India’s population : World’s problem

Indians like me living overseas confront a peculiarly weird problem. We get looked upon as the spillings of an exploding population that can no longer be contained within its country. In these eyes, all Indians belong to a single substandard species – a species which is good at nothing except at raising its population.

You can imagine how infuriating it is for us to be at the brunt of this prejudice. To begin with, it is extremely difficult for an Indian to make it big in India – amongst the enormous competition for scarce resources. The people who make it abroad in search of better opportunities are usually the cream of the cream. It is no wonder that the Indian diaspora does exceedingly well in all the western countries, especially in USA where it contributes to a huge packet of state revenue in the form of taxes.

But, there is a reason behind this prejudice. India’s population is indeed sky-rocketing, with no end in sight immediately. Biologically speaking, I should be happy about this phenomenon. Since the sole biological motivation of a living organism appears to be replicating its genes, it should gladden my heart to be sorrounded by an identical gene pool. This primitive feeling is racism, and it is at the bottom of most of the tragedies that happened in human history.

But, this feeling is also utterly, totally false. It is not good for the health of an organism to be sorrounded by an identical gene pool. A species with limited genetic diversity will be wiped out in the midst of parasites and viruses. A classic and sad story is that of the American Indians who died of the old-world/european diseases. One of the reasons why they had such limited immunity is because of their migration pattern out of Africa. This community was genetically isolated for thousands of years, where as the other communities thrived by inter-breeding.

Possibly nowhere is the genetic diversity as high as it is in India, but this doesn’t mean Indians are the best equipped in fighting diseases. As long as the doors of India are open to foreigners, the community of Indians continue to get enriched by genetic diversity. This is no longer happening because India is being so densely crowded, there is hardly any space for new people. Never has it been the case in history, except now.

Scientists talk about the advantages of biodiversity in an environment. Similarly, we should pay great attention to the diversity of our own human gene pool. Burgeoning populations in South Asia are a great threat to this.

But, why is this population increase happening in the first place ?

It is not happening because of the primitive biological instinct of replicating the genes. It is happening because of an utter lack of education and opportunities. This is the simple answer.

In ancient times, every couple used to give birth to ten chidren. With luck, a couple of these children survived in the midst of disease. But with advances in medicine, the child death rate has fallen to an astonishing low. This has not completely sinked in the cultural mindset of the developing countries. As a rule, high birth rates happen only in rural undereducated communities.

A second reason is a complete lack of retirement benifits. The institution of family is very strong in the developing world, especially in south Asia. People would rather want to have more children to take care of them in the old age, when they cannot rely on the government pension (if at all anything is provided). This is again the reason why many people rather want to have boys instead of girls (highly distorting the gender ratio).

To rein in the population explosion, a civilized country like India cannot impose forceful birth control. It can only strive to increase the levels of education and improve the safety net of retirement benifits. With its limited resources, it is obvious that it cannot do a sufficiently good job of it.

People in the west fail to see this urgent problem. A tiny fraction of the money that goes into the defence budget of the western countries can solve this. If this issue is not addressed, the western countries stand to lose the battle of the human gene pool (especially with their dwindling birth rates).

The disease-ravaged countries of Africa also have a similar problem at the door step. With advances in the reach of modern medicine, population explosion is bound to happen in Africa. It is better to prevent the problem before it engulfs all of us.

In the current era of globalization, nobody in the world is safe from the problems with massive population. Human beings are the most precious resource for economic development. Overpopulated countries automatically provide cheaper roads to production.

To maintain and sustain the economic health of the developed countries, controlling the population increases in other countries is an extremely high-priority issue.