INDIA, April 8, 2012 (npr.org): India’s once-a-decade census has turned up some striking numbers: The population grew this past decade by 181 million — that’s the total population of Brazil. India now has more than 1.2 billion people and is on track to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation in 2030.
India’s rapid economic growth — and its long-standing poverty — are also reflected in the census. More than half of all Indian households now have cellphones, but fewer than half have toilets.
The fact that a mobile phone is easier to get than a toilet is a telling one, says Partha Mukhopadhyay, an economist at the Center for Policy Research, a think-tank in New Delhi. To him it shows that while individuals in India are striving, the Indian government hasn’t been able to keep up.
“The government is trailing people a little bit in the sense that … in order to provide public goods like sanitation, like water … what you need is for the state to be organized, to be able to transform this increase in incomes into an increase in state revenues, which can then be used to provide these kinds of public goods,” Mukhopadhyay says.