The well-regarded World Population Review, which is the usual source for most international comparisons of population size and growth, has indicated in its latest projections that by this month India’s population had increased to 1.423 billion. The country had entered the year, in fact, with a population of 1.417 billion, according to the World Population Review. These are reasonable estimates of India’s population, given that the Census 2021 has not been conducted. However, what has grabbed the world’s attention is not the size of India alone but also the release on Tuesday of the data from China’s National Statistics Bureau. The Chinese authorities have estimated that in 2022 the country saw its first decline in population since the famine-hit 1960s. By their account, the population count in China is now 1.412 billion — which is, of course, a few million lower than India’s. As expected for a long time, India is now generally acknowledged to be the