I saw a thread on 4chan that wasn't complete crap. So I thought I should share the details.
TL;DR India could be potentially fucked in the future because of its agriculture/urban structure.
Please note I am not very familiar with the details of economics here so anyone with more expertise is free to see this data and see whether or not it has any validity. I also am not very familiar with agriculture in India but I hear its kinda messed up.
Now you here all these guys saying how India is the next big thing coz China has low birth rate while India doesn't so India is the future. First of all India is already below the 2.1 replacement rate and the places with high birth rates are places like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which have the most morons and the worst of India. And secondly this large population is a double edged sword which may cause even more problems than benefits.
In India, almost 50% of the country is in Agriculture. The second largest in the world is Indonesia. And no this isn't modern farming that uses drones, huge ass machines or things you see on those China vids. We are talking traditional backbreaking manual labour. Therefore we have a lot of people who are not very literate, get married early, have loads of kids, do stuff the old way etc. In contrast, we have the urban cities which forms the other large part of India. Lifestyles are very different since they are more educated, do more professional work, get married later, have less kids and do stuff that is in line with modern societies. So basically 50% of the country is in agriculture to feed the other 50% of the industrialized parts. No other country has so many people in Agriculture.
Now lets get onto why this is a problem. Firstly India's farming system is lets just kinda fucked. You need to make a new thread to discuss it by itself. Farmers own little land, have to pay so much for seeds, broken infrastructure, lack of modern farming techniques, lack of new technology, poor crop yields etc. The government is doing the best it can to subsidize them but it can only go so far and now they are stuck in a place where they have to keep supporting inefficient farming while not daring remove them coz farmers will lose their minds and riot. I also hear landlords take advantage of this to make things even worse. This leads to the environment in India being kinda fucked from all the chemicals and fertilizers being used and also the groundwater being drained away.
And of course the economy. Like with almost half the country being in ineffective farming. how is India supposed to catch up to the rest of the worst where most people are working in urban cities in industrialized sectors? Oh yeah and whats gonna happen with all those old people?
Now what does this mean in the future? Well the birth rates are going down overall right? So that means next generation there will be less kids to help out on the farms. So there will be less crops to produce for the urban centers which are growing. And then there will be also less people in the urban centers to help India stay on the cutting edge of modernization.
I also mentioned the environment about ground water. What happens when that depletes? What happens when many areas dry up or are just not useable anymore coz of erosion or chemicals?
I'm not really familiar with the details of all this but this kinda sounds like a ticking timebomb ready to go off if things don't change. Also keep in mind India is a food exporter for stuff like rice so if they blow up, we are affected too.
Now you understand why China needs to invest in tech and AI so much. Its not for boasting purposes. It is literally for the survival of the country and its people. We are in a world where falling behind means you will probably get left in the trash can of history. I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, things become centralized and we have fewer countries as they get absorbed into the larger ones.
