India's Population Is Not A Problem

Every article on ills of India ends up blaming India’s population. “We have a large population, hence it takes time for the impact of liberalisation to percolate through”, “large population is to blame for all ills of India, “we have a large population that is illiterate, therefore …”, etc., etc.

This surprises me a little. And I know that this will shock many of my readers but I do not consider population to be a problem. How can abundance of resources be a problem? Have you heard any one every say, we have abundance of oil in our country and therefore we have a problem?

There is a need of a change in perspective. The problem does not lie in the huge population we have. The problem lies in the way we have gone about handling the resources. All policies are (apparently) made so that the population benefits. So basically the focus is to do something for the people of India. The focus needs to shift so that the population of India is not the target of these policies; rather they are the means.

More on this in coming days …

Note: The photograph used belongs to Sanja Gjenero
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