The numbers keep adding up

THE judge for the competition cheeringly declared my name after the first two winners: ‘And now you know the little girl whom you had heard about some time ago… she gets the third prize!’ I stood up amid thunderous claps. I had believed that there was little chance of winning a prize due to stiff competition. An intercollegiate elocution competition on the topic, ‘Population explosion and the reaction of the youth’, was held at Manipal Engineering College and the competitors were from the neighbouring medical and engineering colleges, whereas I was a pre-university student at a college in Udupi. The next day, AIR aired our speeches. That was over five decades ago!

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With only 55 crore people then, India was worried about the population explosion because of the Baby Boomers who had numerous children. I remember during our childhood in Mumbai, the radio promoted the advantages of having fewer children. Dad, who had worked abroad, jokingly suggested that we migrate to the tiny Nauru Island where the population was minimal. As children, we dreamt of living there after having braved the Mumbai crowd.

In the early 1980s, we were thrilled by the deserted roads in Chandigarh with few people around. When the population census took place in 2000, the counting official exclaimed, ‘We have now become a billion!’ The symbolically selected billionth child was born at Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi.

Population growth is in an exponential phase, with 7.9 billion people in the world and at least 1.38 billion in India. The World Population Day, which falls today, is a grim reminder of the effects of overpopulation. Despite numerous proposals to control the population, India is bursting at its seams. The most important factors for the population explosion are illiteracy, early marriage, increase in birth rate, better healthcare, reduced mortality, religious attitude towards family planning, immigration, etc. Damage is being caused to the environment due to the rapid swelling of the human population. Developed and developing countries continue to pollute the environment and deplete natural resources.

The migration of people from villages to cities causes social problems, like the growth of slum areas, unemployment, poverty and frustration. Poor standards of living lead to malnutrition. There is an increased need for fuel, food, water, transportation and open spaces. Consequently, deforestation takes place at an alarming rate, with water and air pollution, overproduction of waste and global warming leading to ozone layer depletion and extinction of various flora and fauna.

The sources for sustaining human lives are limited, and the demand high. The government should generously fund family planning programmes. Some measures to control the population are women’s empowerment, education, ban on child marriage and raising the legal age of marriage. Sincerity of purpose will help achieve the goal.