ocess that favors strong nations (such as the US) while exploiting the weak. Whether or not this is true is of grave concern to a nation such as India, which is blighted by destitution, inefficiency, ethnic conflict and starvation.
India is a nation that must contend with a series of demographic challenges. Its reality is comprised of ôa billion individuals, belonging to countless ethnic, linguistic, religious, caste and other defined groupsö; from within, voices of dissention are becoming more agitated and more frequent as ôsocial inequity, regional disparity, and political instabilityö continue to manifest (Weightman 168). IndiaÆs population is extraordinary. Adding 18 million people per year, India will likely contain more people than Chinaùan area more than twice as largeùwithin this century; even if India achieves its two-child per family objective, by 2015 it will still have a population of nearly 2 billion (Weightman 168-72).
These population trends cannot but be problematic for India. Extreme population growth can have a myriad of negative affects; these were well documented by Ansley J. Coale and Edgar M. Hoover in a 1958 study that dealt specifically with India (and Mexico). As Allen C. Kelley recalls, Ansley and Coale created a model that identified three primary adverse impacts of population growth: 1) It is ôcapital-shallowingö (that is, it reduces the ratio of capital to labor), 2) It perpetuates ôage-dependencyö (that is, it creates an increase in youth dependency), and 3) It constitutes an ôinvestment diversionö (that is, it causes a shift in government spending into health and education at the expense of ôgrowth-orientedö programs) (35).
Though the relevance of the Coale-Hoover framework has diminished as economic theory has advanced, it rem
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