Overpopulation: a grave and persistent issue!

There was a time when most interior villages of Chhotaudepur district (erstwhile Vadodara district) which have been populated by tribes, it was a usual matter (and of course scene) for the local inhabitants to see plenty of families boarding a vehicle leading them to a place of Saurashtra or some other big cities to get labour. Each family had 6-7children with it. Of these kids, elder children will assist their parents in agricultural labour. It’s been a story of almost every family wherein the elder children have to devote their childhood years in earning bread for the younger siblings. In fact, they are taken for granted. 

This is the point where a “labourer” in the form of a child is added to the world of labour, and eventually, he/she becomes an adult labourer, mostly in the field of agriculture. Some of the children falling in the age of adolescence also indulge or get lured towards theft and ultimately a “thief” is added in the world of thieves. There were occasions when the parents had expressed a desire to ensure that each child should get at least primary education, but at the same time, they were of the opinion that feeding family was much more important than education. 

I have always felt that education has never been on the top of their priorities. It won’t be even until they get convinced with the fact that education can become key to survival and even for better living as well. Since their adolescent sons have not been educated, they don’t understand the importance of getting married after attaining legal age for marriage. A 15-year-old guy would get married with a 14-year-old girl. Both of them have been children at this tender age. 

They themselves are dependent on their parents. Usually, they don’t use contraceptives (most of them don’t know about contraceptives) and hence become parents when they could be 17 years old. This becomes the most difficult time as the 17-year-old has to earn for his 8-year-old brother/sister and also for his/her 1-year-old baby. Due to unavailability of money, the family members (mother and son, father and son, husband and wife and so on) start quarrelling with one another. 

There is an environment of social unrest and disharmony, which is easily visible. The eldest member of the family (probably a male aged 40 years) perceives drinking as one of the means to forget grief and tension. 

In most of the tribal villages, adolescent boys elope with girls of the same age and vice versa. To some extent, the lack of healthy communication which is passed on through generations which contains the teaching of moral values, good or bad and so on becomes the reason behind such actions taken by boys and girls of this age. Because you may see that the parents are so busy earning the bread for the family that they don’t concentrate on furnishing such education to their kids. 

If a family has 1 or 2 children, it may be in a position to feed them well, ensure that they get proper education (at least elementary education) and hence even in a medical emergency they may be having a little money to spend. It can also be said that overpopulation is responsible for mass morbidity because a family having many members wouldn’t have money to spend for the treatment and therefore some of the kids remain malnourished who become a liability to their parents in later age. 

If we study Mughal era preceded by Delhi Sultanate era, we see deadly conspiracies done by the princes to get the throne during the time when the Sultan/The king has reached his middle age, and they would be deadlier once the Sultan crosses his 60th year. Typically, there are 5-6 princes, and each one wants to be the king, and in the process, he kills rest of his brothers and many times the commanders or ministers supporting other princes are also killed brutally. Therefore, we can derive out of the mentioned fact that over population has also been instrumental in mass killings in history. 

Overpopulation has created gender inequality too. In former times, the males used to have 3-4 wives. If it could have been one wife situation, the wife would have a greater amount of esteem, decorum in the family. The more is the supply; the less is the value. Even in the Mughal era, the Begum (typically the first wife) used to have a great amount of power and influence over the Sultan. She had the edge over the decisions made by the king while the rest of the queens had to lead their lives. Their desires or wishes had no say. If at all, there are instances wherein they would have articulated their desires, they would have been suppressed. Eventually, a class was created, which was having low self-esteem. This ultimately affected the core of humanity. 

There is a vicious cycle of ill-health attached to overpopulation. The more number of patients having contagious diseases roaming around the hospital premises, the more are the chances of healthy people being affected. Most of the diseases caused by viruses spread because of the situation which is universal in every hospital in every district of India. 

The more grave issue which has to be addressed in the Indian context is the optimum utilization of our population. We come across plenty of youths doing nothing. They roam around their villages/towns/cities and come back to their homes in the evening. There are people who are able to guide such youths, but the irony is that they don’t even go to see the people seek guidance. We have more number of people discussing ideas regarding attacking cross border terrorism than the number of people fighting near LoC and LAC. We have been blessed to have people giving ‘valuable’ suggestions on the strategies of war who are not aware of the “W” of war. Going further, we’ve got people who are influenced by ‘knowledge’ received through social media and considering the details as facts. They not only consider the ‘received’ details as fact but also tell others (even pressurize others) to believe. 

If we minutely go through our past, Indians have lost many fights during Arab Invasions because millions of Indians used to sit at their homes while a negligible number of people fighting in a war. It happened due to the fact that a meagre amount of the country’s population was trained to fight, and hence we lost in spite of having a huge population. Thus, we have never witnessed the optimum use of our country’s population. 

To summarize the point, we have to have a tough population control policy (China had one child policy almost for three consecutive decades) along with stringent measures such as maximum use of contraceptives, mass awareness of family planning methods, behaviour change communication of the masses and so on. I would urge every educated, responsible citizen to highlight the matter and its graveness during each event such as Nukkad, family dinner, Bhajan kirtan sabha, religious gatherings, caste and community gatherings, prize distribution ceremonies, marriage ceremonies, school functions, social gatherings and so on. Be it a teacher of a doctor, an engineer of an elected village Panchayat member, each one of us has to link our task, duties and job with this noble task or else we’ll be in a condition where millions (probably some of them could be our family members) of our fellow Indians would die out of hunger and would be slaves due to lack of education.  

Written by: Haresh Kanzariya