Indian population hits billion

With the birth of a baby girl named Astha - "Faith" in Hindi - India's population officially hit one billion today, an event marked with fanfare and concern over the nation's rapid growth.

Astha was born to Anjana and Ashok Arora in Safdarjang Hospital in the Indian capital at 5:05 a.m. 12:34 am BST.

The birth put India in an exclusive club with China as the only nations with populations exceeding one billion.

Just nine hours old and wailing, Astha was wheeled out with her sari-clad mother before two government ministers, U.N. officials and a horde of journalists. She weighed 7 pounds at birth, doctors said.

"I feel fine," said the mother, who appeared weak and overwhelmed by the chaotic reception.

"I'm happy," said Ashok Arora, who works in an automotive spare parts shop for a salary of 2,200 rupees (£31.25) per month.

"Don't crush the baby," government minister Sumitra Mahajan screamed into her microphone in the hospital hall as nearly 200 journalists climbed onto window ledges overlooking the bed of the dazed mother. The frightened father was jostled out of the way, and he waved his arms, pleading for the crowd not to come to close.

Hospital guards climbed onto the bed next to the mother's and beat back the journalists with wooden clubs.

With an estimated 42,000 births per day in India, it was impossible to know exactly where the billionth baby would be born.

But Health Ministry officials, with the concurrence of the U.N. Population Fund, decreed that a baby girl born Thursday morning in the 1,500-bed Safdarjang Hospital would symbolically mark the milestone. Twenty-four babies were born in Safdarjang between midnight and noon.

Earlier, doctors and nurses said Astha had been born at 12:20 p.m., (07:50am BST) in line with a predetermined plan to choose the first girl born after noon. It was not clear why that idea was abandoned.

India has been promoting fair treatment for infant girls to overcome traditional biases in favor of boys.

The last national census in 1991 said there were 927 women for every 1,000 men in India. Health experts said that reflected a trend in rural and poor areas that gives boys preferential treatment in food and health care. Infanticide of baby girls remains a problem.

The billionth birth was hardly cause for celebration. Since its independence from Britain in 1948, India has tried to curb its exploding population with little success. When it became a nation, India had 300 million people.

"We welcome Astha, but we should also be thinking whether she would get an opportunity for education and health like millions of other children," said Mahajan, minister for women and child welfare. "Will we be able to get her the resources and the opportunities necessary for her future? This is what we have to think about."

Beginning Thursday morning, an automatic recording by the state-owned telephone company told anyone who picked up the phone to dial in New Delhi, "Our population has now reached one billion. Let's have small families for a stronger India."

Projections say India will surpass China as the world's most populous nation in 50 years when it is expected to have 1.5 billion people.

Every measure of progress India has made since independence has been countermanded by the spiraling population: food production has trebled, yet many people go hungry; literacy has increased, but so has the sheer number of illiterate people.

Efforts to encourage family planning among the poor suffered a setback in the 1970s when the government sponsored a mass sterilization campaign, in which poor people were duped or paid to undergo vasectomies and tubectomies.

The emphasis has changed in the past decade toward educating women, raising their status and providing better health care. Nongovernment organizations tour rural areas distributing condoms and discussing birth control, but sex education is not taught in the schools.