Population cause prosperity

Bibek Debroy writes:

• Here is the horror story according to Ghulam Nabi Azad. Between 2005 and 2010, China’s annual rate of population growth has been 0.6 per cent, against India’s 1.4 per cent. Around 2030, India will become the most populous country on earth — with a population of 1.6 billion by 2050. Gujarat and Haryana will reach replacement levels of fertility in 2012, Assam in 2019, Rajasthan and Bihar in 2021, Chhattisgarh in 2022, Madhya Pradesh in 2025 and Uttar Pradesh in 2027. I wonder if the health minister has read Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. If not, he should. And he should recommend it as mandatory reading for all MPs. In 1968, Ehrlich wrote: “India couldn’t possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.” And: “I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971.”