This Article First Appeared In Time.com On Jan 7, 2023
On Tuesday, experts raised the possibility that India’s 1.417 billion people may have surpassed China’s population numbers, according to the latest estimates from the World Population Review. The news came after China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that the country’s total population declined by 850,000 between the end of 2021 and the end of 2022.
The development marks a new phase in India’s growth on the global stage, riddled with the challenges of managing a rising population but also an opportunity to “reimagine strategies and build on our successes to provide a healthy and happy life for its people,” Poonam Muttreja, the executive director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI), told TIME.