The worldwide economic uncertainty ~ caused by Donald Trump’s shenanigans ~ has made Western countries focus on their declining populations, which has seriously eroded their manufacturing and consumer bases. On the other hand, many Emerging Market Economies (EMEs), and poorer countries, face a severe resource crunch brought about by their increasing populations. Thus, successful population management has different connotations for people on different sides of the rich-poor divide.
It would be interesting to go back to 72,000 BC, when the Toba super-volcano erupted in Sumatra (Indonesia). The volcano spewed out 9.5 trillion tons of ash, which billowed up in dark clouds, going up to 47 kms into the atmosphere, covering most of Asia in thick dust. The decades’ long volcanic winter that followed, reduced human population to around 10,000 people ~ bringing mankind to the verge of extinction. Cut to 15 November 2022, when the earth’s population touched eight billion, that is 800,000 times of its population in 72,000 BC. Since human population has never been uniformly distributed ~ humans love to live in large communities ~ ancient thinkers could foresee the harmful effects of unbridled population growth.
Clay tablets dating back to 1700 BC, discovered in Iraq, talk about the adverse consequences of overpopulation. The Greek philosopher, Plato, observing the growing population of Athens, concluded that the ideal city should have no more than 5,040 citizens ~ the size of a large condominium in Mumbai. Not surprisingly, Plato believed in strict population control, and also in moderating consumption ~ both pressing concerns even in the twenty-first century.
The question Plato raised is the essence of the population debate of today: Is the human population the issue, or is it the resources it consumes? Many thinkers ~ ancient and medieval ~ raised similar concerns, but it fell on Thomas Malthus, an 18th century English clergyman, to mathematically explain the relation between population and resources. Malthus wrote: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.
Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second” (An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798). Pessimistic Malthusian predictions have not come true so far, because continuous technological progress has made sufficient resources available for our ever-growing population. Horrified after passing through a Delhi slum, a Stanford University professor, Paul Ehrlich, and his wife, Anne Ehrlich, co-authored ‘The Population Bomb’ (1968), which shocked the Western world, and led to the emergence of concerns about global overpopulation.
Still, many people hold different views; according to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man: “Low birth rates will end civilisation,” which could well be true about developed countries. According to the World Population Prospects 2024, published by the Population Division of UN, fertility in all European countries is now below the level required for full replacement of the population (around 2.1 children per woman), and in most European countries, fertility has been below the replacement level for several decades.
China, the country with the world’s second-largest population, will experience the largest absolute population loss between 2024 and 2054 (204 million), followed by Japan (21 million) and the Russian Federation (10 million). Due to sustained low level of fertility by the year 2100, Chinese population will decline by 786 million people i.e., by more than a half of its current population. Consequently, in 2100, China will have a population size comparable to what it had in the late 1950s. However, despite a low population, Western consumerism fuelled by technological progress has led to a plunder of the planet’s natural resources, a degraded environment, high GHG emissions, and massive pollution.
Moreover, unequal distribution of resources ensures that even today, millions in the Horn of Africa are starving and many in Asia and Africa live in want, while people in Europe and US live lives of extravagance. In fact, Western interest in curtailing population growth in less developed countries has racist undertones, what with Europe and North America being more densely populated than many poor countries whose population they seek to limit. No wonder, to escape the charge of bias, world bodies decry the use of family planning as a tool for population control.
Rather, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development expressly acknowledges that sexual and reproductive health and gender equality are essential for unlocking a more prosperous and sustainable future. The population problem for India is far more complex; unbridled population growth has resulted in hugely overpopulated, dirty cities, falling agricultural land holdings, poverty, un employment, and rising crime. In April 2023, India’s population surpassed that of China, making India the most populous nation on earth.
India is projected to have one hundred crore people in the working age group (15 – 64) by 2030, but with an employment rate (percentage of persons employed in working age population) of less than 37 per cent, the number of unemployed will only increase in coming years. The comparison with China, which has 90 crore skilled workers, is inescapable; while China has put its population to work, our population hangs like an albatross around our neck.
Because of demographic momentum, despite our fertility rate falling below the replacement rate of 2.1, our population is projected to grow till 2066, peaking at approximately 170 crores. (Demographic momentum: The population of country, with a current fertility rate below replacement level but where fertility rates were previously high, and which has a young population, will continue to grow, because of the presence of a large number of women of childbearing age.) PM Modi, in his Independence Day 2019 speech, called the population explosion a challenge for the nation and exhorted the Centre and States to devise schemes to control population.
The population issue lay dormant till 2024, when the Finance Minister, in her Interim Budget Speech, announced formation of a high-powered committee to study “fast population growth and demographic changes.” No such committee was formed, suggesting that the FM’s rhetoric was aimed at the upcoming General Elections. Again, on 15 August 2025, the Prime Minister announced formation of a High-Power Demography Mission, but lack of any follow-up action suggests that the announcement was for a political purpose. This is understandable; after the disastrous electoral consequences of Sanjay Gandhi’s infamous population control experiments during the Emergency era, all Governments have fought shy of population control.
The National Population Policy 2000, which brought about a holistic and target-free approach, limits the role of the Government in family planning to making contraceptive facilities available at Primary Health Centres (PHCs) and Sub Centres (SCs), in rural areas, and at Urban Family Welfare Centres and Postpartum Centres, in urban areas. At present, volunteers called Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) distribute contraceptives and pregnancy testing kits to beneficiaries at their doorsteps. However, looking at the way PHCs are run, one can well imagine the services that would really be available there.
As regards ASHA workers, they are unqualified and minimally trained health workers, who are paid a pittance, for the tasks they perform. Female empowerment by education and gender parity will help in population management, but people would hardly follow the two-child norm if the female population is not healthy, and if couples are not assured of having two healthy children ~ who have a fair chance of reaching adulthood. To achieve this, the Government has to provide good healthcare to all, by ensuring that every district has an adequate number of PHCs and CHCs which are properly manned, and have an adequate stock of medicines. Upgradation of our primary health infrastructure and provision of nutritional supplementation to poor children is required, which is not possible at the current abysmal level of expenditure on healthcare ~ barely 1.84 per cent of GDP.
Once a proper health and nutrition infrastructure is in place, a Family Planning Mission can be launched on the lines of Swachh Bharat Mission. By providing incentives and better public healthcare, the Government would be able to persuade people to have only two children, which would spare us the ill-effects of the ticking population bomb ~ should we continue on our wayward trajectory. The Malthusian spectre is not totally behind us; as Herman E Daly, ecological economist, and an architect of sustainable development, had said: “Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin (an American ecologist) remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead” (Steady-State Economics: The Economics of Biophysical Equilibrium and Moral Growth).
(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)