The dangerous numbers myth
There’s an old saw
about a little knowledge
being a dangerous thing,
and
a perennial illustration is the way
so many have learnt to think of more humans as a problem.
 The health secretary of Karnataka
 the other day,
as our staffer reported,
declaimed the official national philosophy that
‘most of our resources will get exhausted
if the population continues to increase the same way’,
adding, for good measure, that
‘parents who want to have more than
two children should be put behind bars’.
Children are supposed to be
an expression of love and hope;
 to talk of jailing people
who think like this is an odd sense of values.
But
suppose the defence is that
he’s saying something unpalatable,
but
necessary.
Examine the facts
on the correlation between
 population density and development.
Kerala
has 820 people per sq km;
Rajasthan
has 120.
Shouldn’t the latter be well ahead of the former?
Or,
shouldn’t
Jaisalmer district
 in Rajasthan,
with nine persons per sq km,
be well ahead of the rest of the state?
Just how did
Hong Kong,
 with 6,500 per sq km,
 or
Singapore
with 6,800,
get to the top of the income table,
 when India’s average is 350?
The point is that a human doesn’t
 only come with a mouth and a stomach,
he/she also come with a pair of hands and legs to work,
 and something remarkable called the brain.
 Countries
 that get to the top invest
 in people and in the infrastructure
to enable productive work.
Sensible countries encourage immigration,
instead of worrying about the effects on resources;
it not only has a direct correlation with economic growth
of the sustained variety,
but
 also leads to a multiplication of those very resources.
Not natural resources,
 did you say?
Check out the work of the late Julian Simon,
who made a career of debunking the population myth;
for instance,
 the story of the bets he placed
with various academics on the long-term prices
 of scarce natural resources and the outcome.
Population growth
itself follows a natural trajectory;
 advanced countries have for decades
 been adding incentives to women to have more children,
but
 there still aren’t.
Remove the worries on
health, education and jobs,
 and
the supposed population ‘problem’ will solve itself.
And,
meanwhile,
for a responsible policymaker to speak
of jailing people for loving,
and wanting children, is criminal.
Sriram Savarkar ©
Hinduism is more a way of life than a method of worship.
Dharmo Rakshati Rakshithaha
If you protect Dharma, Dharma will in turn protect you.
Hindus, If people slap you once, slap them twice!
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