State of World Population Report 2023, published by UN Population Fund (UNFPA), postulates that very soon, in 2023 itself, we will achieve the dubious distinction of being the most populous nation on earth.

According to the Report, the rising population was a sign that people were living longer, healthier lives and enjoying more rights and greater choices than ever before.

The Report stated: “… many headlines warned of a world teetering into overpopulation, or that whole countries and regions were ageing into obsolescence… Over and over, we see birth rates identified as a problem ~ and a solution ~ with little acknowledgement of the agency of the people doing the birthing.”

The Report suggested that “advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and ensuring women’s ability to control their own fertility must be at the heart of population and development related programmes.” UNFPA India Representative, Andrea Wojnar, termed India’s 140 crore people as 140 crore opportunities. Such bland platitudes are poor consolation for us, reeling as we are under serious ill-effects of an unmanageably increasing population ~ poverty, unemployment and pollution, to name a few.

Yet, after the disastrous electoral consequences of Sanjay Gandhi’s infamous population control experiments of the Emergency era, politicians rarely talk about population issues, let alone take measures to control our burgeoning population.

Therefore, not surprisingly, there has been no official reaction to the UNFPA Report ~ not even the Government’s mandatory debunking of reports published by Western agencies. In what could be taken as the Government’s thinking, Amitabh Kant, former CEO of Niti Aayog, and currently a G-20 Sherpa, has listed out the opportunities that our rising population will open up for us. According to Mr. Kant, India will become ‘a powerhouse of human capital and the largest producer of human resources in the world.’ He has suggested that we should invest in the overall well-being of our youth in areas like ‘health, nutrition, education, skill development and financial inclusion,’ which appears a tall order, given the abysmal expenditure of the Government on healthcare and education.

Mr Kant has further averred that our Total Fertility Rate is now 2.0 ~ below the replacement level of 2.1, which is hard to digest because India’s population is projected to grow for the next forty years, reaching a peak of 166.8 crores in the mid 2060s.

This also brings up an interesting question: What is the optimum level of population? Much before the Christian Era, Plato, observing the growing population of Athens, concluded that the ideal city should have no more than 5,040 citizens, which is the population of a large condominium in Mumbai. Plato said: “What is left now is like the skeleton of a body wasted by disease; the rich soil has been carried off and only the bare framework of the district is left.” Not surprisingly, Plato believed in strict population control, and also in moderating consumption ~ both pressing concerns even in the twenty-first century. In what could be a tale of contemporary times, Plato’s epic ‘The Republic’ tells the story of two mythical city-states: one believes in moderation while the other believes in consumerism.

Unable to sustain its large population, the second city-state casts avaricious eyes on its neighbouring territories, plunging the country into war. Read US and China for the second city-state, and the analogy is complete.

The question Plato raised is the essence of the population debate of today: Is human population the issue, or is it the resources it consumes? Many thinkers ~ ancient and medieval ~ raised similar concerns, but it fell on Thomas Malthus, an 18th century English clergyman, to explain the relation between population and resources mathematically. Malthus wrote: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio.

A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second” (An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798). Pessimistic Malthusian predictions have not come true so far, because continuous technological progress has made sufficient resources available for our ever-growing population. Sadly, we seem to be fast approaching the tipping point; consumerism fuelled by technological progress has led to a plunder of natural resources, a degraded environment, high GHG emissions, and massive pollution ~ all leading to climate change.

Moreover, unequal distribution of resources ensures that even today, millions in the Horn of Africa are starving and many in Asia and Africa live in want, while people in Europe and US, live lives of extravagance.

In fact, Western interest in curtailing population growth in less developed countries has racist undertones, what with Europe and North America being more densely populated than many poor countries whose population they seek to limit. No wonder, to escape the charge of bias, world bodies decry the use of family planning as a tool for population control.

Rather, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development expressly acknowledges that sexual and reproductive health and gender equality are essential for unlocking a more prosperous and sustainable future.

In the absence of proper planning, India’s demographic dividend has turned into a bane. We will have one hundred crore people in the working age group (15 – 64) by 2030, but with an employment rate (percentage of persons employed in the working age population) of less than 37 per cent, we may see an increase in the number of unemployed, in coming years. The comparison with China, which claims to have 90 crore skilled workers, is inescapable. One can readily infer that while China has put its population to work, our population hangs like an albatross around our neck.

According to National Family Health Survey 2019-21 (NFHS5), safe motherhood eludes a significant proportion of Indian women; 38 per cent got married before 18 years of age, and in 27 per cent of births, spacing between two child births was less than 2 years.

A friend who runs an NGO that provides milk to poor pregnant and lactating women at Aanganwadis was surprised to find girls as young as 2o on their second or third pregnancies. Most of these women were malnourished also. It appears that the National Population Policy 2000 which brought about a holistic and target-free approach, has taken the urgency out of the Government’s efforts for population control.

At present, the role of the Government in family planning is limited to making contraceptive facilities available at Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and Sub Centres (SCs), in rural areas, and at Urban Family Welfare Centres and Postpartum Centres, in urban areas.

Volunteers called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) distribute contraceptives and pregnancy testing kits to beneficiaries at their doorsteps. On paper, this may appear sufficient, but looking at the way PHCs are run, one can well imagine the services that would really be available there.

As regards, ASHA workers, they are unqualified and minimally trained health workers, who are paid a pittance as an incentive for certain tasks they perform. Statistics about children compiled in the National Family Health Survey 2019-21 are equally alarming.

Eighteen per cent children had a low birth weight (less than 2.5 kg), 36 per cent of children under five years were stunted (too short for their age), a sign of chronic undernutrition.

Nineteen per cent of children under five years were wasted (too thin for their height), a sign of acute undernutrition, while 32 per cent of children under age five years were underweight. Female empowerment by education and gender parity will help in population management but people would hardly follow the two-child norm if the female population is not healthy, and if couples are not assured of having two healthy children, who have a fair chance of reaching adulthood.

To achieve this, the Government has to provide good healthcare to all, by ensuring that every district has an adequate number of PHCs and CHCs which are properly manned, and have an adequate stock of medicines. This would be possible only if we increase expenditure on healthcare (which currently stands at 1.28 per cent of our GDP), upgrade our primary health infrastructure and provide nutritional supplementation to poor children.

Once a proper health and nutrition infrastructure is in place, a Family Planning Mission can be launched on the lines of Swachh Bharat Mission. By providing incentives and better public healthcare, the Government would be able to persuade people to have only two children, which would spare us the ill effects of the ticking population bomb, which is sure to explode ~ should we continue on our wayward trajectory

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)