Huge populations means nothing in the context of India. Unfortunately our politicians have repeated this tripe enough number of times to make it look like its some kind of inevitable economic dividend which we will reap.

The only known purpose masses of population have in a knowledge driven era like we live in is to compete with machine automation as meat robots, until the machine automation gets cheaper.

Beyond this having a huge population without good education, training and lack of a general progressive culture is a net negative. To sustain these people you get a huge defense bill and a range of social security spending thatlargely taxes productive people in a disproportionate way.

You also have to deal with a huge population scale with weird political and religious beliefs. Its a net negative.