitable. The one thing I hate about India is the overcrowding - everything everywhere is overcrowded: schools, trains, planes, temples, streets etc. It is hard to find a quite and peaceful place there.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Supratik »

I think they should first list AI on the stock market to avoid charges of selling family silver from the Cong-Left apart from selling aircraft and culling unviable routes to prune down the debt. Nobody is going to buy an airline with 50000 crores of debt.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Karthik S »

JohnTitor wrote:India should never have exceeded a population of about 150-160m.

That would put the population density at about 50 persons / km2. Anything over 150p/km2 is overcrowded. India is at over 400 persons/km2. To put this in perspective, the US is at about 30p/km2 and the UK is at 270p/km2. Even china is at less than 150p/km2

The question is - what is being done about it? I don't really see any programs that are in place to check population control. I think Assam (?) recently announced something that stated if you had more than 1 kid you can't get a govt job or something. But India has no population control measures in place. We need something strong in place if we are to make it habitable. The one thing I hate about India is the overcrowding - everything everywhere is overcrowded: schools, trains, planes, temples, streets etc. It is hard to find a quite and peaceful place there.
England is 420 p/km^2 and China east of hu huanyong line is 272 p/km^2. Japan is > 330 p/km^2 and SoKo is 500 p/km^2. The point is if the population is disciplined, sophisticated, we can co-exist well. We really need to work in increasing our per acre yield to support the population.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

JohnTitor wrote:India should never have exceeded a population of about 150-160m.

That would put the population density at about 50 persons / km2. Anything over 150p/km2 is overcrowded. India is at over 400 persons/km2. To put this in perspective, the US is at about 30p/km2 and the UK is at 270p/km2. Even china is at less than 150p/km2
Chinese data is skewed by the nature of their imperial conquests. Here's how they're actually distributed:
Image
"China proper" is just the Yellow/Yangtze river bounded areas. Tibet, Xinjiang are not legitimate territories and they're just one more internal cataclysm away from losing them.

As far as Indian population goes, the current situation is the best of where we are. TFR has dropped like a stone, and we'll potentially do lower than the UN low projection. What's more, the TFR drop is driven by the newer generations being much less willing to have kids, so that even the increasing population of young women together add very few babies. Most mistakes were made between the 1950s and 1990s, or probably the 80s to be charitable. Four successive decades growing at >20% decadal population growth is way too many people.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by JohnTitor »

yes England is at over 400p/km2. Which is why it is just as bad as India. Trains are horribly overcrowded! In fact if you live in London, during peak hours, sometimes you have to wait 2-3 tube trains before there is space to board.

Guys, the point I'm tryin to make be it china or UK is the fact that when there is a huge population density, over say 50-100, quality of life goes down. Even in places like SK and Japan, which are developed countries, space is at a premium (same with NYC). There is a difference in the quality of life - not just space wise but also plenty of clean air, light etc all helping towards living healthy. When I come to Blr, all the houses are built upto the end of the property boundary and 3-4 floors high. This is why I love staying at my native place - theres a lake nearby, trees, clean air, wind etc

Suraj, does India have any population control measures in place? I might be mistaken but I couldn't find anything on google.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

This is the economy thread, so let's keep things on track instead of wishful commentary about 150M populations.

Fact is that the current course of TFR movement and corresponding forward estimate is the best possible situation we can have, given the cards we've been dealt with through successive decades of uncontrolled growth.

The purpose of this thread is NOT to hyperventilate about that. Please go find another place for it. NOTHING can be done about where we are today. But the best possible situation to mitigate the future is happening, and that's that.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by gakakkad »

JohnTitor wrote:India should never have exceeded a population of about 150-160m.

That would put the population density at about 50 persons / km2. Anything over 150p/km2 is overcrowded. India is at over 400 persons/km2. To put this in perspective, the US is at about 30p/km2 and the UK is at 270p/km2. Even china is at less than 150p/km2

The question is - what is being done about it? I don't really see any programs that are in place to check population control. I think Assam (?) recently announced something that stated if you had more than 1 kid you can't get a govt job or something. But India has no population control measures in place. We need something strong in place if we are to make it habitable. The one thing I hate about India is the overcrowding - everything everywhere is overcrowded: schools, trains, planes, temples, streets etc. It is hard to find a quite and peaceful place there.
I'd say ideal level would have been 350 million ... It's not just total land area that is important... But also total arable land...the thotal cultivable area of the us and India are almost similar... Us has vast area where there is no one...near zero population density... The major American population centers have similar population density as India ... Indian cities appear even more crowded than they are because they are horribly planned ...or not planned at all... I suppose when the balance of population becomes decidedly urban and more money are spent in urban infrastructure , a lot of these problems would solve. .. any major megalopolis would have crowded public transport...be it Chicago or Manhattan or londonistan or Paris ..
Suraj
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

And let that be all about the topic, please. There's no point in discussing hypothetical ideal populations and derailing this thread.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Singha »

india was north of 300 mil well before the mughaliya rule i think. there is simply no other country in asia with the profusion of fertile river valleys we have...not even close. a fact not lost over the millenia on those looking to find good land. and food surpluses will lead to population rise over time notwithstanding the periodic droughts - i believe el nino la nina is a ancient thing. the tigris and euphrates valley population is a midget compared to what the indus, godavari or ganga supports since aeons.

for major global climatic changes, 10000 yrs is common and usual...
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by ldev »

Singha wrote:india was north of 300 mil well before the mughaliya rule i think..
This is a great youtube video I found showing human population through time dating back 100,000 years when human migration began. As early as 1 AD, you can see that India and China along with the then Roman Empire and the Mediterranean basin were the most populated places on earth. As you can see from the time lapse by about 200 AD India probably had about 30%-40% of the world's population, China an equal amount and the rest of the world had the rest.

An interesting question to ask will be as to how/why population growth around the Mediterranean basis plunged after the fall of the Roman Empire but population growth in India and China continued unabated regardless of empire to the present day. Also, then, and to this day, the most populated area in India is the Gangetic plain stretching form present day UP through Bihar and into West Bengal and then Bangladesh.

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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Singha »

I believe weather conditions changed the med climate to drier and secondly it never had as much biodiversity as indo cheen ..being a desert plus temperate zone. Onlee narrow nile valley had comparable density and still does. There is no other major river of that style flowing into med sea.

Maybe in snowy places pop growth tends to be lower...
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by arshyam »

Getting OT, but don't discount social stability. It's always conducive to population growth over time.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Ankar »

EU-India trade agreement a win-win situation: study

will add 1.3% to India's GDP growth and 0.14% to EU's
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Singha »

Monsoon Likely to Break Over Kerala Today, Says Met Department

a cyclone mora is also over BD-mizoram.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Singha »

arshyam wrote:Getting OT, but don't discount social stability. It's always conducive to population growth over time.
true, once rome fell, "warlike tribes" like vandals, visigoths, franks, saxons etc who used to be roman auxiliaries moved around building empires and capturing land .... the CoG moved to eastern roman empire in constantinople for several hundred years. I dont think other than the eastern roman empire , there was any big empire in europe between AD400 to AD1400. smallish mizoram or cashmere sized states thats all.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Karthik S »

Ankar wrote:EU-India trade agreement a win-win situation: study

will add 1.3% to India's GDP growth and 0.14% to EU's
Looks like agreement is yet to be signed. But GST is supposed to add 1.5%-2% GDP growth rate, increased FDI 1% and if or when signed this deal will 1.3% over long term, add to it the benefits out of infrastructure projects such as DFC, Sagarmala etc, we are looking at sustained double digit growth in coming years.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by chetak »

Karthik S wrote:
Ankar wrote:EU-India trade agreement a win-win situation: study

will add 1.3% to India's GDP growth and 0.14% to EU's
Looks like agreement is yet to be signed. But GST is supposed to add 1.5%-2% GDP growth rate, increased FDI 1% and if or when signed this deal will 1.3% over long term, add to it the benefits out of infrastructure projects such as DFC, Sagarmala etc, we are looking at sustained double digit growth in coming years.
IIRC, the EU had some serious "concerns" that it claimed India was not addressing and Modi thereafter ignored them and right fully so.

there seems to be a major block to the India EU trade. Earlier it was the eyetalian murderous marines issue and it seems to have morphed into something else now.

Can some guru throw some light??
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

Please use the India-EU thread for off topic discussions. This thread is bring repeatedly derailed by posters not bothering to read the thread topic.

Off topic posts were already deleted once. That's not a situation to repeat with yet another off topic post!
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by V_Raman »

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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by JohnTitor »

^^ its essentially the indian equivalent to US treasury bonds. Not a fan of the name though as it seems to be a stereotypical view of india.
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Re: Indian Economy News & Discussion - Aug 26 2015

Post by Suraj »

JohnTitor wrote:^^ its essentially the indian equivalent to US treasury bonds. Not a fan of the name though as it seems to be a stereotypical view of india.
These are not government issued. They're issued by an external agency in an external bond trading exchange, but denominated in INR because they seek to invest in India. The external investor bears all exchange rate risk. The agency in question establishes currency exchange agreements with RBI (since foreign investor purchases require exchange of forex with INR) and GoI/SEBI needs to approve the security. There's a Chinese version of it called dimsum bond.

GoI separately makes government (central and state) and Indian corporate debt accessible to foreign investors.
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