Thread by @paraschopra

What nobody is telling you about 🇮🇳 India's future

(A thread)

1/ First thing to notice is that while our population has grown over 3 times since independence, our number of MPs have practically remained the same since 1951.

Today, you're getting one-third the attention than a citizen of freshly independent India used to get.

2/ One MP today is representing 3 million Indians.

As a comparison, Estonia is 1 million people and has 101 members at the national parliament level: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_…

Isn't that insane?

3/ India is a beautiful example of a limited resource (land) subjected under constant growth (of population).

In 1951, every Indian had an equivalent area of a hundred 1BHKs equivalent of land, today that figure is 32.

4/ But this population growth is dwarfed by the massive migration of rural population into urban areas, and the pace is growing.

It used to take half a YEAR (150 days) in 1951 for a million Indians to migrate to urban cities. Now a million people are migrating every MONTH.

5/ Source of data on previous tweets: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…

6/ In India's top cities, where most likely most of us live, population densities reach upwards of 10,000 people per sq kilometer.

This figure translates into 100 sq meters per person, which is how much 1BHK usually is.

Imagine: entire city filled with 1BHKs neck-to-neck.

7/ In future, as sea levels rise, our neighbouring country 🇧🇩 Bangladesh will see 17 percent of land submerge (as soon as 2050), displacing 20 million people. nrdc.org/onearth/bangla…

Where will they go? Guess.

Hint: they have no other neighbouring country.

8/ Even if we have space for 20 million new people as a sudden influx, Bangladesh is a muslim majority country and the ruling party BJP cannot be expected to allow millions of non-hindu migrants to come to India

Will we see riots? Famine or deaths across the border? I don't know

9/ We're a country of 1.3 billion people, with NO expertise of manufacturing and NO expertise of innovation.

How on earth are we planning to feed all these mouths in the future?

10/ India will become so hot that living in certain parts during summers will LITERALLY be impossible.

nytimes.com/2018/07/17/cli…

11/ India's is expected to be the world's most populus country with 1.5Bn+ people by 2050

And Ministry of Agriculture projects wheat crop could fall by 23% by 2050 thewire.in/agriculture/cl…

Remind me again what's our plan to feed 200 million additional people with 25% less food?

12/ I think before we reach there, we will run out of fresh water.

About 50% of the country is facing severe drought according to this study: downtoearth.org.in/news/water/dro…

And it's just not studies. @MangaloreCity citizens are without water as of now.

13/ On top of this, the rich and middle class is hoarding more income and wealth. thenational.ae/world/asia/ind…

The top 1% Indian as 22 percent of national wealth.

India is *worse* on income inequality as compared to most developed nations.

14/ We also are polluting air and water like nobody's business.

13 out of 20 of world's most polluted cities are in our country.

15/ Overall, we shouldn't be surprised if more people demand subsidies, reservations, and loan waivers. Most Indians *literally* are starving.

All these simmering anxieties are taken advantage by politicians. So I won't be surprised by future large scale communal clashes.

16/ An average Indian is less happy than our neighbouring citizens.

hindustantimes.com/india-news/ind…

What else do you expect? The future trends are not encouraging :(

17/ That's it!

Hope this thread gave you a new perspective. It is NOT business as usual in the world. It's certainly NOT business as usual in India.

Do something. Anything. Whatever is in your capacity to make a better future.

18/ If you still go about your days like nothing significant is happening, I urge you to learn from history.

Catastrophies are always recognized once they've happened. You'll never see one happening WHILE it is happening.

19/ e.g. you can pick up any history book and you'll find a convincing account for how Hitler rose to power and killed 17 million people. But while it was happening, it was business as usual for most of the unaffected people.

Things go bad gradually, and then fall off a cliff.