Is a dropping fertility rate a big worry for India? Let’s not get distracted by the West’s population problems

Vikram Seth, who abandoned his Stanford University PhD thesis on the demographic changes of seven Chinese cities to write poetry and novels, would be best suited for this assignment. (The acknowledgements to his novel in verse, The Golden Gate, memorably thanked Stanford for nurturing his “tardy PhD” that “waxes lax, and sickly,” but perhaps he could now make amends through a work of fiction.)