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India’s population trends are already showing signs of long-term decline, with regions like Kerala witnessing empty homes and West Bengal’s urban Bengali Bhadralok community shrinking both in numbers and presence. Economist Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, has warned that India is not as young as widely believed and is already seeing the impact of falling fertility and increasing migration. He noted that even Pakistan is younger than India.
Urban homes empty, cultural identities under strain
During a conversation with historian Hindol Sengupta on a podcast, Sanyal said, “If you just go through major towns in Kerala — take Thrissur, for example. Thrissur is the financial and intellectual capital of Kerala. Now you go there — there are beautiful bungalows, a lot of them belonging to wealthy families, particularly Syrian Christian families and others as well. Now irrespective of which community they are from, they have lovely bungalows. All of them live in Dubai or Abu Dhabi or now their children have moved to the West. At best, those bungalows have a few aging grandparents. Now after this, they're going to be just empty.”He made a similar point about West Bengal’s urban elite. “At this rate, the Bengali Bhadralok will go extinct. Because if you combine this birth rate and out-migration from Kolkata to other states and other parts of the world, the Bengali Bhadralok will go extinct. These are statistical points, it's not even an opinion,” he said.
India not the youngest country anymore
Sanyal challenged the widely held perception that India is the youngest country. “We keep fooling ourselves saying - 'We are the youngest country in the world'. First of all, we are not the youngest country in the world,” he said. “There are countries in Africa, there is Pakistan, there is Philippines - which is younger than us. Secondly, even though we are younger than the West or East Asia, we too are aging and we need to begin to think in those terms.”Fertility rates dropping across India
Sanyal said that India’s overall fertility rate has fallen to 1.9 children per woman. “The only reason it is at 1.9 and not lower is because of UP and Bihar,” he said. “Large parts of southern India but also other parts of India, say for example the state of West Bengal, are now somewhere in the 1.6 range. Urban Bengal is 1.2.”Urban crowding linked to poor management, not population growth
On the perception of India’s overcrowded cities, Sanyal said this was due to poor planning rather than high population. “First of all, please separate your urban management problem from the demographic problem. We have this impression that our cities are overcrowded. No, they are badly managed,” he said.He cited the example of Mumbai’s southern suburbs. “In just the last 10 years, the traffic situation in southern Mumbai has improved. Has this been because of out-movement of people? No. In fact, there are more high-rises in Worli today which you can see from the sea-link than there were 20 years ago. But the traffic has improved. Why? Because you have better infrastructure. So the problem is infrastructure building, it is not a crowding problem.”
Decline hard to reverse, long recovery cycle
Sanyal pointed out that once the fertility rate falls below replacement level, recovery is slow. “Let’s say China today — it’s already gotten rid of the one-child policy. Once society changes and you have a generation who's born up without having siblings, the social structure that keeps a higher birth rate simply goes away,” he said.“In China, their birth rates kept falling. And even if they succeed in reversing this, the benefits will not show up for another 25 years.”
North-South imbalance could trigger migration tensions
Sanyal said states in southern India may face labour shortages. “You'll have parts of the country, for example - the South, which will have huge shortages of people. Now either they give up on growing, or they decide to import people. When people are imported, where do they come from? The places where they have more children — which is UP and Bihar. Then you will complain about language, culture, all kinds of things.”Northern regions also showing strain
Even parts of North India are beginning to see the effects. “In Himachal, one major problem is you don't have enough children. You have a large number of schools that do not have a minimum quantum of children to keep those schools running,” Sanyal said.He concluded, “Reproductively speaking, we are no longer reproducing ourselves. The number of children peaked 10 to 15 years ago. So this is an obvious point and I am amazed that I have to debate it.”
