Passage 1
The projection by the UN Population Division is that India will have a population of close to 1.7 billion before it starts declining. This overwhelming size has overshadowed the debate on other aspects like age structure, quality of the population, and its contribution to economic growth. Now we have a report where the total fertility rate (TFR) for India is projected to go down to 1.29. This estimate is based on a complex demographic modelling, done for 204 countries as part of the global burden of disease study. Though this is an estimate within a range of 0.97 to 1.61, given the scientific rigour in their methodology, it opens up interesting pointers to the direction of India’s population dynamics.
The total fertility rate used for projecting the population by the government’s technical group (1.94 for the period 2021-2025 and declining to only 1.73 during 2031-2035) and that used by the UN are higher than those thrown up by the study. The latter is even higher than what one would estimate using NFHS 5 data. All these imply that our population may stabilise below the 1.7 billion mark much before 2065.
Source – https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/indias
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Passage 2
The U.S., Canada and the U.N. have condemned the air attack on Israel, with President Joe Biden reaffirming America’s “ironclad commitment” to the Jewish nation and vowing to convene a meeting of the G-7 leaders on April 14 to develop a coordinated response to the brazen assault.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that 99% of more than 300 drones and missiles were intercepted by Israel and its allies.
The nation had vowed to retaliate for a strike on its consulate on 1 April which killed seven IRGC officers, including a top commander. It accused Israel of carrying out that attack, but Israel neither confirmed nor denied it.
