India would become leader in nano-technology in 5 yrs

How many people in India now? Last time I checked it was 700 million, but that was in the eighties.Here are some numbers:

The population in India as at 0:00 hours on 1st March 2001 stood at 1,027,015,247 persons. With this, India became only the second country in the world after China to cross the one billionmark. India's population rose by 21.34 % between 1991 - 2001. The sex ratio (i.e., number of females per thousand males) of population was 933, rising from 927 as at the 1991 Census. Total literacy rate in India was returned as 65.38%.

More stats.

Although India occupies only 2.4% of the world's land area, it supports over 15% of the world's population. Only China has a larger population. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age. About 70% of the people live in more than 550,000 villages, and the remainder in more than 200 towns and cities. Religion, caste, and language are major determinants of social and political organization in India today. The government has recognized 18 languages as official; Hindi is the most widely spoken.

And a bit more interesting: India population 'to be biggest'

India is set to overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2050, while some countries will shrink by nearly 40%, according to new research.

Britain's population is likely to overtake that of France, while the US will grow by nearly 50%, it says.

India is expected to grow from 1.08bn to 1.63bn people, overtaking China, which is forecast to reach 1.44bn from 1.3bn currently.

PREDICTED POPULATIONS, 2050 1 India, 1,628m (2) 2 China, 1,437m (1) 3 United States, 420m (3) 4 Indonesia, 308m (4) 5 Nigeria, 307m (9) Source: PRB (2004 position in brackets)

And so on. So what's the point of this blog entry? Hopefully we'll find out soon...