Many trains in the country are decades old and dirty, while the tracks need revamping. Unlike the capital’s subway system, however, not all of India’s vast railway network is modern. Delhi has a metro which is so state of the art,” he said. “I would like to invite this cartoonist to come on a metro ride with me in Delhi. The Der Spiegel cartoon “plays with very old fashioned clichés,” Germany’s ambassador to India, Philipp Ackermann, told Indian news agency ANI. Sankhadeep Banerjee/NurPhoto/Getty Images India expects to reap a "demographic dividend," from its huge working-age population. “If you look closely at it, you will notice, as many of my friends in India have, that their unlikely convoy is bursting with youth and energy – and most importantly, it is winning the race!” he said.ĬNN has reached out to Der Spiegel for comment. “A lot of the backlash echoed resentment against the West, a sentiment I can understand – the double standard of Western policies is something I have made cartoons about.”Ĭhappatte added that he intended his cartoon to be “good humored” and “sympathetic towards India.” “I was surprised that government officials of such a great country would take a cartoon so seriously, and start stirring people’s emotions,” he said.
In a statement to CNN, cartoonist Patrick Chappatte said he was taken aback that his illustration in Der Spiegel had become “a geopolitical issue.” “In a few years India’s economy will be bigger than Germany’s,” he wrote on Twitter. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, minister for electronics and information technology, said it was “not smart to bet against India” under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. By comparison, the German and British economies are expected to stagnate, while the United States is expected to grow only 1.6%. The International Monetary Fund expects the South Asian nation to outperform all major emerging and advanced economies this year, logging GDP growth of 5.9%. How India's population exploded to overtake China's and what's next REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri/File Photo Rupak De Chowdhuri/ReutersFILE India’s so-called “demographic dividend,” the potential economic growth arising from a large working-age population is augmented by the country’s vast consumer market and a pool of affordable labor that’s attracting global investors.įILE PHOTO: People shop in a crowded market amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Kolkata, India, January 6, 2022. Last weekend, India overtook China to become the world’s most populous country, according to United Nations projections, a seismic change in global demographics that coincides with growing confidence in the world’s largest democracy. Literacy rates have increased to 74% for men and 65% for women and average life expectancy is now 70. The World Bank has promoted India from low-income to middle-income status – a bracket that denotes a gross national income per capita of between $1,036 and $12,535. India’s nearly $3 trillion economy is now the world’s fifth largest and among its fastest growing.
The country’s GDP was just $20 billion, according to scholars.īut more than three quarters of a century later, critics of the Der Spiegel cartoon say it is unfair to view India through the lens of poverty. Average life expectancy at the time was just 37 for men and 36 for women – and only 12% of Indians were literate. In the years following India’s independence from Britain in 1947, the country became synonymous with underdevelopment.
Population: India overtakes China - © Chappatte in Der Spiegel, Germany > /bRbNlP4Dvc- Chappatte Cartoons April 22, 2023 “Hi Germany, this is outrageously racist,” Kanchan Gupta, senior adviser to India’s information and broadcasting ministry, wrote on Twitter. “The Western World prefers to depict India as poor and struggling,” Indian lawmaker Vijayasai Reddy wrote on Twitter, adding the cartoon was in “bad taste.” The illustration, published last month in German news magazine Der Spiegel, shows a throng of jubilant Indians on an old and overcrowded locomotive – many standing on the roof – as it overtakes a sleek Chinese bullet train. A controversial cartoon struck a nerve in India as the country of 1.4 billion surpassed China to become the world’s most populous nation, highlighting sensitivities to what critics say are outdated stereotypes perpetuated by Western media.
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