Population bomb is ticking!

As a citizen of the second most populous country in the world, I was always taught during my childhood that over-population of our country is the root cause of all our problems and we need to fix it as soon as possible.

Whether it was poverty, poor infrastructure, increasing competition for admissions to premier schools & colleges, jobs or scarcity of resources like water and electricity; everything was blamed on overpopulation of the country.

Feeding on such information, I was convinced that over-population was the biggest threat and we need to work on this single biggest problem before we could fix other problems. But growing up, I found many countries in the world are doing just the opposite - they are incentivizing their citizens to bear more children. On the other hand, my country wasn't doing much to address this serious problem. This baffled me a lot!

Even today, I ponder over this issue on several occasions. But I couldn't completely agree to this hypothesis of over-population.

What is the right population size?

I wonder if 7.2 billion people on this planet are considered to be over populated then what is the optimum size? What exactly is the human carrying capacity of Earth?

I believe that carrying capacity of our planet was never a constant and it keep changing with time and development. During pre-historic times of hunter-gatherer, it was impossible for 7.2 billion people to survive on this Earth. I guess a maximum of 100 million people could be sustained if everyone here was sustaining him or her through hunter-gatherer methodology.

Invention of agriculture and adoption of practice of cultivating land made it possible to sustain a much bigger population. Of course, it also contributed in clearing of a huge forest cover threatening several other species.

About 2 centuries back, Thomas Malthus warned that population growth is soon going to deplete all resources and bring in a widespread famine.

But soon industrial revolution happened. Since then technologies kept improving and our planet was able to sustain 7.2 billion people without any widespread famine in sight. Further technological development may make crop production even more efficient so that it can provide far more bigger population with their daily 2000 calorie of nourishment needs.

But it's true that we have only one planet and there must be some limit to it. Only future can tell that. How can we speculate on it today?

And if ever we reach any such limit, I guess, humans will fight amongst themselves for their survival and balance will be restored. That's how nature balances the population of all other species. Either species don't reproduce much due to constraints of resources or their numbers are controlled by there predators or otherwise environment only feed a limited number of individuals from that species and numbers reduces to what Nature can sustain.

Should population be controlled by governments?

So why should governments try to control human population forcefully? During 70s millions of Indians were sterlized. Even today government incentivizes sterilization. China adopted a strict one-child policy which is now "relaxed" to two child. Isn't this abuse of human rights'?

_{Wikimedia Image of Chandrababu Naidu}
Recently Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Mr. Chandrababu Naidu announced that his government will provide incentives to couples who decide to have more than two children. Although Andhra Pradesh is tenth most populous Indian State (84.6 million as per 2011 census), its population decreased by 1.6% in last 10 years. Naidu says that State has only 50% of its population below 25 years of age. And to keep the state young, we need more young people. He has also revoked the law that prohibits people with more than two children to contest local elections.

Perhaps, Naidu's move is politically motivated and he is angry as his State is not getting population based dividends of XV Finance Commission. But anyway, do you support his decision?

How about the stand of vegan anti-natalists

Many vegans support anti-natalism approach and refrain from producing any children. However, I appreciate their decision but I don't whole-heartedly believe that their decision is going to improve the situation of over-population. Probably they too understand this as their logic is to not to bring another child into this world of pain and sufferings. I think they are quite pessimistic about the future of humans on this planet.

May be they are right, may be wrong. I ain't very sure. I just wanted to share my present thoughts on the subject with you. But they ain't any conclusive yet. I'd love to hear your thoughts and arguments about it.

_{News Reference:
Hindustan Times,
India}

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