India will soon pass China as the world’s most populous nation

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• Geoff Bennett:

  India will overtake China as the world's most populous nation by the middle of this year. That's according to United Nations data released this week.

  Alongside its population of 1.4 billion, India's geopolitical and economic footprint is also growing.

  As Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, fears are mounting that it's all coming at the cost of the liberal democracy the country has enjoyed for decades.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  They arrive from nearby villages each morning, piling into a rain to the Capitol, Delhi, competing for space or just oxygen inside or just a firm handle to hang from outside for the hour-long ride.

• Shyam Shankar Yadav, Day Laborer (through translator):

  For laboring people, if we didn't go to Delhi, how would we run a family, educate the kids? There is no industry in our villages. That's why we have to go to Delhi.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  It's the kind of scene repeated across India every day, where an estimated 400 million people work in the so-called informal sector paid by the day on days when they actually find work.

• Asish Kumar, Day Laborer (through translator):

  I have to catch the trains like this. You can see how risky it is.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  These commuters are coming from Uttar Pradesh, a northern state. With neighboring Bihar, they account for about a fourth of India's 1.4 billion people, and most of its population growth.

  India's population is not just the world's largest. It's also very young. More than 40 percent of the people in this country today are below the age of 25. The challenge is to find employment for them.

  Poonam Muttreja, Population Foundation of India: We have to worry about expanding education, infrastructure, health.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Poonam Muttreja with the nonprofit Population Foundation of India says the huge numbers represent both a challenge and opportunity for what is now the world's fifth largest economy.

• Poonam Muttreja:

  The good news is that there is a shortage of labor in the rest of the world. So, for India to take advantage of that, it has to be now and at a big scale.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Leading that charge is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He has pushed to bring global manufacturing jobs to India.

• Narendra Modi, Indian Prime Minister (through translator):

  We have to make India a developed India in 25 years before our eyes.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  At home, Modi has used his commanding parliamentary majority and the country's growing digital savvy to deliver various basic welfare benefits, gas stoves to many rural areas to replace dirtier cooking fuels, for example.

  He's made it easy for most citizens to open bank accounts and use them to deposit financial support for some farmers. His image is omnipresent in these campaigns, and as he touts India's growing economic prowess and global footprint in a media landscape that's become largely allied with his ruling Bharatiya Janata, or India People's Party, the BJP.

  India has seen solid economic growth, but overall job creation has fallen well short of the number economists say is needed for millions of young people entering the work force each year. Still, the prime minister remains highly popular.

• Mihir Sharma, Economist:

  If you don't have a job, at least he's making you feel proud about other things. He's making you feel proud about India's place in the world.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Economist Mihir Sharma is a Delhi based columnist for Bloomberg.

• Mihir Sharma:

  This is a new form of populism that we're figuring out in this country, which is this combination of basic welfare, basic stability, and daily, weekly, monthly reinforcement of how good it is to be Indian.

• Swapan Dasgupta, Bharatiya Janata Party:

  I'm very, very optimistic about India, because I think India has discovered its mojo.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Swapan Dasgupta is a prominent member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

• Swapan Dasgupta:

  We are no longer somehow feeling that, oh, God, India, we have an Indian passport and the lottery of life, you have probably won the last prize.

  That sort of feeling has gone.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  He praises Modi for instilling new pride in a nation whose aspirations he says were long suppressed, not just under British colonial rule, but for centuries before it under Mughal rulers, who came from Central and West Asia, bringing Islam and leaving an enduring cultural legacy, the Taj Mahal its most famous icon.

  Dasgupta says the BJP wants to change that historical narrative.

• Swapan Dasgupta:

  But I think, overall, the belief is that India is principally, principally, but not exclusively, a Hindu country.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  But critics charge, the BJP has run on a divisive platform, especially hostile to the country's 14 percent Muslim minority, blessing a new Hindu temple built on the site of a 16th century mosque that was demolished by a mob of protesters in 1992.

  There are frequent reports of lynchings for allegedly consuming beef. The cow is revered in Hinduism. And, in 2019, the government passed a citizenship law which critics say places a burden on many Muslims to prove their loyalty to India. Its detractors say the BJP has used the courts and tax authorities to silence political opponents and journalists.

• Palanivel Thiagarajan, Finance Minister, Tamil Nadu:

  It's really about the Hindu and kind of division and kind of spreading the bigotry.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Palanivel Thiagarajan:is finance minister of the Southern state of Tamil Nadu, ruled by a regional party. He says India's economic growth is highly uneven, aggravated by poor governance in the populous northern states, where the BJP is in power.

• Palanivel Thiagarajan:

  Every measure, economically, developmentally, educationally, every measure shows that, at best, we're underperforming the potential by a few percentage points. At worst, we're actually regressing.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  By contrast, he notes South Indian states have focused on development, notably public health and education.

  The result, he says, the south is seeing declining populations and high economic growth, from I.T., to automobiles, to iPhone manufacturing. Another result, millions of northern especially lower-skilled workers have migrated south to cities like Bangalore and Chennai.

• Heera Paswan, Migrant Laborer (through translator):

  After my education, there were no jobs in Bihar. That's why I had to come here.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  They feel alienated here linguistically and culturally, they complained, but have the choice.

• Bablu Kumar Mandal, Migrant Laborer (through translator):

  We are Bihari. We want to return to Bihar. Here, there's been a lot of change. Lots of companies have come here. But what's come to our Bihar? Not a thing.

• Mihir Sharma:

  A third, in some cases, a half of people in the eighth grade in India can't add or write at a second grade level.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Economist Sharma says India needs to urgently replicate nationwide the model of its southern states, notably in public health and education.

• Mihir Sharma:

  when you have this boom generation that should be able to push you over the edge into being an upper-middle-income country or a rich country, in fact, if that generation is not healthy and not reasonably educated, you're going to run into trouble.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Prime Minister Modi has vowed to bring improvements, and BJP commentator Dasgupta says that, under his powerful influence, the party will become more inclusive.

• Swapan Dasgupta:

  The outreach to the Muslim community must happen. And I think the prime minister is fully aware of that, and he's made enough soundings on that basis.

  And, yes, I guess — it's — it should be a political priority.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  But there doesn't seem to be any impetus for it.

• Swapan Dasgupta:

  That doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't happen. There is a difference between winning an election and governing the country.

• Fred de Sam Lazaro:

  Right now, most analysts see the prime minister's party winning elections scheduled for 2024.

  Maybe may risk life and limb in the daily struggle to earn a living, but the populous northern states remain an enduring stronghold for the BJP.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro in New Delhi.

• Geoff Bennett:

  And a reminder that Fred's reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.