Indian Overpopulation: A Closer Look

It is very well known that India is one of the most overpopulated countries in the world. India currently stands at a population of 1.33 billion people and rising. In fact, predictions show that in 2022 India will bypass China to become the most populous country in the world. In India overpopulation has depleted reserves of natural resources, caused social and religious turmoil, and has lowered the quality of life to the point where getting a seat on a train resembles war.

Many solutions have been proposed in trying to slow the India population growth. Adopting China’s one-child policy has always been in conversation but for those who don’t know, this policy ultimately failed. Imposing one child per couple created a large gender imbalance with the female population increasing significantly. This only leads the possibility of more births since there would be more mothers. Forced sterilization has been discussed in the past despite its lack of ethical value. In 1976 during a period known as the “Emergency,” a movement was started by Indira Ghandi towards sterilizing the population, which produced a total of ten million sterilizations! It is reported that few were forced and many people were compelled to get sterilized. Unfortunately, despite the massive movement there was no noticeable change in population growth thereafter. Even so, it is a human right for people to decide how many children they have, and government policy likely wouldn’t hold very well in modern India.

Rather, activists point towards education and healthcare. Many are pushing to increase literacy rates and decrease fertility rates down to a manageable 2.2 babies per mother. Kerala is a state in India that has a literacy rate near 100% and a fertility rate of 1.6, which directly shows the correlation between the two. In contrast Madhya Pradesh has an average literacy rate of 65% and a corresponding fertility rate of 3.4. With greater knowledge and educated youth will come a refrain from having children so young and having so many. Now it becomes a political battle to fight for funding for education in India as it has decreased from 4.57% of total budget in the past 5 years. This one change seems to be the best defense towards overpopulation in India right now.