Follow my father’s advice on population control
“We try to forget our personal and financial problems in the pursuit of social activities,” Ramakant Poddar said when I asked him about his family. He visited me in 1966 to talk about his goal to set up a One World Government. It would be based in the UK to manage the myriad problems of nations. His goal was altruistic, but perhaps impractical.
As he was leaving, I asked him about his family. He told me he had a family of 11 children which he managed with some difficulty, since his income was only Rs 1,500 a month. “We manage. Clothes, toys, books of the older children get passed to the younger ones,” he said.
Later, I reflected that managing a large family on a limited income must be tough. It would impact the quality of food, nutrition, education and recreation that parents offer their children.
Back in the 1920s and 1930s, having a large family was the norm in our Tandalianwala town in East Punjab, (now in Pakistan). A large family was welcome, since it meant more members to build the business. Then came Partition, when we had to flee to the Indian side with just our lives and the clothes we wore. We had to begin our lives from a scratch. So we resorted to having smaller families to provide better quality of education to children.
An independent Chinese demographer and scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, opined that India may already have overtaken China as the world’s most populous country.
He estimates that China’s population was 1.29 billion in 2016, despite the government’s official figure of 1.39 billion, and India’s population is estimated at 1.33 billion.
The Indian population is expected to overtake China’s population by 2022, as per a United Nations report.
The cold fact is that 20% of India’s population lives below the poverty line of Rs 130 per day. About 35% of the population of metros such as Mumbai and Kolkata lives in slums.
During the emergency era in 1975-76, Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of then prime minister Indira Gandhi, enthusiastically espoused family planning. Whilst the goal was laudable, its implementation was messy. And it contributed substantially to Mrs Gandhi losing power in the general elections in 1976.
The result of the 1975-76 negative whiplash was that no political party ever advocated family planning after that. Consequently, India is poised to become the most populated country in the world.
The family planning slogan of “we two, our two” must be propagated across towns and villages.
Raising a child is an expensive affair and the cost can run into several lakhs. Parents must plan the number of children they can afford.
Population control is critical for India’s economic growth. In managing the size of a family or the population of a country, I am reminded of a Punjabi idiom, my father would often spout in the 1930s, “Aadmi nuu onhe paer fellane chaaiyde ne, jine lambi chaddar hoi. (A person must spread his legs on the cot, depending on the length of the sheet)”.
India should ensure a plan for the population, depending on the size of her resources.
A LARGE FAMILY WAS WELCOME IN THE 1920S, SINCE IT MEANT MORE MEMBERS TO BUILD THE BUSINESS. THEN CAME PARTITION, WHEN WE HAD TO FLEE WITH JUST THE CLOTHES WE WORE