INDIA: India, with a population already over a billion, will, if present trends continue, overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2035, census officials said, writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi
According to the official count released to mark World Population Day yesterday, India's population stood at 1.029 billion on March 1st, 2001 when the figure was last tabulated.
The country's top census official J.K. Banthia said India had added 182 million people between 1991 and 2001, which is more than the estimated population of Brazil.
But by 2035, India's population will touch 1.46 billion outstripping China, local media reports declared, making it the world's most populous country stretching its already dwindling resources to apocalyptic limits.
Every hour, India adds 1,815 people to its population and around 15,678,000 each year, a figure nearly equalling Australia's population. The census showed that 35 per cent of Indians could not read or write.