ELECTIONS '98
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A billion reasons

The stars in the sky, Carl Sagan reminded us in his award-winning television series Cosmos, number in the billions, as grains of sand on the shores of the ocean. Whatever the symbolism in such analogy, the enormity of that number cannot be wished away in our nation, for sometime in the next few months, if not already, there will be one billion of us. Somehow, thinking of stars, sand-grains and people in the same way doesn't seem quite normal, but there it is.

A billion is one of those numbers, which we have learned to work with on desktop calculators and in algebra tests, without quite grasping its significance in our lives. Let's reduce it to things we can understand, both in terms of time and space -- a billion is roughly the number of seconds a 35-year-old woman has lived, it is roughly twice as many people as live in all of Latin America, which is more than six times the size of our country. Even Africa, which is nine times as large as India, contains 250 million fewer people. Nine zeros, that's a lot of people.

Far too often, we have heard that rapid population growth of the past few decades has deeply undermined our potential for social and economic progress. In the absence of strong political commitment to check the growing numbers, the problems may persist for many more years. In despair, some of us have become pessimistic that the India of our dreams can ever be built. But it is equally true that we cannot afford that despair, we cannot look away. A billion lives are riding on it, and more are on their way. Despite the refrain, then, we must address and fix the problem.

There are several reasons why we should address the growing population, and all of them merit immediate attention.

* Population growth, given its uneven nature, is an obstacle to national unity.

As in any democracy, we have upheld the notion that individual citizens merit an equal voice in government. The often-overlooked truth, however, is that for nearly 30 years now, representation in Parliament has been frozen based on old census data. An important provision of the otherwise forgettable 42nd amendment, which fixed the number of seats each state gets in the Lok Sabha according to the 1971 census, is about to expire in 2001. Already, leaders of southern states are unequivocally opposed to rejiggling the numbers. A non-partisan declaration just made it through the Tamilnadu assembly calling for retention of the status-quo.

However this gets resolved, it will be messy; either the huge masses of the heartland will slide further down the scale of proportionate representation, or the states that have successfully arrested population growth will be penalised for the efficiency of their programs. Neither scenario is ideal. Imposing proportionate representation will rekindle secessionist feelings in the south, and calls for greater autonomy.

On the other hand, further disenfranchising the population in the heartland states won't be much more democratic, and worse still given their large representation in the Lok Sabha, harder to push through. When the interests of states clash, they are each asked the question - how much will you sacrifice to remain a part of India? Even in the greatest of times, this question is best avoided.

* Population growth is a drain on the economy, and an impediment to improvements in the quality of our lives.

For the most part, stable populations in the developed world were achieved through two centuries of socio-economic development during which declines in mortality rates were accompanied by declines in fertility rates as well. On the other hand, the death-fighting medical skills and knowledge gained over several decades in the West were rapidly transferred to the poor world without simultaneous social progress. As a result, declines in third-world mortality far outstripped declines in fertility, leading to unprecedented growth in numbers. The Indian population, for example, has more than tripled during this century, as fertility rates have fallen rather slowly while death rates were arrested much faster.

The lack of corresponding socio-economic progress has left many among the increased numbers without the skills to meet their needs, and often without the opportunities to do so even if they were able. The result is that 300 million people in our country have inadequate nutrition, and absolutely no hope of ever being anything but poor for the rest of their lives. And while increases in output and productivity in some industries has kept the nation growing at the much-spoken-of Hindu rate of growth, the resulting job opportunities and economic gains have never been sufficient to outstrip the impact of population growth.

Political inertia is to blame for much of this. In the name of catering to socio-economic justice, we have witnessed one Budget after another, with each political party claiming to represent the interests of the rural poor even more than its predecessor. Without exception, these have failed miserably, there is no other way to account for the sheer numbers of poor in our country. The myopia of a class of leaders who never served the national interests hangs as a yoke around the necks of millions of Indians who never attained any control over their lives.

Inevitably, we have substituted potential increases in the quality of our lives with pointless increases in quantity, or more precisely, numbers. Instead of meaningful and healthy 2400-calories-a-day lives, far too many Indians lead lives of mere subsistence, at far lower levels of nutrition, medical care and sanitation than even basic considerations would dictate.

* Without well-planned solutions, population growth can be catastrophic. And even with sound solutions, the benefits won't be reaped anytime now.

If any proof is needed that population is an explosive thing, we need look no further than this decade's most egregious example of human savagery. In the early 1990s, Rwanda was among Africa's most densely populated nations, and had the highest birth rate of any nation in the world. Women, on average, had more than 7 children. Even today, over 30% of the Rwandan population is under the age of 10. The ethnic rivalries which led to large-scale slaughter were partly fueled by increasingly harsh competition among Hutus and Tutsis, and the resulting conflict produced a 14% reduction in the population, as one in 7 Rwandans was butchered. That's the equivalent of 140 million lives in a population the size of ours.

Alarmingly, many policy-makers appear to be unfamiliar with a basic truth -- that solutions, even when they are implemented, will take many years to begin showing effects. Significant gains from population control cannot be expected until those born after the enactment of solutions are of child-bearing age, i e, at least 20 years away. Much as with the ozone hole, this is a problem that begs for a solution today, even while the benefits from it lie far in the future. Procrastination is fuel to the fire.

An additional impediment to sound policy results from a disconnect between individuals on the one hand, and the society one inhabits, on the other. This is inevitable, to varying degrees, in all social policy, and clearly so in population programmes. Individual households must perceive the growing numbers as a problem, and must be willing to make choices that reflect that concern. Additionally, their choices must carry an attendant cost which reflects the true burden on the rest of the population. In reality, however, such social responsibility isn't very evident; Chinese-style laws and enforcement, which might achieve such desired ends, aren't very pragmatic in India. So the stasis in finding solutions persists.

We will soon have to muster the political will to address this pressing problem. The success of population control measures in the southern states will have to be rapidly replicated elsewhere in the country. The solutions are all well-known - better education for girls, avoiding unwanted pregnancies, faster economic growth, to name a few. Yet each of these solutions is also impeded by the socio-economic conditions that have now brought us to the edge of unmanageable numbers. As a first step, each of us who would build a better India must incorporate into our efforts a desire to manage our numbers.

For now, the numbers continue to tell their own story - of a people whose single largest problem these days appears to be that they exist in ever-increasing numbers.

Ashwin Mahesh