Everywhere one looks, politicians, religious leaders and even media headlines, the same story is being echoed, that overpopulation is the enemy. But what if the problem lies deeper, hidden in the very systems that are meant to sustain it?

The current trend suggests that the population will continue to grow owing to many young individuals entering the reproductive age, so even if the total fertility rate has fallen, the population will increase till the year 2063, after which the numbers will decline. The problem that the government is trying to solve is population control, but coercive population control has never panned out well. One doesn't even have to travel far from home; just a flip through our history books reveals the atrocities people had to face during the Emergency Sterilization Drives. A look up north to our country will reveal how China's one-child policy will pose a financial burden on the government regarding healthcare and pensions for the population, the lack of labor force to run their industries, and a falling birthrate, recorded at an all-time low of 1.09 births per woman in 2022.

The argument certainly isn't that the population explosion is not a problem. We as citizens need to understand that the root cause of the challenge lies not in the numbers themselves but in the systemic gaps that prevent resources from reaching people equitably.

To further elucidate this, a national family health survey of 1992-93 showed that high rates of female literacy, both primary and secondary education strongly negatively correlated with fertility. A unit rise in the percentage of female education saw a 0.83?cline in the fertility rates in women in India. There also is evidence from the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu where infrastructures and healthcare systems are more robust. The infant mortality rate in Kerala is 7 per 1000 births while Uttar Pradesh clocks in at about 38. The thing of note here is that the population density of both the states is the same. The only point of difference is the healthcare systems and investment in infrastructure.

In the book "Why Nations Fail," the authors argue that nations don't collapse under the weight of their numbers; they collapse when their systems exclude people from participating productively in economic and political life. The book talks about England which followed a growth trajectory during the Industrial Revolution, because the state championed innovation and enterprise. However, even with a smaller population, Latin America stagnated because of the inequitable system of wealth distribution that concentrated the wealth in the hands of a select few individuals.

Coming back to India, as we flip through Amartya Sen's "Development as Freedom", it is argued that fertility rates are not strict biological inevitability but a response to social opportunities. Furthering to this point, it should be noted that the Bengal Famine was not a result of overpopulation but a culmination of war, inflation, and mismanagement of distribution. The size of the population may have framed the background, but policy and institutional failure were at the forefront of it all.

If the people feel empowered and have access to healthcare, education, and livelihoods, they will make decisions that stabilize the population, as is already being seen with the falling birth rate (1.98 births per woman) in our country. Population doesn't hold nations back; it is the failure to treat people as agents of change rather than objects of control.

Instead of chasing blunt instruments of control, the policy focus must shift towards strengthening decentralized planning and localized implementation of family planning and sexual and reproductive health programs.

A young population can propel a country on the trajectory of growth, lest they should be provided with tools that ensure their holistic development, but if these systems fail, the same prong of development can quickly turn into something dark, with issues of unemployment and unrest that become a strain on the public systems.

About the author,

    Janvi

Working in introspection, cultural quirks, and observations into writing, and bringing in multiple frames to look at the world with. Constantly trying to broaden my own horizons, and probably reading something or people-watching somewhere.