Meet Earth’s Symbolic 7 Billionth Inhabitant

October 31, 2011, 10:15am

Sometime today – maybe even this very second – the projected seven billionth human inhabitant will enter the world. If we’re to believe one account, the milestone has already been reached: Nargis Kumar, the symbolic No. 7,000,000,000, was born earlier this morning at a dingy government-run hospital in northeast India.

I’ll let you stew on that one for a minute.

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The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is in many ways calling (.doc) the birth of this milestone child (and yes, there are already competing claims over the real deal baby) “a success for humanity.” Why? Because it means we’re living longer lives and that, worldwide, fewer of our children are dying. These are results of sweeping medical advancements and fertility rates that have been declining since the early 1970s.

The UNFPA is also realistic about today’s record population. “Not everyone has benefitted from this achievement,” the international development agency admits, “or the higher quality of life that this implies.” The occasion is marked by enough “setbacks and paradoxes” to have prompted the agency’s calls for action
in health and education in a recent report, The State of World Population 2011.

There’s no guessing just where No. 7,000,000,000 will, or has already been, delivered. But there are decent odds it’ll go down, or is going down, in what NPR dubs “the mosh pit of modern Indian life”: northeast Delhi, arguably the densest pocket of the second most crowded country on earth.

Newborns at a women’s clinic in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh, India (Rajesh Kumar Singh/AP)

There, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, roughly 11 children are born by the minute. (That accounts for about one fifth of births-by-the-minute across all of India.) With nearly 30,000 bodies per square kilometer all vying for food, water and personal space, comparisons to Western megacities where people live on top of one another are almost inevitable, setting aside electricity, computers, phones and the internet.

Northeast India’s population density is only shades above that of, say, Manhattan. But here in the U.S., people are stacked dozens of stories high, whereas buildings in northeast Delhi really don’t exceed four or five stories. And the crush of so many people into small, sometimes unstable structures is tricky as it is, let alone in already cramped hospitals. At a maternity ward in the Swami Dayanand Medical Centre NPR reported enough beds – “30 or so” – to accommodate about as many women giving birth there each day. Some of them shared mattresses.

Then there’s the primary health center in Sunhaida, where some villagers predict the landmark birth will take place. A local shopkeeper’s wife has apparently been singled out as the mother. As the little one comes screaming through there will be fireworks lighting the sky.

via Jonah M. Kessel

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that over 30 people, mostly women and children, are feared drowned after a footbridge in northeast India collapsed on Saturday. The blowout is the second such catastrophe in a week, and a terrible reminder of the crushing tolls humanity’s masses are placing on aging and insufficient infrastructures.

So our immediate and longer-term responses to today’s speculative birth, Nargis or not, the UNFPA’s report continues, will determine whether the future is “healthy, sustainable, and prosperous,” unmarked by stark inequality, potential climactic tumult and economic regress. The agency argues that empowering women and at-risk youth will raise floors across all societies.

At this point, though, it’s worth reminding that we’ll be tacking on another billion people through 2024. By then, “quintillion” might be the new “quadrillion” in everyday parlance. Crowd quakes could be so common that trampling threats are actual things that everyone is stressing balls over. India, we know, will be approaching 1.5 billion inhabitants, edging out China as world’s most populous country. Nargis will be a teenager.

You can stew on that one for a minute.