Anand Mahindra offered his Twitter followers a reason to ‘smile with optimism’ even as United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) data revealed on Wednesday that India had pipped China to become the most populous country in the world.

What Happened? The Mahindra Group chairman took to Twitter to post two separate screenshots — one that people aren’t too happy about, and another that does show India’s economic progress over the past 5 years.

The first image shared by Mahindra is a UN world population dashboard reading that shows that India now has 1428.6 million people while China’s population stands at 1425.7 million.

The second screenshot shows a graph published in a recent report by The Washington Post which highlights World Poverty Clock data to reveal that India’s ‘extremely poor population’ figure had dropped from 124 million in 2016 to just 15 million in 2022.

The billionaire entrepreneur’s point behind the tweet was to highlight the fact that despite the rise in population, the country’s economy is definitely making strides in the right direction to rectify poverty.

“…this could be India's century,” added an upbeat Mahindra.

As the global economy recovers from the Covid-19 pandemic, India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. That said, economists have been concerned about consumption seeing a sharp slowdown, and household savings slumping to a three-decade low.

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