Ever think of population?
When i was a student in London, i was at a crossroad. Should i stay back (and i had been there almost 9 years, and it would have been easy), or should I get home. In that period, i would get these nightmares. I am at Churchgate Station, at 9 in the morning, and trying to cross the road, with a mass of people. That one nightmare, kept me in England for an extra year, till i figured, i will get back to India and not find a job in Nariman Point 🙂
Even today, when you pass by an Andheri station at peak hour, or a Dadar, the sheer mass of bodies is scary (at least for me), and that is going to grown. We have stopped talking about population, but we need to start again.
My DNA article this week
One of the scarier sites on the internet, is livepoppulation.com. it is a live tracker of the change in population. As one looks at the counter, with horrific fascination, as it increases by one almost every second, one realises that this is a lot of children. Almost 58,000 more children every day, who will grow up to need food, water, shelter; school, hospitals, universities, and jobs. How are we going to provide for 1.6 crore additional people every year?
In the 1970’s the concept of population growth was all around. When we went to the cinema, there would be Film’s division’s documentaries telling us about how India was overpopulated, and how there wouldn’t be food to go around. We grew up hearing about , the Government promoted contraceptive, ‘hum do hamare do’, and various family planning schemes. The few times one got to watch television, the message was the same, too many people, too little food, and if we keep growing at this pace, it will be a terrible future.
Today, in the cities, most of us gawk when someone tells us they have three children. And, this cuts across socio economic classes. One seems to be the norm, two far less frequent. The cost of bringing up a child is deterrent. In rural India, the situation is different. While it may no longer be a large battalion of children, it is common to see families with 4 or 5 children. This again cuts across socio economic clusters, and communities. It is also seen that the more educated, and well developed states, have been showing a decline in population growth, while the Hindi belt in the north – with high levels of illiteracy, suppression of female literacy, have a higher reproductive rate. The average fertility rate (the number of children born to a woman) is 1.2 in Sikkim; 1.6 in Punjab, Kerala; 1.7 in Tamil Nadu, Goa; 2.3 in Madhya Pradesh, 2.7 in Uttar Pradesh, 3.4 in Bihar. As it stands now, we are likely to overtake China in 2024.0
The first census of independent India put the population at 361 million people. Life expectancy was 31 years. Infant mortality was high 50 deaths for every 1000 births. People had more children simply because only a few would survive. But, independent India managed to devote some resources to improving health parameters. Life expectancy grew, and infant mortality started dropping. In 1970 India’s population crossed 553 million, and alarm bells began. People began talking about the population explosion, and what needs to be done to control population. Amongst the people who saw the booming population was a threat was Sanjay Gandhi. When Emergency was declared, he declared a personal war against population growth. And, part of this was enforced sterilisation. Having suspended democracy, and the constitution, Sanjay Gandhi’s directives were ruthlessly enforced by state governments. Government officials were given targets for sterilisation, and in most cases, these targets were met with sterilizing people without their consent. Undertrials, students, old men, no one was safe. Coercion was high, Villages were refused water for irrigation, if they didn’t meant sterilisation quotas; families were not given food rations, if sterilisation quotas were not met. It is estimated that 6.2 million Indians were forcibly sterilized during the emergency.
The biggest body blow that emergency delivered was not so much to Democracy which was restored, and continues to be part of our DNA; but population control. For some reason, we have stopped talking about reproduction. And, as we stand to touch 1.5 billion people in 2030 we need to bring population back front and centre of the policy agenda. Because if we don’t, no matter what is done in terms of social welfare – it will never, ever, be enough.