The Population Crisis

(We are one………… billion)

There is hardly an Indian who hasn’t been stalked by the crowding syndrome. The perils of over population are conspicuous everywhere; overcrowded buses, jam packed railway stations, prolonged queues in the cinema theatres, the struggle of anxious parents to get an admission for their wards in nursery schools , the stiff rivalry for admissions to professional courses, the long wait for an LPG connection; the list of woes we are burdened to carry for being a nation of one billion goes on.
The fact that the birth of baby Aastha- the one billionth baby- was celebrated with so much hype, makes one wonder if atleast we as a nation are willing to confront the gravity of the issue. (Nobody marked the one- millionth sterilization or the one- billionth condom sale!!).
The problem of over population took an ominous turn when we acceded the one billion club, the only other member being China. However, the perils of population are definitely more sinister here than in China. The reason being, we do not have the large land mass that our neighbour has, which makes our population density three times as much as that of our neighbour.
It would be improper however, to directly attempt at analyzing the Indian scenario without an examination of the general theories of demography.

The Malthusian theory of population.

“An Essay on the principle of population” by Thomas Malthus published in 1798 was among the first and most significant theories on demography in that era. The book was later cited by Darwin as having had a significant influence on the formulation of his own theory of ‘Natural Selection’.
Malthus begins the dissection of the issue by defining the population problem as, ‘ the tendency of all animated life to increase beyond the nourishment prepared for it.’ Malthus observed that in plants and irrational animals, nature has been generous in scattering the seeds of life but has been miserly in providing for the room and nourishment needed to sustain them. That is, the species are all compelled by an inherent tendency to increase their number but are limited by the means to provide for their offspring.
In man, this same limitation in acquiring food for large numbers, puts a check on population, which never increases beyond the lowest level of nourishment that can be supported by the environment. To quote Malthus, “Population when left unchecked, grows in a geometric ratio. Subsistence increases in an arithmetic ratio.”
From this hypothesis, Malthus was able to conclude that both famine and poverty are natural outcomes of the tendency of all animated life to proliferate. When the number of individuals living in an area, increases beyond the subsistence level, natural laws intervene to put a check on the increasing numbers. Such interventions in the form of famines, epidemics, poverty, hunger-deaths, social unrest etc were named Malthusian catastrophes. Malthus proposed that the purpose of such a catastrophe was to contain the population and that it would return the population to subsistence levels.
The methods that Malthus identified that would put a check on such catastrophes was categorized as positive checks and vices. The former refers to moral restraint and the latter means acts such as homosexuality. Malthus advocated moral restraint among England’s poor and downtrodden population and also called for a repealing of England’s ‘Poor laws’ as food subsidies and subsidized shelter only encouraged the poor to reproduce more, he asserted. The Malthusian argument was fiercely class discriminatory as it argued that it was among the poor that the family size exceeded the means to provide for them.
The class bias of Malthus’s work is visible from this controversial quote from the second edition of his essay,

"A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in counter-acting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all guests should have plenty, and knowing she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full."

Criticism of the Malthusian theory.

Much of the criticism to Malthusian theories came from the liberals and radical social reformers of the 19th century. They found it impossible to accept that the misery of the poor was on account of their reproductive practices. Marx and Engels in introducing their own theory of surplus labor to explain the population problem, attacked Malthus calling him, “a shameless sycophant of the ruling classes”
It must be recognized that the Malthusian argument was class discriminatory and justified the existence of a social structure based on the unequal distribution of nature’s resources. It’s critics also argued that poverty is not a natural condition as was implied in Malthus’s essay.
Also, Malthus’s theory predicted a huge catastrophe resulting from the lagging of growth in food production behind the growth in population. However this forecast proved to be wrong on account of new methodologies in agriculture that emerged after the industrial revolution.

Modern view points in demographic studies.

The issue of population explosion is a divisive one in economic circles today. Both apocalyptic views and dismissive complacency abound.
The former group present the picture of the population problem, as a bomb, that will soon go off and the people involved are treated as irrational beings -whose sexual instincts must be tamed- rather than as allies facing a common problem.
The latter group on the other hand are inspired by the ability displayed by the human race to cope with increases in population in the past. They remind us that not only has predictions of a Malthusian catastrophe failed in the past, but there has been an increase in the general standards of living and the consumption of food per person has also increased.
Complacency on this account cannot be justified, however. To quote Amartya Sen, “The fact that Malthus was mistaken in his diagnosis as well as his prognosis two hundred years ago does not, however, indicate that contemporary fears about population growth must be similarly erroneous. The increase in the world population has vastly accelerated over the last century. It took the world population millions of years to reach the first billion, then 123 years to get to the second, 33 years to the third, 14 years to the fourth, 13 years to the fifth billion, with a sixth billion to come, according to one UN projection, in another 11 years.6 During the last decade, between 1980 and 1990, the number of people on earth grew by about 923 million, an increase nearly the size of the total world population in Malthus's time. Whatever may be the proper response to alarmism about the future, complacency based on past success is no response at all.’

Population and emigration

On studying the regional distribution in the growth of world population one observes serious imbalances. More than 90% of the increasing population is in the developing world. The largest absolute growth takes place in Asia.
This has lead vast multitudes of people in the developing countries to emigrate to the west. More than any other social and economic factor population growth is considered the single most important reason behind the growing pressure of emigration to the west.
However to cite that population growth is the sole factor responsible for immigration into the developed world is to close one’s eyes to the rapid internationalization of cultures and integration of world economies that has occurred in recent times. The dynamism of international capitalism is more pronounced than ever and its growing reach and absorptive power has removed many obstacles to the free movement of labor.

In the west the large number of immigrants moving into their shores has caused much alarm and there are fears that a growing third world population will further push more people into the west. This fear has also metamorphosed into the apprehension by westerners that they are being engulfed by Asians and Africans. The share of the world population by the latter group increased from 63.7 percent in 1950 to 71.2 percent by 1990, and is expected, according to the estimates of the United Nations, to rise to 78.5 percent by 2050 AD. Relatively well off people surrounded by a very large impoverished population does bear the potential for serious social unrests.


Population and food production.

Although most public discourses seem to suggest that the growth of population will soon outrun our ability to produce food, there is no real evidence to support this claim. The rise in food output is infact outpacing the expansion of food production and the major contributors to the increasing food supply are India and China.
There has been however, a decrease in the per capita food production as well as net production of food in various regions of sub Saharan Africa most conspicuously, Somalia. The decrease in food production, can only be linked to political turmoil, civil war and climatic changes. Of course, many countries in the world—from Syria, Italy, and Sweden to Botswana in Africa—have had declining food production per head without experiencing hunger or starvation since their economies have prospered and grown; when the means are available, food can be easily bought in the international market if it is necessary to do so.
All attempts that try to convince us of the proximity of a catastrophe owing to fall in food production must be dismissed, outright.

Link between population, poverty and the slums.

Average income and food production per head can go on increasing even as the wretchedly deprived living conditions of particular sections of the population get worse, as they have in many parts of the third world. The living conditions of backward regions and deprived classes can decline even when a country's economic growth is very rapid. Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s provided an extreme example of this. The sense that there are just "too many people" around often arises from seeing the desperate lives of people in the large and rapidly growing urban slums in poor countries, sobering reminders that we should not take too much comfort from aggregate statistics of economic progress.
The present situation in India is not different. The question here however is whether the deep poverty and the growth of slums that we observe in the third world derive directly from population growth.
To once again quote Amartya Sen, “To see in population growth the main reason for the growth of overcrowded and very poor slums in large cities, for example, is not empirically convincing. It does not help to explain why the slums of Calcutta and Bombay have grown worse at a faster rate than those of Karachi and Islamabad (India's population growth rate is 2.1 percent per year, Pakistan's 3.1), or why Jakarta has deteriorated faster than Ankara or Istanbul (Indonesian population growth is 1.8 percent, Turkey's 2.3), or why the slums of Mexico City have become worse more rapidly than those of San José (Mexico's population growth rate is 2.0, Costa Rica's 2.8), or why Harlem can seem more and more deprived when compared with the poorer districts of Singapore (US population growth rate is 1.0, Singapore's is 1.8). Many causal factors affect the degree of deprivation in particular parts of a country—rural as well as urban—and to try to see them all as resulting from overpopulation is the negation of social analysis.”
This is not to deny that population growth may well have an effect on deprivation, but only to insist that any investigation of the effects of population growth must be part of the analysis of economic and political processes, including the effects of other variables. It is the isolationist view of population growth that should be rejected. Population growth is not the root cause rather the catalyst in this situation.

Population and the environment.

The pressure exerted by an increasing population on the raw materials of the earth could be a good deal more serious than the stress put on food production as proposed by Malthus. If the environment is tapped beyond its serving capacity, then it will adversely affect the standard of living of the population. In the dissection of this argument it is interesting to note that the per-capita consumption of food, fuel, and other goods by people in third world countries is often relatively low; consequently the impact of population growth in these countries is not, in relative terms, so damaging to the global environment. But it remains true, that one additional American typically has a larger negative impact on the ozone layer, global warmth, and other elements of the earth's environment than dozens of Indians put together.


The Indian context

The causes for population explosion in India have been widely discussed and the following general deductions, arrived at

Universal marriages and universal motherhood: The 1981 census reveals that, of all the women in the 40-44 age group those who have never married are only 0.55% of the total. Marriage in our society is universal and is considered a religious and sacred duty. The 1981 census also reveals that only 6.1% of all the women above the age of 50 have had no live births . Motherhood too is universal.

Early marriages: India is a tropical country and girls reach puberty at an early age owing to the hot climate, thus making child marriages prevalent.

Joint family system: the joint family system gives security to idle hands and numbers are allowed to multiply without any concern for the supporting conditions.

Poverty: it has been universally acknowledged that the weaker sections of the population tend to increase their number as they feel that more children would imply more hands to work.

Fatalism and orthodoxy: family planning and birth control measures have proved to be ineffective as we live in a largely conservative society. The excesses during the emergency era have also added to the people’s apprehensions regarding birth control measures.

The enormity of the problem of demographic growth has not created much alarm as it does not have the same immediacy as a tsunami or a terror attack. There are certain striking elements that come to light when Indian population growth patterns are analyzed.
The most significant being the sharp distinction between the backward states and the others in containing the rising population.
The southern states, especially Kerala and Tamil Nadu have almost achieved replacement levels( levels where there is not much difference between the birth rate and the death rate, thus stabilizing the population.) but at the other extreme is a region that comprises Bihar, Chhattisgarh, eastern Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan where the growth is virtually out of control. More than 53% of the population in these states has no access to family planning methods like condoms or contraceptives.
The problem of migration that was discussed earlier, again surfaces. Once the population in the southern states stabilizes, there will be a great influx of job seekers to the south. This again bears the potential for severe social unrest. In the past we have witnessed the surfacing of the ‘sons of the soil’ theory in Maharashtra and assam. The pattern of growth in this country suggests the fragmentation of this nation into the developed and the underdeveloped half which is bound to have serious consequences of dissent and unrest unless rectified.

Combating the problem.

The French mathematician and thinker Condorcet identified two approaches to combat the population crisis
(1) developing new technology and new behavior patterns that would waste little and pollute less, and
(2) fostering social and economic changes that would gradually bring down the growth rate of population.

Women’s power:

The drudgery of a life of constant child bearing and rearing faced by third world women is on account on the prevalence of illiteracy and lack of education among women. A better educated population has more chances of engaging in discussions that concern the kind of life we have reason to live .Womens empowerment has enabled them to take decisions such as the size of the family and also family planning measures. In country after country the birth rate has come down with more female education, the reduction of mortality rates, the expansion of economic means and security, and greater public discussion of ways of living.

Kerala’s example:

China has adopted a very stringent “over ride” policy of family planning to achieve population stability. The rationality and inevitability of such coercive methods have been questioned by many economists and social scientists. It would be interesting to compare china’s policies with that of Kerala.

The roots of Kerala's success are to be found in the kinds of social progress Condorcet hoped for, including among others, a high female literacy rate (86 percent, which is substantially higher than China's 68 percent). The rural literacy rate is in fact higher in Kerala—for women as well as men—than in every single province in China. Male and female life expectancies at birth in China are respectively 67 and 71 years; the provisional 1991 figures for men and women in Kerala are 71 and 74 years. Women have been active in Kerala's economic and political life for a long time. A high proportion do skilled and semi-skilled work and a large number have taken part in educational movements. It is perhaps of symbolic importance that the first public pronouncement of the need for widespread elementary education in any part of India was made in 1817 by Rani Gouri Parvathi Bai, the young queen of the princely state of Travancore, which makes up a substantial part of modern Kerala. For a long time public discussions in Kerala have centered on women's rights and the undesirability of couples marrying when very young. This political process has been voluntary and collaborative, rather than coercive, and the adverse reactions that have been observed in China, such as infant mortality, have not occurred in Kerala. Kerala's low fertility rate has been achieved along with an infant mortality rate of 16.5 per 1,000 live births (17 for boys and 16 for girls), compared with China's 31 (28 for boys and 33 for girls). And as a result of greater gender equality in Kerala, women have not suffered from higher mortality rates than men in Kerala, as they have in the rest of India and in China. Even the ratio of females to males in the total population in Kerala (above 1.03) is quite close to that of the current ratios in Europe and America (reflecting the usual pattern of lower female mortality whenever women and men receive similar care). By contrast, the average female to male ratio in China is 0.94 and in India as a whole 0.93. Anyone drawn to the Chinese experience of compulsory birth control must take note of these facts.
The temptation to use the "override" approach arises at least partly from impatience with the allegedly slow process of fertility reduction through collaborative, rather than coercive, attempts. Yet Kerala's birth rate has fallen from 44 per 1,000 in the 1950s to 18 by 1991—not a sluggish decline. Nor is Kerala unique in this respect. Other societies, such as those of Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Thailand, which have relied on expanding education and reducing mortality rates—instead of on coercion—have also achieved sharp declines in fertility and birth rates.
It is also interesting to compare the time required for reducing fertility in China with that in the two states in India, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which have done most to encourage voluntary and collaborative reduction in birth rates (even though Tamil Nadu is well behind Kerala in each respect). Despite China's one-child policy and other coercive measures, its fertility rate seems to have fallen much less sharply than those of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The "override" view is very hard to defend on the basis of the Chinese experience, the only systematic and sustained attempt to impose such a policy that has so far been made.
It is time for our planners to recognise the enormity of this disaster, and to put together a group that can prepare a plan to involve all sections of society in preventing this from happening. In the target areas, concentrated unremitting work is needed to reverse or at least to slow the explosive growth rate. It only needs some organised work by persons within the administrative system. If it can be sustained with every section of the people actively involved, perhaps the generations to come can cope with the enormous population of India in the 2050s.
THE END