The fact that India’s population of 142.86 cr has exceeded that of China’s 142.57 cr should be celebrated or lamented requires serious consideration. The area of India at 3.287 mln sq km in 1951 has not increased. India’s population density of 122 per sq. km in 1951 is now 435 sq. km, 3.56 times larger.
China’s population density is 148 per sq. km. China’s Gross domestic product (GDP) is $ 20 trillion, six times that of India’s at 3.5 trillion; the per capita GDP of China and India were nearly equal in 1992; China’s now is 6.7 times more than India’s. China has no Below Poverty Line (BPL) population, whereas 25 per cent of India’s population is BPL.
India has over 880 miilion (over 60 per cent of the population) covered under food security and is provided with almost free rations. Are India’s figures justifying our celebration of our country exceeding China in population and becoming the world’s most populous country with more than four times the population of the world’s most prosperous country, the USA?
Huge population, with many young persons, is an asset; if it is so many brains and bodies to produce wealth and strength for the nation. But suppose they are so many mouths to feed, bodies to clothe and house and persons without employment. In that case, they are not a “demographic dividend” but a “demographic disaster”, what with political parties out of power organising rallies of unemployed youth demanding jobs!
The total fertility rate, the number of children a woman has during her child-bearing age, has come down to two in India is no consolation; not yet reassuring because the base being high, the additions continue to be large, at 12 to 15 million per year.
Never has our country provided jobs in that numbers in any year, nor is there such a prospect. Increasing jobs in governments or filling “vacancies” is wasteful, not creating wealth. Government “jobs” don’t create wealth; huge such numbers stifle wealth-creating pursuits by people. A country over-governed will always remain underdeveloped.
There is one seriously disturbing aspect of our population growth. The growth is skewed. The ill-to-do and the less educated are increasing faster than the rest. The “upper” caste people have shrunk from about 20 per cent to 15 per cent or less.
Muslims have nearly doubled their proportion from 9.8 per cent in 1951 to about 20 per cent, including the infiltrators from Bangladesh and Rohingyas patronised as vote blocks by regional parties.
Many districts in Assam, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and even Punjab, Haryana and Kerala, not to mention many parts of Delhi, are becoming Muslim-majority. This is disturbing because two of several historical reasons.
Some Muslim intellectuals like Samar Abbas have already pleaded (Economic & Political Weekly, Dec 2000 issue) that India should be partitioned again to create a third Muslim state, Mogulistan comprising a belt of districts from Assam to Punjab in northern India between Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Dr Omar Khalidi, a postgraduate of Harvard University and PhD from the University of Wales, wrote in the Jamat-e-Islami ‘s weekly, “Radiance”, in 2005, “we need Muslim districts for three reasons. First, concentrated areas provide security; second, to provide an environment conducive to our cultural independence; third, to provide a political base through which our people can be elected ……at present…our numbers don’t add up to elect adequate legislators. Hyderabad & Rangareddy in Andhra and Gulbarga (Karnataka) and certain Thlaukas could be merged to create a Deccan province (with a Muslim majority) similarly in Bihar, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Where Muslims can be in the majority…”.
The vote-hunting Congress led by the Sonia family had the Sachar Committee report (2006), as per which over 90 districts spread all over India (like the 565 Princes’ territories in pre-1947 India) with considerable Muslim populations were endowed with “Muslim First” (nor SC/ST) development programs. These will have the potential to gradually develop into a federal state of Islamistan out of India (like the concept of Princess-stan proposed by the Nawab of Bhopal, the Chairman of the Prince’s Chamber in June/July 1947 (but nipped in the bud by Sardar Patel).
With Muslim separatism fostered by vote-hungry regional parties (mostly casteist and dynastic) and two-nation theory as DNA among Muslims noted by Dr Ambedkar in his book, “Pakistan or Indian Divided”, the dangerously unequal growth rate (never less than 25 per cent more fertility rate among Muslim women) in Muslim population spells disaster for Hindus unless effectively addressed in time.
As long ago as in the 1952 election manifesto of the Schedule Caste Federation, Dr Ambedkar stated that there is a relationship between poverty and population and that unless the runaway growth in population is controlled by effective family planning programs enforced as a matter of policy, poverty could not be brought down.
The manifesto even proposed that family planning clinics be opened in every village and that even drastic measures may be enforced to control population growth.
Unfortunately, that wise proposition has never been countenanced by other political parties. Therefore, we have the unenviable fact of India becoming the most populous country in the world with the largest number of below-poverty the line (BPL) people, all with a vote so that welfare measures become politically compulsive militating against economic development, which requires huge investments.
Therefore, India becoming the most populous country must be a warning rather than a euphoria. Will politicians continue to engage in power games, or will they care for the real welfare, prosperity, and power of India, Bharat? This has to be intellectually agitated as the most important item of public discourse for discussion.
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