To take the serious accounts – and that of the population is not a fool – in joke can attract bitter results. Or, at least, someone can end up being ashamed. Something like this has happened before, and it's not the first time, the rotten weekly Der Spiegel at the cost of a cartoon -- something that wouldn't even be news.

Because it has long been known that without a delay the population of India will outnumber China, which is around 1.4 billion. And that, by the way, will assume the “trophy” of being the most populous country in the world. This is what all mathematical models say, interpreting obvious trends.

However, to check the forecast with greater safety it is necessary to wait. China's last census dates from November 2020 and its population data, with an annual estimate, can be considered relatively adjusted. But for India's data to be equally safe, the census that had to be done in 2021, delayed by the pandemic, will have to wait for it to be done in October this year and the results will be done. There is no doubt that these results that we will have in a year's time will confirm the forecast.

Perhaps for this certainty, and for the “news” not to expire in its day or, on such a projection, a calculation has been published in most of the world’s media, led by the most prestigious: the step would be taking place now. Obviously, the opportunity has been used to make reflections and predictions of different seriousness and usefulness, there and here, which some deserve to be read. And, without any exceptions, of course, the news is “strewn” with photographs of people who do not have to be difficult to obtain in some places in India.

For in search of some “originality”, or Der Spiegel, to bring a report that would not be the worst of the rest, he published along with him a vignette that grabbed a clumsy topic: an Indian trentxo full of people and, next to him, a Chinese train with high-speed appearance.

There is no need for a special imagination to appreciate the welcome of anecdote in India. It has already ignited a clear political resentment on the elites of what appears to be the most populous country in the world. Of course, not in China either. The weekly, of course, has removed the cartoon, but the damage has been done.

No kidding. No one has mentioned freedom of expression this time.