Vivek

The UN predicts that India's fertility rate will fall to about 1.7 children per woman and then stay there until the end of the century. The UN made a similar prediction for Thailand, but its birth rate has since fallen to less than one child per woman. In the UN's 2024 projections, the fertility rate in Thailand stood at around 1.2 children per woman, and was predicted to rise gradually thereafter. But Thailand's own population institute, at Mahidol University, now estimates that the figure for this year is 0.86. Last year, there were around 417,000 births and about 560,000 deaths in the country. Thailand is not a rich country. Its per capita income is around $7,400 a year, about a fifth of South Korea's. Colombia, which has a similar per capita income, has had a similar trajectory: the fertility rate was 1.1 children per woman in 2024, a record low, according to the national statistics agency. The UN's estimate for Colombia in 2024 was 1.6. The UN's demographic model assumes that fertility rates, once they decline to low levels, will eventually stabilize and then begin to rise again. But Sanjeev Sanyal (@sanjeevsanyal), an economist on the Indian prime minister's advisory council, pointed out last year that no country whose birth rate has fallen below the replacement rate has ever seen it rise back to it. India's official fertility rate stands at 1.9, and the UN expects it to fall gradually to 1.76 by 2050. But the Indian states that started declining earliest are already far below that level. According to the government's own sample survey, Delhi's fertility rate is 1.2, and Tamil Nadu's, Kerala's and West Bengal's have all fallen to 1.3, about where Thailand was in 2020. According to the national health survey, two regions have already reached or fallen below one: the Himalayan state of Sikkim has a fertility rate of 1.0, and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands have a rate of 0.9. According to another projection, published in The Lancet, India's overall rate will fall to 1.29 by 2050. The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh has cited a projection that his state's fertility rate will fall to around 1.07, and his government is offering families around $320 for a third child in the meantime. India's official projection assumes that the fall in the fertility rate will stall at 1.7. The middle-income countries that declined before India did not stop there, and neither have the Indian states and territories that led the way within India.

The 27-story home of Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai, known as Antilia, stands on the site of a former orphanage. The orphanage was a charitable organization established in 1892, and per its founding charter, its purpose was to care for and educate orphaned and poor boys belonging to the Khoja community, a small trading community in Mumbai. By 2002, the charity owned around an acre of land on Altamount Road, one of the most expensive real estate locations in India. In November that year, the charity sold this acre to a company controlled by Ambani for 21 crore rupees, or about $4.3 million. The real estate value of the plot at the time was no less than 200 crore rupees, or $41 million, according to an Indian publication called The Caravan. The sale price was around a tenth of the value The Caravan reported. There was a problem. The orphanage was a religious charitable trust, and to sell its properties, it was required to seek approval in advance from the state regulatory board for charities. No such request was made to the board. In 2004, the board issued a notice requiring an explanation. The charity fought it for a year before offering a settlement to the board. In 2005, the board agreed to take 16 lakh rupees, about $36,000. Its members voted that the sale of the land had been necessary for the orphanage's mission, and the case was closed. This was the approval that allowed the tower to be built. Ten years later, a state inquiry found that board members had committed misconduct for personal gain. In 2017, the board filed an affidavit in the Bombay High Court stating that the sale was illegal all along. So the board charged with protecting land donated for charitable purposes is the board that handed it over. And for $36,000, it gave up land worth at least $41 million. The land now accounts for most of the house's value. It cost about $77 million to build Antilia, but now it's worth an estimated $1 billion, and nearly all of that value is from the land, not the building. The sale has never been reversed, and the land has never been ordered by a court to be returned to the charity. Land given to raise orphans is now under a $1 billion house, and the only people who were paid to object took $36,000 to stop.