6/25/2014 Over-population warning as India's billionth baby is born | World news | theguardian.com

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/may/11/population 1/1

India's population hit 1bn today with the birth of a baby girl in a Delhi hospital.

The birth puts India in an exclusive club with China as the only nations with populations exceeding 1bn.

But on current trends, India will become the world's most populous country as it grows by 15.5m people

a year.

The billionth baby - named Astha, Hindi for faith - was born to a poor Delhi couple. An estimated 42,000

children are born in India each day, so government officials decided that a baby girl born after noon on

May 11 in the 1,500-bed Safdarjang hospital would symbolically mark the 1bn milestone. The child was

born at 12.32pm local time.

"The one billionth baby, symbolically selected and born at Safdarjang hospital, represents the human

being that brings India's population up to 1bn. Thus this baby is very special and very unique," said the

UN population fund's representative in India, Michael Vlassoff.

"But 42,000 other babies are also being born in India today on May 11, as they are on every day. What

world will they inherit? Will their hopes and aspirations be fulfilled?" he added.

The UN has warned of widespread shortages of food and water if India's demographic growth does not

slow down.

Almost every measure of progress India has made since independence has been checked by its growing

population: food production has trebled but many people go hungry; literacy has increased but so has

the total number of illiterate people.

India was the first country in the developing world to initiate a state-sponsored family-planning

programme in 1952 and official figures suggest a measure of success. Since independence in 1947, the

fertility rate has been cut from six births per woman of child-bearing age to 3.5.

But efforts to encourage family planning among poorer Indians suffered a setback in the 1970s when the

government sponsored a mass sterilisation campaign, in which illiterate people were duped or paid to

have vasectomies or removal of the fallopian tubes.

The emphasis has changed in the past decade toward educating women, raising their status and

providing better health care. Non-governmental organisations tour rural areas distributing condoms and

discussing birth control, but sex education is not taught in schools.