Has population growth hurt or benefited India?

Many Indians blame the nation's high population for all that is wrong with the country, but they forget that it is because of our numbers that we have become such an attractive economy.

That is not to say that population has not had a negative impact on the country, but it does show that strength lies in numbers.

The total population of the United States is 312 million, Germany's is 82 million and Australia has 22.7 million.

China has more than 200 million living on a dollar a day, Brazil has about 20 million and India has 400 million such poor.

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If we are able to bring even half of them -- 200 million -- out of their poverty, what a massive middle class, the backbone of every economy, India would have.

The country would have a ready and ripe market bigger than Germany, Australia and the US combined and it would surpass even China, which too, is reaping the rewards thanks to its population.

We would see an unprecedented boom in demand for everything -- from homes to cars to schools.

Both private and public sectors would enjoy the windfall created by the rush to meet rising aspirations.

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The real estate sector, currently facing tough times due to the continuous interest rate hike and soaring property prices, would have its hand full; the automobile sector would have to work overtime just to meet demands and the education industry, especially the private sector, would be building schools all day long.

But that is not all.

If we are able to improve the living standards of those at the bottom rung, it would also mean lower maternal and infant mortality rates, increase in birth control, decline in diseases, more productive workers, better sanitation networks, and an overall improvement in everybody's life.

It is not as if this hasn't been done before or that it is impossible.

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Scandinavian countries have been able to provide a comparatively better life to their citizens and some Persian Gulf countries have succeeded in improving the living conditions of all their nationals.

India's sheer size is a challenge, no doubt about that, but it can be turned into an advantage.

All we need are correct policies. Instead of steps that benefit either the super rich or the upper class, we require measures that provide an all-inclusive growth and that are targeted at lifting the social status of the poorest of the poor.

The present policies are completely skewed against the poor and, if we continue to go on this path, we are more likely to become another United States, where the top one per cent of the population controls more than 40 per cent of the wealth, while those on the bottom rung survive on handouts. And we would be facing this problem without even attaining the Americans' per capita income levels.

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A study by the McKinsey Global Institute has found that in 1985, 93 per cent of Indians lived on a household income of less than Rs 90,000 a year, or about a dollar per person per day; by 2005 that proportion had been cut nearly by half, to 54 per cent.

More than 103 million people have moved out of desperate poverty in the course of one generation in urban and rural areas as well.

They project that if India can achieve 7.3 per cent annual growth over the next 20 years, 465 million more people will be lifted out of poverty.

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Contrary to popular perception, rural India has benefited from this growth: extreme rural poverty has fallen from 94 per cent in 1985 to 61 per cent in 2005, and the McKinsey report projects it will drop to 26 per cent by 2025.

This shows that India, with all its corruption, bad governance and other shortcomings, is more than capable of improving the lives of its citizens.

Now, imagine what we can achieve if only we did not have so much corruption, policies were not that bad and governance was a wee bit little better.