India Growing

India's population used to be 357 million in 1950. From 1950-2000, the population grew at roughly 2% annually to just over a billion. In the last two decades, governments carried out an extensive media campaign to spread awareness regarding birth-control, and to point out the benefits of having small families. Despite the campaign, the population grew at 1.8% between 1990 and 2000. Although the growth rate is likely to keep going down, by the latter half of the 21st century, India may have to accommodate 2 billion people in a third of the area of the United States.

In stark contrast to China, which has taken extreme measures to control its population, the Indian government has resorted so far only to spreading awareness and making birth-control available to those who ask for it. These are positive steps, but their effectiveness is somewhat limited. To make a person do something, we can use several measures:
1. Polite request
2. Point out advantages
3. Provide incentives
4. Impose penalties for non-compliance
5. Use force
A government can use all five (and maybe others). China relied on the bottom (most effective but harsh), and India started from the top (benign but inefficient). In fact, I am not aware of any monetary incentives given for having few children in India. For the poor, cheaper and more rice and sugar in monthly rations would be a good incentive to have few children. And the government would save far more in the long run, than it would spend in extending such subsidies. For those with taxable income deducted at source, a tax cut would be a good incentive, again saving the government money in the long run.

Governments in India are run largely on populist principles. In the last two decades, power has regularly changed hands from one party to the next, thereby making politicians eager to avoid displeasing anyone. But try as they may, power changes hands in every national election. On the outset, this may seem surprising for a country with a rapidly growing economy, but it is not really. Money being important for happiness, a nation must have a healthy combination of wealth-creation, and wealth-distribution. In India, growth has far outstripped distribution. When 10% of the people have 90% of the money, the rich do not make a fuss about buying necessities at unreasonable prices. Inflation goes through the roof, and life becomes miserable for the majority of people. The frustration of the majority is then directed at those in power. Politicians will not be able to halt the flip-flop of power until they create avenues through which money can percolate from the rich to the poor, and from urban to rural areas.

Here I sit, in the comforts of my home in San Diego, thinking about the country where I was born, and its problems that are of a scale unfamiliar to Americans. There are things that make me glad, and others that make me a little melancholy. In a way, us humans are like trees. There is no such thing as a perfect transplant for a grown-up; we just learn to live, adapt, and deal, and in the greater scheme of things, that's not so bad at all.

Excerpt from 'The Cloak' by Nikolai Gogol

The young officials laughed at and made fun of him, so far as their official wit permitted; told in his presence various stories concocted about him, and about his landlady, an old woman of seventy; declared that she beat him; asked when the wedding was to be; and strewed bits of paper over his head, calling them snow. But Akakiy Akakievitch answered not a word, any more than if there had been no one there besides himself. It even had no effect upon his work: amid all these annoyances he never made a single mistake in a letter. But if the joking became wholly unbearable, as when they jogged his hand and prevented his attending to his work, he would exclaim, “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” And there was something strange in the words and the voice in which they were uttered. There was in it something which moved to pity; so much that one young man, a new-comer, who, taking pattern by the others, had permitted himself to make sport of Akakiy, suddenly stopped short, as though all about him had undergone a transformation, and presented itself in a different aspect. Some unseen force repelled him from the comrades whose acquaintance he had made, on the supposition that they were well-bred and polite men. Long afterwards, in his gayest moments, there recurred to his mind the little official with the bald forehead, with his heart-rending words, “Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?” In these moving words, other words resounded—“I am thy brother.” And the young man covered his face with his hand; and many a time afterwards, in the course of his life, shuddered at seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage coarseness is concealed beneath delicate, refined worldliness, and even, O God! in that man whom the world acknowledges as honourable and noble.