A sharp drop in India's population trot has thrown Malthusian projections of an exponential growth off the mark by 600 million, thanks to a quiet revolution among millions of rural women. But while the world's second most populous country with one billion people that make up a sixth of humanity has witnessed the sharpest decline in growth rate in the last decade, the rate of the slowdown is reaching a plateau, experts say.

At a global UN conference in New York to revise demographic projections last month, experts said India may have 600 million people less than the numbers predicted for the year 2100, bringing down the global projection of 10 billion people by the end of this century.
"It is a remarkable achievement for us to be able to stabilise the country's population growth, but much needs to be done still," said KV Rao, chief director of the demographic research survey in the health ministry.
The decadal growth of population at 21.34 per cent between 1991-2001 is the sharpest decline since independence, with the average exponential growth rate declining from 2.14 per cent per year during the previous decade to 1.93 per cent per year.
Rao, a key figure behind India's population policy aimed at achieving an average of 2.1 child per family by the year 2010, believed the decline in growth rate was largely due to the awareness among women. But the poor state of women in northern India was confining the success to select pockets. Bureau Report