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Comment by motionlessveloc | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago? Cutting electricity loss is one thing, but getting rid of "load shedding" (unplanned power cuts) is the really revolutionary part. It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge. My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).

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> unplanned power cuts

Actually load shedding is planned power cuts. I have seen a schedule published in a newspaper with different regions of the city (not Delhi) and times when no electricity will be available. This is for ppl to plan their day

Load shedding = it was done on purpose, not that it was pre-planned. If a sudden problem occurs, some areas can be cut to prevent wider failure. I would expect this to be largely automatic.

There was some priority order to determine which circuits should be load-shed when there is a power shortage. For example while scouting datacenter sites across Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, I learnt that 220KV lines were not part of load-shedding schedule whereas 66KV lines were. If you took power directly from the power generation company and had contracted power then also you were protected.

I suspect the semantics are about how long in advance it's planned. A day or two? Planned. An hour? Hard sell.

Planned collision with iceberg!

I call this Caution Shedding.

see also: squirrel wingsuit.

Far enough in advance to be available in a printed newspaper. Planned.

The load shedding was a chronic problem. It lasted months if not years.

Example from year 2003 (city = Pune) [1]. Its hard to read

Excerpt:

The load shedding schedule is as follows:

  Group A: Monday 8 am to 11 am, Tuesday 11 am to 2 pm,Wednesday 3 to 6 pm, Saturday 11 am to 2 pm: Navi Peth, Gultekdi I and II, Dhankawdi, Padmawati, Old Parvati I and II, SNDT, G Block, Parsi agiary, City Apollo, Sant Tukaram, Kharalwadi. 

  Group B: Monday 11 am to 2 pm, Tuesday 3 pm to 6 pm, Friday 8 am to 11 am

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/mseb-announces...

I just don't understand why government didn't step in and raise the price of electricity 5x.

It is better to have electricity 24x7 but only 50 watts to run a fridge, phone charger and one lightbulb, than to have electricity 3 hours a day but be running 1000 watts of airconditioners.

I guess perhaps energy theft was too hard to police?

You’re assuming a far more functional system than what was going on.

“And there was no penalty for not paying—there were no regulations allowing the utilities to cut off a customer’s power.”

Collecting more money in a corrupt organization doesn’t means they will automatically get a more effective distribution system.

> and raise the price of electricity 5x.

People wont vote for them if they increased the price by 5x.

And then there’s the small matter of it being financially ruinous for the poorest people

common misconception. In fact, it would probably be cheaper for most people since they wouldn't have to own a generator (or pay for use of someone elses).

Instead, people (especially the poorest) would need to put effort into tracking their own usage - and understanding that an airconditioner uses far more electricity than a phone charger.

This seems completely out-of-touch with reality, and absolutely insults the intelligence of the poorest people

With higher energy cost, People who could afford ACs would pay off the linemen to connect the AC directly bypassing the meter.

This continued even in 2013. Had to finally pay for an inverter because PCs do not have built in batteries like laptops do and work was being impacted.

Useless industries like RO water, gensets, inverters etc are so much larger in India because of governmental abdication of responsibility due to political compulsions. Once you have your own house, or live in a gated community/highrise with its own water/power infra, you get almost western levels of comfort without the messiness of the outside world.

What's RO water?

Btw, what you describe is also true of malls. Basically, every country has shiny malls.

Every house there (that can afford the essential $200 or so) has a Reverse Osmosis water filter because the municipal water supply (if any) is not considered potable.

RO water is Reverse Osmosis water. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis)

Planned for the electric officials, unplanned for the consumers.

Nowadays, power cuts are announced via SMS in advanced. Before, this was not the case.

> Actually load shedding is planned power cuts.

Isn't that a rolling blackout? Load shedding is the technical term and can happen for a variety of reasons that are not based on policy.

Every second house had a diesel generator back then. Ours had to be cranked started by hand(not for the heartless) before push button starters became a thing. The shutoff though was simple tug on the switch; I attached a twine that ran to my bedside for shutoff, which was a godsend at 2:00 AM when the power came back on to make those crazy summer days a bit easier to sleep through.

Small tangential note, but I think you might mean "not for the faint of heart".

Oh boy, those Honda maniacs would fire up the entire market area. I can still smell the diesel as I type this.

Do you remember the scheduled water cuts? We would stockpile water in buckets so we could flush the toilets. Good old days!

I remember the inverse of that in Chennai -- scheduled running water for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evenings when we had to stockpile water in every container possible.

It's so weird reading these comments, we didn't have either of these issues in Gujarat in early 2000s (left India in mid 2000s).

Modi hai to mumkin hai!

I mean that was one of the reasons why he got re-elected twice in Gujarat. It's a shame what that party has devolved to now

one of. other is he killed Muslims.

Riots in India are uncontrollable. Muslims killed 59 Hindus returning from Ayodhya by burning a train full of innocent karsevaks which started the riots

One thing I have noticed is "It is very easy for the Empire to vassalize Muslim countries". Try to notice next time.

This trope is going to get you guys nowhere. The Gujarat riots started with burning of a train filled with Hindu Karsevaks by Muslims. Once religious riots start in India no politician can control it. It requires military intervention. Gujarat riots was curbed the fastest if you compare it to any other riot in Independent India. It was ended in 3 days. By comparison, 1984 Sikh riots took 4 days to end.

Can we not call it the Sikh riots? Those were riots by Congress, the BJP and VHP and their supporters against the Sikhs. The Sikhs didn't rise up. You don't call the Gujarat riots the "Muslim riots" do you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots

Perpetrators - Indian National Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

And if you want lessons on riot control, learn from Kerala. North Kerala is host to an uncountable number of Hindu-Muslim riot triggers but most of them are defused before they can take root, and if they do occur, the riots are curbed in a day or so.

This one is the most recent and deadliest riot in Kerala - defused in 2 days before it could escalate because of timely police action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marad_massacre

And this is the entry for the Gujarat riots - Perpetrators: Government of Gujarat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence

To quote some extracts :

> Throughout the violence, attacks were made in full view of police stations and police officers who did not intervene.[15] In many instances, police joined the mobs in perpetrating violence. At one Muslim locality, of the twenty-nine deaths, sixteen were caused by police firing into the locality.[18] Some rioters even had printouts of voter registration lists, allowing them to selectively target Muslim properties.[66][75][65] Selective targeting of properties was shown by the destruction of the offices of the Muslim Wakf board which was located within the confines of the high security zone and just 500 meters from the office of the chief minister.[61]

> The violence had been planned far in advance, and that similar to other instances of communal violence the Bajrang Dal, the VHP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) all took part in the attacks.[64] Following the attack on the train the VHP called for a statewide bandh (strike), and the state took no action to prevent this.[61][62]

> The Concerned Citizens Tribunal (CCT) report includes testimony of the then Gujarat BJP minister Haren Pandya (since murdered), who testified about an evening meeting convened by Modi the evening of the train burning. At this meeting, officials were instructed not to obstruct the Hindu rage following the incident.[109][110] The report also highlighted a second meeting, held in Lunawada village of Panchmahal district, attended by state ministers Ashok Bhatt, and Prabhatsinh Chauhan, among other BJP and RSS leaders, where "detailed plans were made on the use of kerosene and petrol for arson and other methods of killing."[70][110] The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind claimed in 2002 that some regional Congress workers collaborated with the perpetrators of the violence.[111]

> Dipankar Gupta believes that the state and police were clearly complicit in the violence, but that some officers were outstanding in the performance of their duties, such as Himanshu Bhatt and Rahul Sharma. Sharma was reported to have said "I don't think any other job would have allowed me to save so many lives."[112] Human Rights Watch has reported on acts of exceptional heroism by Hindus, Dalits and tribals who tried to protect Muslims from the violence.

Don't repeat BS talking points that the government couldn't do anything. If the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it has lost its legitimacy. That's literally one of the main jobs of the people in power.

Oh, and what did Gujarat do to Rahul Sharma, the IIT grad police officer who was one of the few officers to actually try to stop the riots? They transferred him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahul_Sharma_(Gujarat_police)

EDIT: funny how you edited your post and added BJP and VHP as part of Anti-Sikh riots. This is as fake as it can get. BJP and VHP actually saved many Sikhs from getting massacred. Why TF would BJP and VHP kill Sikhs? Indira Gandhi was not part of either BJP or VHP. She was part of Congress Party. This is how I know you are peddling propaganda.

> Can we not call it the Sikh riots? Those were riots by Congress and its supporters against the Sikhs. The Sikhs didn't rise up. You don't call the Gujarat riots the "Muslim riots" do you?

Why did the riots even begin in the first place? Because Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was shot by her two Sikh body guards. It was as revenge for Operation Bluestar which targeted Khalistani terrorists who had taken over the Golden Temple. Now I have no love for Congress or Gandhi family but you cannot exclude the history from it or cherry pick it according to your liking. Khalistani terrorism was at its peak during that period. Just look at the history of how many Hindus were killed during the militancy in Punjab.

> You don't call the Gujarat riots the "Muslim riots" do you?

It is not a name I have given. I did not decide to name 1984 riots as Sikh or Anti-Sikh riots. I did not decide to name 2002 riots as Gujarat riots. That is literally what it is called. There is no reason to get so butthurt about the name.

> And if you want lessons on riot control, learn from Kerala. North Kerala is host to an uncountable number of Hindu-Muslim riot triggers but most of them are defused before they can take root, and if they do occur, the riots are curbed in a day or so.

LMFAO this is the worst state when it comes to controlling riots. It tolerated Moplah Genocide of all things. Lasted several months.

> This one is the most recent and deadliest riot in Kerala - defused in 2 days before it could escalate because of timely police action. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marad_massacre

This is not a riot mate. This is a terror attack. Do you not know the difference between a riot and a terror attack?

> Don't repeat BS talking points that the government couldn't do anything. If the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it has lost its legitimacy. That's literally one of the main jobs of the people in power.

I never said Government couldn't do anything. Are you unable to comprehend what I wrote? I wrote politicians have no power to stop riots. It is only the military (which is also part of the Government) that has the power.

Your "Sikh riots" are literally called the "anti-Sikh riots". You don't get to brand the entire community just because the root cause was an assassination perpetrated by fringe elements of that community.

Second, very laughable of you to call out the Moplah rebellion, which happened in the 1910s lol. Are you still stuck in the British Raj, pre-WW1?

Third, Marad was a riot, except it was extinguished in a day (by a North Indian Hindu top cop by the way), because of timely action by the police in actually discovering the weapons. What could've been a terror attack was averted.

> I wrote politicians have no power to stop riots. It is only the military (which is also part of the Government) that has the power.

And fourthly, no riots in any democracy across the world are controlled by the military lol. The military serves a different purpose, and using them for tasks such as riot control is exactly how you end up with another Tiananmen Square massacre (in which case, the military were explicitly called because the civilian police of Beijing did not want to shoot and kill the protesters). Perhaps that's where your mind is, to make India another one-party Hindutva dictatorship.

My edits were taken from the Wikipedia article only.

EDIT: > Perhaps that's where your mind is, to make India another one-party Hindutva dictatorship

Thanks for confirming you are part of the propaganda. I have no further interest in continuing this discussion with a lunatic.

> My edits were taken from the Wikipedia article only.

Your edits even in the Wikipedia article call it "dubious". You still mentioned it anyway, without mentioning that the claim is dubious, because you are part of the propaganda machine.

> And fourthly, no riots in any democracy across the world are controlled by the military lol

It infact IS controlled by the military. In US, for example, it is called National Guard. Police is not equipped to control a riot in any democracy in the World. India is actually an exception where it has a CRPF for riots and because scale of riots in India exceeds even the CRPF's ability to handle it (due to our size and population), the Military is called.

> Second, very laughable of you to call out the Moplah rebellion, which happened in the 1910s lol.

Moplah Genocide was not part of the rebellion. Unless you want to call Muslims genociding Hindus and raping Hindu women as part of rebellion against the British Raj. Have some shame. And it happened in 1921 not 1910.

> Those were riots by Congress, the BJP and VHP and their supporters against the Sikhs.

I was in Delhi in 1984 when the riots happened. It was only Congress workers going after Sikhs to seek revenge for the killing of Indira Gandhi. No BJP or VHP or RSS workers were involved. Our family gave shelter to Sikh families from the neighborhood. I remember the fear, as I couldn't understand why Sikhs were being targeted; and since I didn't see much difference between Sikhs and Hindus, I assumed we also could be the targets of these rioters.

The 1984 riots are a stain on the moral fabric of modern India. And the only party responsible for it is the Congress party; even though all Indians bear some collective responsibility for what happened.

As I grew older and learned more about what happened, I swore to myself: never again.

The historical debate was revived globally when a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary highlighted a previously unreleased, classified 2002 British Foreign Office report. The internal UK government report concluded that the violence was pre-planned and that the rioting had all the hallmarks of "ethnic cleansing," alleging that Modi was "directly responsible" for the political climate that allowed it. The Indian government banned the documentary domestically, calling it a biased piece of colonial propaganda.

Supposed to be unbiased because "Internal UK government report"?. Both the train and the riots were crimes against humanity. Sorry if Indians don't believe shit coming from the UK.

Let’s not lie now.

IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt alleged that at a meeting on the night of February 27, 2002, Modi told senior police that Hindus should be allowed to "vent their anger." Another officer, R.B. Sreekumar, said he was denied a promotion for criticizing the government's inaction

I've no horse in this debate; why create a throwaway account for this comment?

Sanjiv Bhatt's wife fought on Congress ticket. R. B. Sreekumar was implicated and charged for framing a highly decorated ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in a fake espionage case.

Both are dubious characters with conflict of interests and one of them even straight up went against an innocent scientist just to massage his fat ego.

Please don't throw around accusations like this; especially after creating a temporary account.

I was an adult in 2002. I remember the riots differently. (And, BTW: riots were almost an annual occurrence in some part or the other of the country, like clockwork. Moradabad, Aligarh, Bareilly, etc. etc.)

The SOP when riots happen is to call in the Army to do a "flag march", after a couple of days.

But guess what happened just a few months before the Gujarat riots? The attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 [1]. As a result, the Army was deployed on the borders and could not be pulled to do flag marches. The Gijarat govt wrote to all neighboring states (MP, MH, RJ) to ask if some police could be spared to help stop the riots. All 3 state governments replied "no, we don't have any police to spare". What else could the government do?

From 2004 thtough 2014, several different teams investigated Gujarat government's actions, and in the end gave them a clean chit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Indian_Parliament_attack

Supreme Court expressly did not give Modi a clean chit

https://www.thenewsminute.com/news/gujarat-riots-supreme-cou...

Keep lying to yourself.

Still better than INC (Rahul Gandhi) IMO.

Would reconsider if INC appoint someone competent like Shashi Tharoor.

Or Bombay for that matter.

Outside of central Mumbai, in the suburbs this was still a thing until the 2010s

Mumbai got the sweet heart treatment.

Moving from Mumbai to Pune in early 2000's was like going back to a village with 3 hour power cuts in Summer.

Same here from Kerala since almost 90s.

Kerala is having daily power cuts right now!

> My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).

This I think is a standard practice in any large office building in France (Europe? Global?) too, regardless of the frequency of the power cuts. I don't remember witnessing any power cuts in the office (not since long ago anyway), but in most of the places there are systematically white and red sockets, red ones being powered through a UPS. So, server machines go into red ones. Well, we don't have servers anymore, but the sockets are still there anyway. Hopefully UPS too, LOL.

US typically has the whole office with UPS and diesel generators (if it is important enough to do so).

No, this isn't remotely "typical." You have no idea what you're talking about.

The building might be on a generator. The whole building is most assuredly not on UPS.

Even in hospitals only certain outlets are on UPS - the stuff that absolutely cannot be interrupted - though a lot of hospital equipment now has its own battery system, at least in part for convenience.

I don't know if it's still done but semiconductor plants used to use intertia-based grid smoothing/UPS systems to handle millisecond-level interrupts and voltage fluctuations.

Agreed. Nothing actually typical at all for regular "just offices".

I do remember working ~25 years ago at a place that did have those two kinds of outlets. Our computers and monitors would be on the UPS+generator ones, while desk lamps, office lamps etc. were not. But it was specifically because the offices were on-site w/ the two data center complexes the company had and the building I was in happened to also be wired into that whole setup. Not every other one was either, only that one and the 24/7 NOC.

I only knew this was a thing because my office mate's computer was in the wrong kind of socket. One day his lamp stayed on while the computer turned off and for me the other way around. Soon after we heard the diesels starting and had to close the window coz of the fumes.

At full capacity of the data center, the absolutely huge UPSs could run the data center for all of 10 minutes. So that's how long the diesels had to actually start and take over.

I've never seen them in France. I've seen them in a chemistry lab section of a university in New Zealand and I believe they're also common in data centers, NOCs, etc. worldwide.

> I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago?

I wonder how many HNers are, or ever have been there in the first place? It seems strange to me to ask who "recalls" what it was like there before. What would such a recollection be based on? There's only so much attention one can pay to what daily life is reportedly like around the world, and that required believing the reports.

At least a quarter of tech professionals in Silicon Valley are born in India. So I would guess a quarter to a third or more of the posters here are Indian origin.

India accounts for a big portion of the english speaking internet, so I wouldn’t be surprised if half the posters here are Indian origin.

I spent two weeks in Bangalore in 2014. Power cuts happened roughly every other day.

Thankfully, I stayed in a nice hotel with an automatic generator, so the power would cut out for a second or two before the generator came on, and then would cut back out for a second or two a few minutes later when the hotel went back on the mains.

Depends on the season. Until a few years ago Bengaluru had a different problem – when it thundered or rained, they would cut power to protect transformers from shorting out due to falling trees on power lines.

They have PG&E in India too? Dang.

Very similar on Chennai too apparently.

The problem is still there in Bangalore. Power goes out at least once or twice each day even now and so most medium to large commercial institutions have backup generators.

Sounds similar to life in Dhaka in the 1980s. I remember many sleepless nights where the power went out for no discernible reason and our air conditioner (a window unit in my parent’s bedroom) stopped working. My understanding is that this has gotten much better in Dhaka over the last decade, though the recent energy crisis set things back.

> I remember many sleepless nights where the power went out

Genuine question - how did people sleep there pre-AC?

Probably outside to catch the breeze. We lived i like a concrete bunker so it was good at holding in heat at night.

I once spent most of the summer in a WW2-era building with no AC in the southeastern US (Ft Benning). I imagine it is both hotter and more humid in much of India.

Short answer is that you get used to it. There was a surprisingly effective swamp cooler that worked about half the time (we got pretty good at troubleshooting it) and several ancient pedestal fans. You can sleep in very nearly any environment once you become sufficiently sleep-deprived.

    > It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge.

Two questions: (1) Does a regular surge strip protect against damage? (2) I lived in California in the early 2000s when there were frequent power shortages. We didn't worry about "surges" after the power came back on. What is/was different?

Unfortunately the water situation is still the same all over India even in 2026. There would be manaoon floods and yet in summer there would be widespread water cuts.

They solved it in Calcutta as well. The load shedding and voltage fluctuations. Growing up it was terrible. Very pleasantly surprised during my stay back home during Covid.

I still remember those summer midnights, without cooler

India's ongoing growth, and overall the positive sentiment of the population, is such a breath of fresh air compared to the decadent west. I have had a few friends from there for almost a decade and the improvement has been huge. It's just a shame that you are also speedrunning population collapse. Modi completely ignoring the cratering birth rates under him is a real hero.

Who's not speed running that right now? I can't really fault India in particular when it's nearly universal.

You said it yourself, nearly, so it's not something written in stone.

I can fault India (and, in particular, Modi) for repeating the same mistake all other western developed countries made 40 years before, yes.

You mean are making right now? Also not just western developed countries, unless you count Russia, China, Japan, etc. as western.

Oops, I was a little too implicit.

made 40 years... before they (India) started developing.

Western countries were at the forefront of this already in the 80s. India, starting to develop much later, had a big time buffer to learn from that and at least attempt to avoid it.

Eh, I think the birth rate (and economic challenges re: wages, etc.) from western countries are much simpler to explain, and also much much harder to resist than this implies.

Effective and safe Birth control is something that has never before existing in human history (with the possible exception of a specific plant during the Roman Empire which was driven to extinction due to over harvesting), and which society doesn’t really have a decent answer to address in a stable fashion yet. As clearly demonstrated by the upcoming demographic collapse.

The short term incentives this provides to women (and men who benefit in the short term as well) is just too powerful to fully contain, despite all the attempts from the powerful religious groups in India.

The long term consequences of having everyone (men and women) competing for the same jobs, lack of sustainable long term population demographics, removing many consequences of promiscuous sexual behavior, etc. only show up once the western approach has played out for multiple generations. Until then, it’s a way to juice the numbers.

They held out much longer than western society did, and society still goes to extreme lengths to attempt to restrain it, but it still has had widespread effect regardless. They still haven’t experienced the long term effects, and I bet they would love to juice the numbers more as India is a very hard place to live now.

They are still living with the very real pain of ‘the old approach’.

The even more powerful religious groups in the Middle East, and social/tribal groups in Africa, being the only ones ‘still standing’ on this front, but it’s inevitable there too.

Conservatism may attempt to slow the spread, but eventually even the tribal groups of mountainous Afghanistan will have to deal with the same issues that the most left wing liberal folks currently are grappling with - what is the point/long term future this is leading too?

The current Hedonic nihilism of a lot of folks in the west tends to not be long term self sustaining. Very addictive in the short term though!

It isn’t clear what is going to emerge as the alternative.

What would ‘children of men’ be like if the same thing was happening - but it was because of a voluntary pill or implant every woman was taking instead of some big mystery illness?

Every part of the world is affected by this. Even Niger, which still leads the world in birth rate is seeing falling birth rates. There is no known way to prevent that short of halting economic and social development.

War does tend to do that.

You mean working to prevent unwanted teen pregnancies?

Not sure, I think it may be more about half your women in their 40s staying single and childless vs 1% 50 years ago, but don't quote me on that!

You should check your intuition against the facts, which show that decreasing fertility rates in the United States are largely a consequence of reduction in teen pregnancies.

> population collapse

There are 1.2 billion Indians.

True, let's put it this way then. In some time, there will be 1.2 billion >80 year olds and 100 million people under 18.

You see, I know it's hard to grasp for some, but everything is really relative.

This will in fact not happen. There are no models that result in 90% population depletion in less than 100 years

This is an hyperbole, yes. Replace the 100 million value with 300, 400, 500, and my point isnt going to change.

> Replace the 100 million value with 300, 400, 500, and my point isnt going to change

Your ratios are all wrong. There are about 500mm Indians aged 6 to 26 today who will be over 80 (and under 100) by 2100. Even if nobody dies, India isn’t hitting 1.2bn 80-year olds. As for under-18s in that timeline, it ranges from 100 to 500 million depending on fertility.

Put another way, there is no deterministic population collapse in India the way there almost must be in Korea and Germany.

I'm honestly very glad to hear it won't be too bad but I reaaaaallly do not really care about numbers, my point is much broader.

I'd prefer if it didn't have to go through this at all. Knowing you are headed for bad times isn't something to live with, it's something to fix. And it's not like the birth rates in each state are staying the same, they are actively dropping. The issue isn't just there, it's also getting worse.

> I reaaaaallly do not really care about numbers

Then don't raise them! Also, don't raise problems that are easily disproven with real numbers! Demographics is a terrible domain to vibe your way through.

> Knowing you are headed for bad times isn't something to live with, it's something to fix

I literally just showed you that demographic projections for India give realistic scenarios for the number of under-18 year olds being equal to the number of over-80 year olds by 2100. The worst case is a 5:1 ratio.

I agree! But I just like using them to drive points across. Practical examples drive points across much better than some generalizations that take 10x as many words to be expressed.

exactly. so in 2150, or 2200, or someday, it will be a problem. So yes, it is a problem even today. It's kind of why you don't stand on train tracks even if there are still 15 minutes.

Future problems need to be fixed, else you end up as the countries you listed, Korea and Germany. It's not that hard

> so in 2150, or 2200, or someday, it will be a problem

No. Never of the magnitude you suggested. The population pyramid simply doesn’t have the shape required for a population bomb the likes of which we’re seeing in e.g. Korea.

Given current and projected fertility, it never blows out the way you suggest. It gently curves. If Indians, tomorrow, suddenly stop having kids that would be the problem you suggest. But they aren’t. And it isn’t.

What makes you confident that declining population is gonna be worse than the alternative?

Smooth population decline means much less contention on ressources, energy and living space, which is highly relevant when all of those are already somewhat at the limit.

Significant positive growth is clearly completely unsustainable even over centuries, and I don't see why a somewhat smaller total human population could not be just as successful/satisfied over the next decades.

Tempted to infuriate everyone in this thread by suggesting that the German population will also be fine .. due to Indians moving there.

It's clearly a massive exaggeration to talk about population collapse, but India has dropped below replacement, and will start seeing a decline in population in the next few decades, so they're heading in the same direction as everywhere else.

But of course that also makes blaming Modi pretty silly - every country sees this happening as their economic and social conditions improves. We don't know of any way of stopping it short of maybe throwing people into poverty.

(the only remaining places that has not yet dropped below replacement is sub-Saharan Africa and parts of the Middle East, but they too are seeing birth rates drop).

I think we do know how to stop it: Welfare Queens, but really. If you can actually "live large" by doing nothing else than raising a bunch of kids (either with some controls that ensure you raise them well, and/or significant structured investment into rearing kids by the state), people will do that.

The reaction to that idea shows you how undervalued baby production still is. Morons insist that $20k or similar is enough incentive. It's laughable.

Whatever happens with AI "taking all the jobs", this will drive real societal change, because it has to. The options are obscene authoritarianism and removal of bodily autonomy from women so we can just force them to reproduce like society is used to, or actually adapting to what it will cost to encourage women to go through literal trauma and 20 years of really hard work because the rest of society will benefit. Seeing as de-facto enslaving all women is horrific, I hope people see that we should do everything to avoid the first option.

It has to become very attractive to be an average person, with average social standing, with average resources. The uber rich might have to give up some of their share of the pie.

I really don't think we do know how to stop it. Even massively increasing welfare payments has totally failed to produce lasting change where attempted.

It is possible going significantly higher could, but if so we have not yet figured out how high, and it's clear the threshold is much higher than people have tended to think it would be. E.g. look at financial incentives in Hungary, or the welfare system in places like Norway that makes parental leave in many developed countries look like third world conditions.

Rich people do seem to have a somewhat higher fertility rate, so it is possible that you could fund it enough, but the rise happens at high enough income levels I don't think our economy could handle it.

I agree with the rest of your comment, though - I just don't think we know if purely financial motivation would be sufficient at a level that is actually possible (and I do fear authoritarian approaches will end up being tried instead). It might take a lot more effort than that in terms of lightening the burden and/or making it more attractive in other ways.

Has anyone tried the equivalent of 60k a year for mothers to stay home? Like a full time professional salary, clearing minimum wage.

If child rearing is a full time job maybe we can treat it like one.

Only for a year and a bit (parental leave in e.g. Norway is up to 100% of salary for 49 weeks capped at ca $85k, or 80% for up to 61 weeks).

On top of that you get a bunch of other subsidies - e.g. in Norway again, nursery spaces are guaranteed by law and capped at around the $200/month mark, and child support is paid monthly until the child turns 18 at about the same rate.

Norway is below replacement, so we know that rate is too low.

Maybe your 60k/year on an ongoing basis would be sufficient. Whether anyone would be prepared to take the economic hit of trying is another question.

I suspect we'll see a lot of desperate flailing, creeping authoritarianism (e.g. curtailing abortions etc.), virtue signalling (it's your patriotic duty...), and increased reliance on immigration (until that supply also dries for an increasing number of countries) before someone is willing to try to figure out what a high enough number to change it is.

Yeah I think it's too expensive for anyone to really implement it, but I do think if you want it to be a viable choice to not pursue a career for a while (and a year isn't long enough) then it's the only ethical way to do it.

Banning women from working certain jobs or something seems like the authoritarian method instead, and unfortunately easier to implement.

It's not the number of people but the shape of their demographic pyramid that matters.

> There are 1.2 billion Indians.

Incorrect. It is 1.48 billion and expected to hit 1.7+ billion in next three decades in a nation that is <1/3rd size of the USA. Birth rate collapse cannot come soon enough.

I know we have our issues but how blackpilled do you need to be to envy Indians... Something isn't right with this comment.

Why? What's so bad about India? Their people are young and positive, the west is ancient and past its peak. It's a very simple point actually.

Both of these comments have an inaccurate view of India in either direction, too romanticized or too doomerized. In reality it's just another country with people trying to do what's best for themselves and their families.

People are people, they live their lives, and there is no mastermind behind them. That is a given. But there is a common culture and country wide patterns that can still be observed.

I'm an Indian 1.5 gen immigrant living in the west, and I'm by no means ashamed of my Indian culture or heritage. I would never move to India and I feel sorry for many of my Indian friends or cousins living there. They are too often emotionally stunted people, and held down by India's oppressive work culture.

The one benefit of living in India is cheap household labour...only possible because of a massive underclass of people!

Have you ever been to India? In particular Delhi and Gurugram, and the surrounding manufacturing/industrial areas.

It's in the username

For one thing, Indians aren't giving hormone inhibitors to their children, Illegal immigration is almost universally viewed as bad, and every 10th girl is not an onlyfans starlet. Indians have better chances of being alright, although they lack a strong leader and will likely remain below China.

You mean the government actively scapegoating Muslims/minorities for all their problems? The Hindu nationalist party that has street militias (RSS, Bajrang Dal), anti-minority lynchings and press / university crackdowns? Sounds like a "breath of fresh air" for those on the right side of things

This is just a list of talking points with no basis in reality.

That's just meme spread by left-leaning media in the west, (and their cronies in certain Indian mainstream media outlets) who can't tolerate anyone developing a national identity.

We are 1.48 billion people (and growing) in a nation that is 1/3rd the size of the US. Expected to reach 1.7+ billion in another 20-30 years - which will increase desperation considerably.

The birth rate falling is a VERY good thing. India cannot really support more than 300-400 million people with a high quality of life with its geographic size and exhausted resources. Life becomes cheaper than disposable toilet paper otherwise.

> India cannot really support more than 300-400 million people with a high quality of life with its geographic size and exhausted resources

Source for this carrying capacity?

Glad you asked!

India has roughly ~18% of humanity but only about 4% of global freshwater resources, and agriculture consumes roughly 80–90% of India's water. The World Bank estimates that around 600 million Indians already face water stress. (The number is actually higher in many estimates)

https://www.worldbank.org/en/brief/2026/03/19/how-india-is-a...

There is also substantial pressure on land. Government data report about 97.85 million hectares, or ~30% of India's geographical area, as affected by land degradation/desertification.

https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?lang=2&reg=...

If you want long-term, sustainable agriculture, we need to heavily move to organic farming. This yields ~30% less food produce. I forgot the popular paper on this - can dig it up.

India has also exhausted its mineral reserves. This is not fully our fault. We were fully strip mined and utterly bankrupted by the British in WW2. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?lang=2&reg=...

(IMHO that is the real reason why we got independence - the Brits didn't want to keep holding to a distressed asset and immediately liquidated. Look at Bengal famine of 1943)

We are having heavy import dependency on minerals - a ridiculous 80%!!! dependency, which is causing significant problems in our trade/current-account deficit.

So, if we want maximum ecological comfort, and long-term, prosperous standard of living, we need a significantly reduced population. You can get the number by just halving our population simply taking into account high-availability to water and then reduce further for sustainable agriculture and sustainable mineral consumption.

That's very obtuse, there is always time to make more CASH, but there isn't to reverse a culture where having 0 children is normal and encouraged.

> there isn't to reverse a culture where having 0 children is normal and encouraged

Not normal. Not encouraged. Not the trend line. You’re projecting a problem from other countries onto a demographic context within which it doesn’t exist. Unfortunately this is a topic where one has to actually look at the numbers.

If the user above got what he wished, it'd be 0.90. That's what I'm talking about. This is a topic where one needs to know how to read, my nagging friend.

I am not asking for 0 children - that is silly. I just gave a target number for sustainable, high-quality of life in one nation which currently has a very stressed population due to limited resources, ongoing-desertification, exhausted mineral resources and a water crisis. Obviously we should not stop having kids tomorrow. But neither should we subscribe to the birth-rate cliff paranoia where corpo billionaires want the birth rate to increase so they always have access to a desperate population that they can treat as effective slave labour.

> If you want long-term, sustainable agriculture, we need to heavily move to organic farming

This is deeply unsupported by the evidence I’ve seen. Organic farming tends to look far more resource intensive than modern methods. Often for little discernible gain in flavor and nutrition.

> You can get the number by just halving our population

I agree with your conclusion given the data, particularly around mineral exhaustion. (Though there is also the issue of severe mismatches. Lots of lithium, for example, yet no battery industry to speak of.)

> This is deeply unsupported by the evidence I’ve seen.

What ? This is well-supported unless you have been sadly influenced by the brainwashing of corrupt American Agricorpos - who btw do a terrific job of FUD & misinformation. I even learned about the benefits of organic farming in high-school biology class.

"organic farming generally had higher soil organic matter, lower nutrient losses per hectare, lower energy requirements and generally better biodiversity outcomes"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22947228/

“Organic farming enhances soil microbial abundance and activity - A meta-analysis and meta-regression” (2017)

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjourn...

Land‐use intensity and the effects of organic farming on biodiversity: a hierarchical meta‐analysis

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4299503/

Actually, there are dozens of papers. The research is extremely supported for sustainable agriculture with the corresponding caveat of lower yields like I mentioned. No idea how you got "deeply unsupported".

organic farms yield less, you need more area if you farm organically. it's that simple.

> The research is extremely supported for sustainable agriculture with the corresponding caveat of lower yields

Right. Modern agriculture with minor modifications (atmosphere-derived fertilizer) can yield more on less land with less water input more or less indefinitely, i.e. sustainably. To get the same yield with organic methods you need more resource inputs. It’s more resource intensive.

By the way! I like shopping at my farmer’s market. I do think the eggs and vegetables are fresher and taste better. But I don’t pretend it’s more sustainable. If everyone did what I do, we’d need to divert even more land and water and energy to farming.

It is very unfair you got downvoted. Your conclusions might be debatable but sourcing them with so many sources is laudable. I wish all my debate adversaries would drown me in data like you did.

I am hopeful for India. Each time that I visit every five years or so, it feels like a "new country" -- so many things are changing so fast. While Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are not as water-starved as India, they did a lot to become rich with almost not good "minerals" (I assume that you also include oil & gas). Regarding water stress, look at Israel. They switched to as much "drip irrigation" as possible. For non-ag water uses, again look to Israel: You will need a lot of desalination plants. For the interior regions, you'll need water movement infrastructure like California and China.

India can easily become a green energy super power due to its enormous solar productivity. Think of all the industries in the 21st century that thrive with cheap power.

Indians like to blame population for their problems. But India is very big. Mumbai is about as densely populated as Paris.

No, Mumbai is significantly more densely populated than Paris when looking at the entire urban scale and not just a few areas of Paris. This is easily fact-checked.

I mean Mumbai's population is 10x Paris population, so this should be obvious.

Wikipedia lists the core city of both as 50,000 per square mile, though it looks like the Mumbai numbers are somewhat old. More recent numbers say 73,000 per square mile for Mumbai. Which is similar to Manhattan’s residential population density.

How's life these days over there?

We've traded power cuts for pollution. The current government seems energetic enough in trying to fix the problem, but frankly it's something every single developed country in existence went through at some point, so there's probably no escaping it. Hopefully the pollution era will be shorter than it was in other places!

It's good to hear there have been improvements in some areas of life at least.

Not Dehli but Tier 2 city. Yeah power cuts were very frequent, even multiple times a day (but usually once)

They make surge protectors

They don't work nearly as well as the marketing says they do. They might save your equipment from a lightning strike a medium distance away, by absorbing the remnants of the surge that get to you - only once or twice before the protector is dead! - they will not save your equipment from anything that lasts longer than that.

Most surge protectors are one-shot. They may not make this clear in the marketing.

> I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago?

The only thing I know about India is from a Big Bang Theory episode where Raj's father said to Leonard when asked how's the weather, "It's hot, it's always hot in India!".

Played by Brian George, who I don't think has ever lived in India (his parents did, and he is part Indian, but he was born in Israel and grew up in London and Canada).

I personally feel fully qualified to say "It's always hot in India". I'm a native speaker.

I don't personally know that the statement is true, but if that's your issue you should be criticizing the writer, not the actor.

There wasn't a single critical word about either the actor, the writer, or anyone else in my comment. Maybe try not to read into a comment things that aren't there. If I'd wanted to criticise anyone, I would have.

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