After the disastrous electoral consequences of Sanjay Gandhi’s infamous population control experiments of the Emergency era, all Governments fought shy of taking any measures for controlling our burgeoning population. However, alarm bells started ringing after publication of “World Population Prospects 2019: Highlights” by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs which predicted that with a population of about 147 crore, India would be the most populous country in the world in 2027. PM Modi, in his Independence Day 2019 speech, called population explosion a challenge for the nation and exhorted the Centre and states to devise schemes to control population. But there was no official reaction to the UNFPA Report ~ not even the Government’s mandatory debunking of reports published by Western agencies.

However, in what could be taken as the Government’s thinking, Amitabh Kant, former CEO of Niti Aayog, and currently a G20 Sherpa, 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 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 would appear a tall order, given the abysmal level of expenditure of the Government on healthcare and education. Mr. Kant 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 crore in the mid 2060s. Except sporadic attempts to bring a population control bill with a view to highlight growth in minority population, electoral compulsions ensured that not much was heard about population growth till 2024, when the Finance Minister, in her Interim Budget Speech, announced formation of a high-powered committee to study “fast population growth and demographic changes”.

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Thereafter, on 7 May 2024, just before the elections, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PM-EAC) released a paper suggesting that the share of minorities in India’s population had increased between 1950 and 2015, while the share of Hindu population had dipped. Be that as it may, till date, nothing further has been heard about the high-powered committee proposed by the FM. Rather a zero-sum game has begun with all shades of religious leaders and politicians advising couples to have more children. While religious leaders want more children to tilt the population balance in their favour, the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu feel that northern States would get more seats in the Lok Sabha after delimitation if the population of southern States does not increase quickly enough.

We can ignore the perils of unbridled population growth that has resulted in hugely overpopulated, dirty cities, falling agricultural land holdings, poverty, unemployment, and rising crime. Long-term prospects are also not encouraging: India is set to increase its population by more than 27 crore (i.e., 20 percent) by 2050. We can, perhaps, take a cue from China which is predicted to reduce its population by 34 crore (i.e., 24 per cent) by 2050. This also brings up an interesting question: What is the optimum 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 ~ the population of a large condominium in Mumbai. 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 to 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, 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 in coming years, we may see an increase in the number of unemployed. The comparison with China, which claims to have 90 crore skilled workers, is inescapable. One can readily infer that while China has its population to work, our population hangs like an albatross around our neck. 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.

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 1.9 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 soon should we continue on our wayward trajectory. Finally, as Sir David Frederick Attenborough the British broadcaster, biologist, natural historian, and writer has said: “Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we controlled the population, to allow the survival of the environment.”

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