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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively)

> 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

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Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything.

I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

And a lot poorer overall, which certainly doesn't help. GDP(PPP) per capita for India was 7874 in 2018. Versus 41351, 44227 and 53023 for South Korea, Japan and Taiwan respectively. These countries that manage their high population density pretty well are also much smaller (Japan is around 10 times smaller than India) and it is much easier to optimize/organize on a smaller scale.

The way I think of it, India's pollution and poverty are both caused by their society not organized well.

I believe South Korea was poorer than India in living memory!

When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan in 1951, South Korea was about as poor as India and Pakistan. Today, it’s as rich as France.

Just curious: Have you visited China in recent time? The past few years it's made incredible gains, and it continues moving at a blazing speed.

I think one force that can encourage Pakistan to move forward is China. I don't know if Pakistan can have its own Samsung, but it can maybe 'modernize' with China's help. Would you agree?

Japan, Korea or other countries may also be overpopulated yes. But realize the volume spread. A few millions overpopulation is largely different from an over population of a few billions. The magnitude is incomparable.

Overpopulation is always relative. It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with. You can argue that Indian society is badly organized and that their current population levels and densities could be sustained with better societal systems, but that doesn't quite capture how difficult it is to fix societal systems.

What's easier, improving infrastructure or lowering the population?

I get your point - it's obviously easier to solve the problem (at least if you want to act ethically) by improving infrastructure.

But that also has the risk of trivializing the problem. Improve infrastructure is hard, especially in a compromised system.

Genocide (which I assume is the "unethical" option) is also hard, and tends to destroy infrastructure as well...

I do agree that improving governance is much, much easier said than done. And to be fair, India has had substantial progress.

> It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with

I think this is just a different phrasing of "Indian society is badly organized".

Which is a different way of saying I think we mostly agree.

The population density of Delhi is 29K people per sq mile which is one of the highest in the world. Tokyo, for example, has a population density of 16k.

India's population density is not really a problem though, the problem is lack of urbanization and absolutely horrible California like land regulations that prevent building new cities and infrastructure.

Delhi's pollution is not caused by Delhi, it is caused by neighboring farming zones that burn the stubble.

> South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India ...

This is disingenuous.

Australia has an astonishingly low population density (3.1 people / square kilometre) however it has about the same volume of arable land as France and most of that land is poorer (soil, nutrient) quality, and has a lot lower rainfall and is prone to more severe weather events ... etc.

Assessing or comparing population density based purely on people / sq km is wildly misleading. Rather, it's a matter of carrying capacity of the land, which is what I presume GP was referring to.

We're talking about Delhi here, not all of India.

> We're talking about Delhi here, not all of India.

Parent was comparing country population densities.

GP was asserting whole of India is overpopulated, while also trying to assert that 'this issue only affects Delhi'.

Clearly the 'only affects Delhi' isn't pollution related -- as most large cities in India are literally breathtakingly polluted.

So I assume GP was asserting that the burnoff issue was a purely Delhi (or surrounds) related issue ... though even that seems unlikely given the water management & agricultural practices throughout the country.

India is 52% arable land, Japan is 11%, South Korea is 22%. So Japan and South Korea have far less arable land per person.

India has the highest proportion of arable land in the world. Lack of land isn't India's problem. We've long had the resources to house and feed our population, which, ironically, is the reason why we have so much population in the first place.

South Korea, Taiwan, Japan all are coastal, whereas North India is landlocked and surrounded by mountains, which does not let that fog to escape. This makes the problem worse.

For that matter, if Mumbai wasn't a coastal city, it would have been way more polluted than Delhi.

Having said that, yeah, the politicians do not show any kind of intent to solve the problem, it is just another matter for them to blame their rivals.

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