Quality Vs Quantity : the true wealth of a nation

Ashok Khosla

What is a nation but the sum total of its people?  They are the creators of its economic, cultural and natural wealth.  And they are collectively – though not necessarily in equal degree – the beneficiaries of the well-being this wealth makes possible.  For them, fully to contribute to the nation and to benefit from its wealth, each citizen must have access to health care, education and opportunities for livelihoods  — not an inappropriate definition of “sustainable development”.

People are both the strength and the weakness of any nation.  Their capabilities and skills take it forward; their unmet needs slow it down.  For any land, with a given set of resources, the number of human beings that can be supported in a manner they consider acceptable is limited.  This limit can be raised somewhat by improvements in technology and by lowering of expectations but in today’s world of global communications, the leeway is small.  Beyond a point, the numbers of people tend to get out of balance with the natural resource base and a vicious cycle sets in, leading to deteriorating living conditions and falling resource productivity.  

For a country like India, whose population has already exceeded – by a significant margin – the number that can maintain the kind of lifestyle to which they would like to become accustomed, the question of human numbers assumes a vital importance.  Although no major policy agenda currently acknowledges it, population growth is the number one issue facing our nation.  For the rich, its consequences threaten their security, their health and their status in the economy.  For the economically poor, the socially vulnerable and those living in ecologically fragile places, it is literally a matter of life and death.  For the nation as a whole, it spells stagnation and gradual self-destruction. 

It does not take much mathematics to show that a population living on a finite resource base cannot go on growing for ever.  Yet, many otherwise well-intentioned people in our country believe that the issue of population growth is a “foreign” construct, of little relevance to a country like India.  Some claim  that the industrialised countries have conjured up such concerns, originally out of fear of being swamped by large migrations and more recently because of the possible impacts of large third world populations on the global environment.  Quite correctly, they point to the massive toll on the environment of the consumption patterns in the North which far exceeds any impact that can be generated by the developing countries. 

Others state that the central issue of population relates to the right of individuals, particularly women, to reproductive health services and that the environmental and resource depletion are not the real issues; indeed, they tend to divert attention from these more important ones. 

Still others maintain that with every new mouth to feed comes a pair of hands and a brain and that the more people there are, the more the economy will benefit. 

Whatever the intellectuals and the people at large think, the political “leadership” – of whichever hue or shade – is mortally afraid of addressing the issue at all.  The reason, ironically, lies in the historical backlash to earlier, possibly overzealous, public campaigns to promote family planning – a cause to which the government of India has had a longer formal commitment than perhaps any other country.  In fact, through numerous programmes and legislation to provide contraceptive services, raise the age of marriage, and give financial incentives for sterilisation, the government has done almost everything it could be expected to do. 

Everything – except what was most needed: primary health facilities, proper education and meaningful, remunerative work for girls and young women. 

For India to make the demographic transition from a society of high birth rates and high death rates to one of low fertility and low mortality, not only must there be a good supply of contraceptive services but, even more important there must be a high demand for small families.  The experience of dozens of countries shows that such demand is best generated by the same factors that result in the very “sustainable development” process we pursue to bring  together economic development, social equity and environmental harmony.

In fact, the preconditions for the demographic transition and sustainable development are identical: universal health care, universal education and universal economic opportunity – and in this context, universality is a feminine noun.  q

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