India: The Tale Of The Demographic Giant

In this video, I analyse demographics of India, now the most populous country on the planet, from a deep historic, anthropological a sociological point of view and I speculate about it's possible future development.

- timestamps -

00:00 - Introduction
03:37 - The Ancient Divide
19:52 - The Caste System
27:51 - The Demographic Future

Music used in the video:

Photos used in the video and for the thumbnail:

Some of the sources used for the video:

[gj]

The total fertility rate of India is currently 2.0, which is below the 2.1 needed for replacement rate. A massive decline from recent years. It has been below 2.1 since 2020.

[jayexile]

My doctor is Indian he was telling me about those sterilizations he said that he was performing them back-to-back while he was in medical school before he had even received his license. He said the Indian government pays people if they are willing to go and get the procedure done.

[bogdanoff]

Glad to have another episode on Canada.

[gocool_.]

Most of the states in India is starting to face population decline and has a lower TRF of below 2.1. Most of the GenZ people are reluctant to have children or at max 1 child. By 2050 we will start to have a very sharp population decline and maybe by 2100 our population can reduce to 800-900M

[Maxშემიწყალე]

They love india so much until they are told they have to go back. Amazing isnt it?

[Hanbenwei]

Tales from the dirtiest slum in Mumbai

[vanshstalin]

India population is still less than 1.4 billion, UN forecast is exaggerated.For ex according to Un forecast in 2011 stated 1.2576 billion, but official census counted 1.21 billion on same year

[Ecumenomachy]

Don’t the Vedas and Avesta (from ancient Iranian Zoroastrianism) descend from the same religion of the very ancient Indo Europeans? It’s amazing to me that Zeus, Jupiter, and Dyaus all come from the same PIE god Dyeus-Pater

[DarkOfTheMist]

Also despite being the most populous country they are the lowest Olympic winners by proportionality. 41 Medals in their ENTIRE history

[jayasuriyas]

The comments are what i would expect in this channel

[GuardianGamerable]

I think you are placing too much emphasis on the inward-looking nature of Indians in your predictions of demography and analysis of India's past. With regards to demography, if what you were saying was true, then only the Hindu majority's fertility rate should have declined while Muslims' and Christians' TFR should have stayed the same or even increased. Yet we see similar changes in all racial and religious groups, according to your own words. This suggests broader factors like economic development affecting all levels of society.

Additionally, I find it honestly ridiculous that you are connecting Hinduism to India's prevalence in service industries. Setting aside the religious aspects for a moment, perhaps you could consider the economic factors here? Economic factors are the primary lens of looking at most countries' development, yet for India you seemingly jump to Hinduism to explain nearly everything. Hinduism did not give India a massive English-speaking population. It is the British we have to 'thank' for that. This is the primary advantage in the world labor market that India has, millions of English speakers, which lends itself to a connection with Anglo sphere that was already transitioning to service-based economies by the time India opened up to the world in the 90s. Indians followed the Anglo economies because they were tied to them by language. This is relatively similar to other English non-settler colonies. Just look at Kenya, which is also English speaking and is dominated by services, at 50%, followed by industry and agriculture.

Something that is unique to India, however, is how the British systematically destroyed any native industry India had, hobbling the country after independence. India was the world's source of textiles and high-quality steel (Damascus steel, which comes from Wootz steel in India), which the British decimated by quite literally destroying the textile looms and furnaces, forcing Indians to buy British made goods and expelling millions of Indians to the agriculture sector. No other country I can think of faced anything similar to that, and with only 80 years after independence, 50 of which were under stifling socialist policies, India is just beginning to find its manufacturing strength again.

In terms of religion, it is certainly true that the caste structure creates a large group of intellectuals in the forms of Brahmin and Brahmin adjacent communities, which could theoretically translate to an emphasis on services over manufacturing in the economy. Yet Brahmins only make up about 4-5% of Indians, not nearly enough to explain the 50% of India's economy that is services. Furthermore, there is an incredible emphasis on manufacturing and development being pushed today by the most Hindu of political parties and the Hindu nationalist movement in general. Even if there is a perceived intellectualism to Hindus and a tendency to focus on the abstract, I would say this is largely limited to some of the elite intellectuals and not to the general masses. Hindutva, the most popular people's ideology today, is in fact a little obsessed with manufacturing.

I suppose the other idea you briefly suggested was that the Indian (and here I think you mean Hindu) emphasis on transcendence over earthly matters is somehow to blame for its emphasis on services. This is frankly, a very simplistic understanding of the religion which can only arise if you've only read about it intellectually and not lived it as I have. Religion is not something constrained to the intellectual sphere and, as an outsider looking in, you cannot read other intellectuals' opinion on a lived religion and claim to have an understanding of it. You actually have to observe how it affects people's lives.

Along with earthly transcendence, there is an almost paradoxical aspect of Hinduism which is that the divine is manifest in everything. As children, we are taught that even a rock or ant contains God inside it. Everything is sacred to a Hindu because the world itself is formed from the thought of God. Through work and devotion in the material realm, through realization of the divinity manifest in everything, through doing your duty in the material world, transcendence can arise, taking one's soul to enlightenment. For example, you may have seen the Shinto priest in Japan blessing an F35 before it entered service about a year ago. This is exactly the mindset that Hindus have, that we are doing God's work with every dutiful action we take, whether that be violence or war. It is a mindset that lends itself well to manufacturing, I would say, and India's relative lack of this industry compared to services is not something that can therefore be placed onto the feet of Hinduism. I would hazard to say that it is due to the socialist policies of the Congress government, which regulated manufacturing industries out of existence, that has mostly contributed to India's low manufacturing output today.

I also reject your characterization of Hinduism as a pacifist religion. I will remind you that the first Muslim conquest of India occurred 712 and the next in 1192, 500 years later, not for a lack of Arab efforts but because of fierce resistance by the Indians. Even during Muslim rule, there were countless rebellions by Hindus against their overlords. The most successful were the Marathas, who had overthrown the Mughals right before the British arrived. Kung Fu itself traces its roots to an Indian monk that travelled to China. Sikhism, an offshoot of Hinduism (however much some idiots deny it), is militaristic at its core. The Vedas talk of martial arts and the science of war, which is called shastra-vidya. In more modern times, there was fierce resistance to English rule, with freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh and Subhas Chandra Bose, who raised armies to fight the British. Indians also served in WW1 and WW2 with distinction. Indian mercenaries were widely known throughout antiquity and the classical period.

Your understanding of India from a demographic standpoint is good. I was happy to see a nuanced take on the Aryan Migration Theory, although you did not include that recent excavations have discovered war chariots in an IVC site, suggesting that it wasn't Aryans that introduced horses to India. I was also surprised that you included sterilization programs, and I suppose this out of scope, but these sterilizations were forced in many cases, especially at the start of this program in the 70s. But reading Riencourt is not enough to grasp Hinduism, especially as he was writing from an intellectual's standpoint. You could have chosen any aspect of popular Hinduism to focus on, yet you chose a book from 1960. In your predictions you did not include the massive and pervasive influence of Hindutva which is shaking the foundations of socialist India and purging it of all anti-developmental tendencies. The old elite which was composed of intellectuals obsessed with secularism and socialism is now being replaced by a manufacturing and realist-oriented group.

For a 40 minute video, I feel like you could have done better.

EDIT: I just saw the rest your comments section. WTF! How is everyone so retarded and racist when it comes to anything Indian?

[AmirSatt]

If you want to see how animals would behave if they had internet, just read comments mentioning anything about India/Pakistan

[sourovdas]

The video is pretty neutral and except some misunderstanding and mistakes it was pretty factual and knowledgeable. The video wasn't hateful towards indians AT ALL.But yet i don't understand where this hate coming from in this comment section! Is this have become a new western tradition of spewing hate wherever they see "india" on internet 😂

[pineapplesareyummy]

India (and its neighbours, particularly Bangladesh) may just have too many people. India's territory is only one-third the size of China or the US. While food is not a problem, you still need access to resources to support a high standard of living. Unless India starts acquiring overseas colonies, India's population density would put it at a disadvantage. It may very well still reach #1 in absolute GDP size due to its population, but standard of living will be lower than in China and Europe.

[Kriankas]

This comment section became a crusade between indians and trolls

[anime]

37:47 The chart itself shows that population under extreme poverty line reduced from 45% in early 2000s to about 13% in 2021. In other words, India lifted more than 400 million people from extreme poverty into lower-middle class. Nothing short of an achievement, that too by a democratic country. But as usual Europeans only use "democracy and human rights" narrative only when they need to undermine geo-political rivals. As for the literacy rates, they were over 77% back in 2011 itself, there hasn't been a new census yet. The country went through a sea-change in the last decade and this decade it has even accelerated further. Europe has just started noticing the growth as India surpassed many countries in EU. By 2030, India will be almost double the size of German economy(assuming Germany doesn't nosedive).

[ihatemotionblur_]

Why is the comment section on this dude's videos almost always so much worse than the videos?

[trireme]

Make a video about gender imbalance in India & China. They've tens of millions of surplus lonely men which is shocking.

[yellow-purple-pink]

This video was packed with valuable information and great insights. Fantastic work!

[anuvlad]

God as someone who has always liked his content the comment section is surely hell of toxic