Introduction
At the end of the 18th century, the British economist Thomas Robert Malthus suggested that, given the intrinsically limited nature of world’s resources, protracted periods of prosperity and the subsequent population growth often come with a risk: the rate of growth could exceed the levels where local food supply can support the entire population, resulting in food shortages.
Over the past decades, India has witnessed exceptionally rapid rates of economic growth, which made the country gradually become one of the leading economic performers in the world (Roy, 2020). At the same time, India has been experiencing extremely high rates of demographic growth: in only five decades, the country’s population has more than tripled (UN DESA, 2022). Given these trends, and acknowledging that climate change is heavily contributing to the depletion of key natural resources (such as water and land), it seems reasonable for Indian policymakers to take into consideration the risks that Malthus theorized.
By referring to the theoretical framework of the Malthusian model and reviewing its contemporary relevance, the present analysis aims at discussing the potential risks and drawbacks associated with India’s protracted period of growth.
The Malthusian Trap and its Contemporary Relevance
Thomas Robert Malthus’ model of population and income growth is regarded as one the most influential contributions to the field of economics of development. The model theorizes that populations grow in exponential progression, while food production (or other resources) grows arithmetically. Consequently, populations are expected to grow faster than food production. This leads to the so-called Malthusian trap: a situation in which the rate of demographic growth exceeds the levels where local food and resources can support the entire population, thus resulting in food shortages. With this theory, Malthus indeed predicted a world where, due to limited resources, any period of income growth and prosperity, by causing an excessively high rate of population growth, would inevitably culminate in famine and war. Besides the dramatic consequences envisioned by Malthus, his model highlights a fundamental hypothesis: given the limited nature of the world's resources, there is a negative correlation between the size of the population and its standards of living (Olsson, 2012).
However, despite the initial success of Malthus’ model, with the Industrial Revolution the theory started to lose support among scholars. As a matter of fact, for the first time, accelerated technological advancement enabled the joint growth of both income per capita and population, without resulting in a deterioration of living standards. In doing so, the experience of the Industrial Revolution thus made scholars acknowledge that advanced technology could be an efficient tool to escape a possible Malthusian trap and enhance productivity since it allows to increase supply without having to rely on more resources (Weil & Wilde, 2010).
Although technological advancement has undoubtedly called into question the applicability of the Malthusian model, its underlying hypothesis should not be overlooked. As a matter of fact, at present times, it is still relevant to take into consideration how, given the intrinsically limited nature of natural resources, excessively high demand rates could still threaten some countries to fall into a Malthusian trap. Notably, this scenario is becoming alarmingly realistic due to the widespread high rates of population growth, and the increasingly violent impacts of climate change which, by causing the degradation of land, water, and the loss of biodiversity, are threatening food (and other resources) supply (Montano & García-López, 2020). Acknowledging that the interplay of these trends is placing more and more pressure on depleting resources, a scenario not too far away from what Malthus predicted is thus not to be entirely ruled out.
Besides Malthus, the concerns related to the risks associated with growth are widely shared among contemporary scholars. The hypothesis that there could exist limits to growth itself has been a critical subject of debate and research among the academic literature in the past decades. For instance, already in 1972, MIT’s report “The limits of growth”, commissioned by the Club of Rome, concluded that if the growth rate of global population, pollution, food supply, and the exploitation of natural resources were to be kept this high, the world could reach its growth limits in one hundred years (Meadows et al., 1972). Similarly, in an updated version of the same report, new data were collected and once again the authors warned that, because the world has limited resources, there cannot be unlimited population, economic and industrial growth (Meadows et al., 2004).
Could the Malthusian Trap Represent a Realistic Threat to India?
To understand whether the Malthusian trap could represent a risk for future India, the country’s recent economic, poverty, demographic and environmental trends must be observed.
India’s recent development dynamics have attracted a lot of attention among the academic literature mainly because of the country’s exceptionally rapid rates of economic growth. As a matter of fact, the process of liberalization that started in 1991 made the country become one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In general, despite witnessing several fluctuations due to national structural reforms and the global economic environment, India’s average rate of GDP growth managed to remain exceptionally high for a protracted period, peaking to an average annual rate of 8.8 percent a year from 2004 to 2008 (Gupta et al., 2018). More recently, Indian GDP growth has been progressively slowing down firstly because of the Covid-19 shock and later due to the general deterioration of the global market, for instance caused by the general rise in world’s food and energy prices (OECD, 2022). Nevertheless, India remains today one of the world’s leading economic performers and, according to the IMF, by 2028 it is set to become the third biggest economy behind the US and China (IMF, 2022).
Indian outstanding trends of economic growth allowed more than 90 million people to improve their standards of living and escape extreme poverty. For instance, the World Bank estimates that, only between 2011 and 2015, poverty in India has declined from 21.6 to 13.4 percent. However, despite this success, poverty and malnutrition remain extensively widespread in the country and gains from growth continue to be unevenly distributed among different social groups (Roy, 2020). Above all, the gap between the urban and the rural population has historically been particularly noticeable: in 2011, the percentage of Indians living below the International Poverty Line was 14% for the urban population, and 26% for the rural one. Considering more recent data, the challenges brought by the Covid-19 pandemic have interrupted the protracted trend of India’s progress in poverty reduction. Although throughout 2022 there have been signs of recovery, as for future economic growth projections, also the outlook for poverty reduction in the coming decades is threatened by the interplay of rapid population rise, inflation, and the impacts of climate change on natural resources (Olinto, 2022).
Along with the rapid GDP growth, in the past years, India has been also experiencing extremely high rates of demographic growth: in only five decades, the country’s population has more than tripled, growing from 342 million in 1947 to 1027 million in 2001. At present times, with a total population of over 1,4 billion people, India has become the second most inhabited country in the world. Even if in the past decades its demographic growth rate has significantly slowed down, after 2030 India is expected to surpass China and become the world’s most populous country, reaching a peak of over 1,60 billion people by 2060 (UN DESA, 2022).
Although population size is usually considered a key source for development, as Malthus hypothesized, an excessively rapid demographic growth rate risks putting too much pressure on a country’s resources. This has been the case for India in recent years, when the massive increase in population has collided with the impacts of climate change, resulting in resources’ degradation. In this regard, water has so far been the most discernible example: recently, India’s total demand of water has begun to exceed its supply, creating serious water insecurity threats. Studies indeed show that every year, around 600 million Indians face high to extreme hydric stress and about 200 thousand die due to inadequate access to water (National Institution for Transforming India Aayog, 2019). At the same time, India is also facing an acute pressure on agricultural land: over the past five decades, while India’s population has more than tripled, the total area of land under cultivation has only increased by 20% (Nagdeve, 2007). However, alongside pressure on land and water resources, India is facing other environmental challenges as a consequence of the rapid industrial development, population growth and the impacts of climate change, including land and soil degradation, forest destruction and higher demands for energy and food.
Considering this brief overview of India’s current economic, poverty, demographic, and environmental trends, it can be recognized that a future not so far away from what Malthus theorized is not to be completely ruled out. Although scholars agree that so far India has not found itself caught in a Malthusian trap, it is thus still key for policymakers to consider and efficiently address the risks associated with this protracted period of growth.
Conclusions: the Way Forward
After reviewing the contemporary relevance of the Malthusian model, the present analysis has discussed the risks associated with India’s recent rapid rates of economic and demographic growth. These outstanding trends, combined with resource scarcity and environmental degradation are indeed alarmingly exposing the country to the risk of falling into a Malthusian trap, where the national level of resources would not be able to meet the total demand.
Notably, given the extremely rapid rates of degradation of land and water resources, one the most immediate concerns for India’s near future is whether the country’s food supply will be able to meet its increasing demand levels. Indeed, despite over the past decades the agricultural sector has been prioritized by the Indian government, its growth rate remains below the levels essential to eradicate poverty and to prevent the country from falling into a Malthusian trap (ADB, 2010).
Acknowledging the threat of a future deterioration of the Indian population’s standards of living, it is thus key for Indian policymakers to take into consideration the risks associated with this protracted period of growth. India’s World Bank Country Director Junaid Ahmad recently summarized what should be Indian future policy goals arguing that:
“...in the long-run, for higher growth to be sustainable and inclusive, India needs to use land and water, which are increasingly becoming scarce resources, more productively, make growth more inclusive, and strengthen its public sector to meet the challenges of a fast growing, globalizing and increasingly middle-class economy (World Bank, 2018).”
From Junaid Ahmad’s speech two key policy aims can be highlighted: sustainability and inclusivity.
As far as inclusivity is concerned, it is key to recall that while India is witnessing a protracted period of outstanding growth, the country is highly regionally diversified in terms of development and GDP per capita. Indeed, if recent growth trends have generally improved the standards of living of around 90 million people (Roy, 2020), poverty remains still dramatically widespread. Consequently, it is key for future development policies to embrace inclusivity as their starting point by adopting region-specific policies and by not neglecting poorer regions’ needs. On the other hand, it is equally important to not let the fight against poverty clash with the issue of sustainability. For instance, the aim of increasing productivity to meet the rising food demand must not translate into overexploitation of natural resources but must go hand in hand with the promotion of sustainable development. Sustainability is indeed key to ensure that new development policies will have long-term impacts on the country’s food security and poverty challenges.
In short, for the foreseeable future, to avoid the threat of falling into a Malthusian trap, Indian policymakers should prioritize the adoption of decisive measures to turn current growth trends into sustainable and inclusive development trends, based on equal opportunities and efficient exploitation of natural resources.
Bibliography
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