Demographic milestones rarely get more momentous than this: India is almost certainly now the world’s most populous nation, having overtaken its neighbour and geopolitical rival China.
Last week the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) confirmed that the long-projected population crossover between the two Asian countries would happen by mid-year. It projected that India would have more than 1.428bn people, about 3mn more than China.
This week another UN body, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, put a finer point on the data: it said it believed the inflection point had probably happened some time in April, adding that it might revise that estimate later because of gaps in information — including what it could glean from India, which has not held a census since 2011.