The population conundrum

Mahatma Gandhi had said decades ago, ''Earth provides enough to serve everyone's needs but not everyone's greed''. It is as true today as it was then and before that.
In India, the consumption by the highest income group (1.44% of the population), of electricity, petroleum products and electric appliances - products that have global environmental impact - is about 75% of the total. Eg, the land diverted from food crop production to floriculture not only adversely impacts on nutritional levels, but degrades the environment with high pesticide and fertilizer use. The consumption pattern of the elite in any Third World country is comparable to the relationship between that country and the "developed" world. In Latin America, for instance, vast tracts of valuable rainforest were cleared for cattle ranching and beef export. Today, the average Central American eats less beef than the average house-cat in the U.S. Every North American child consumes as much energy as three Japanese, six Mexicans, 12 Chinese, 33 Indians, 147 Bangladeshis, 281 Tanzanians or 422 Ethiopians. To make 1 kilo of meat you need 11kg of high protein grain. It's worth noting that less than 25% of the world's population consumes about 75% of the world's resources and the same fraction generates most of the world's waste and global atmospheric pollution. The Pentagon, for instance, is the largest single consumer of energy in the U.S. and generates a tonne of toxic waste every minute.
It is the "luxury" emissions of the rich that generate almost 90% of the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and two-thirds of carbon dioxide emissions, rather than the "survival" emissions of the poor. However, the "consumption explosion", with its disastrous implications, appears to engender less fear in the public consciousness than the "population explosion" Yet the belief that all people use resources and create waste, and large families use more resources and create more waste, gained currency among most international development agencies which put population high on their agendas for problem-solving.
The highest-polluting industrial processes that provide consumer goods for the wealthiest fifth of humanity - are controlled almost entirely by men in the most powerful transnational corporations and governments, which manufacture chemicals and weapons of mass destruction, with the main goal of maximising economic growth and profit. Yet policies of "population control" are targeted at the "poorest of the poor" - institutionally powerless women whose main goal is survival and have larger numbers of children for complex reasons that range from immediate survival and necessity to high infant mortality, lack of access to health services and patriarchal control over reproduction. Within India, 84 crore people live on less than Rs. 20 a day. These are not the people who create the dirt and the grime, they live in it.
Paul Ehrlich's 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb, predicted that by 1985, the "population explosion" would lead to world famine, the death of the oceans and a reduction in life expectancy to 42 years. Earlier as far back as 1798, Malthus predicted catastrophic food shortages that never came. It has in fact been repeatedly observed that where there is famine, the problem usually is not an excess of people but an excess of bureaucracy and high government, which leads to gross misallocation and misuse of resources as corrupt bureaucrats or dictators seek power more than the welfare their subjects. We need to understand and acknowledge that the hungry suffer from lack of resources and poverty, not from over population. If given the resources, the hungry will find a way of feeding themselves and their neighbors and believe it or not, if they have the resources, even the food will find its way to reach them instead of waiting for the trucks and planes of NGOs. The tragedy is that it is this lack of resources that does them in, ably supported by a vicious circle of corrupt dictators, bureaucrats, businessmen, social organizations and the media that feeds off the hungry child with a bloated stomach.
As per some generally available data, population per square mile in India is about 1200 which pales in comparison to the population density of Japan, 6600, or even the UK - 2100. If the number of people is the problem, then Japan should be one of the poorest countries in the world. Why is it that the UK and Japan are part of the biggest economies of the world with some of the highest per capita incomes, globally?
Were it not for the corruption and excesses of apathetic governments and bureaucracies, the populations of the world would have much cause to rejoice. Humans are living longer. Disease is being eradicated. Food is cheaper and more available than ever.
We need to increasingly move towards participatory government in democracies, specially the likes of India. Clearly, with such a massive asset as our strength, we need to involve our young population in creatively arranging resource generation for them. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of rupees on wasteful sarkari expenditure, the need of the hour is to ensure speedy disbursals of cash to individuals and households in urban as well as rural centres. It is critical to arrange to provide some basic level of resources directly to the needy through channels such as post offices, widely availble across the length and breadth of the country or through branches of public sector banks.
While this may appear a daunting task, whichever government is able to sell the idea to the vast majority of the poor and needy will get voted back to power for sure. The point, however, is that this action needs to be undertaken much before elections, so the poor get a taste of cash in their hands and know which government, minister, chief minister or prime minister has done this for them.
Actually this is as simple as it gets. There are post offices all across India, but let's just take the case of U.P. for instance. With post offices located in each and every district and tehsil in this most populated state of India, all that the Mayawati government needs to do is to ensure that funds for Ambedkar villages, NREGA, or even other smaller state level programs are provided to the people below poverty line at these post offices in the form of money orders or direct transfers to their accounts.
There are more than 190 million in UP as at present. Assuming that about 30 percent of this population needs assistance in terms of resources, we would need to take care of a little less than 60 million people. If we just ordain to pay Rs. 30 a day to these people directly in their bank accounts on a monthly basis, it would come to Rs. 900 per person. On a monthly basis, this would cost the state of UP only Rs. 5000 crore and that of course means an annual bill of Rs. 60,000 crore. While stand alone, this might look massive, but if we tell a poor woman in a village or even in the capital city of Lucknow whether she would prefer standing in queue for buying kerosene oil which more often than not, is not available or would she rather take Rs. 30 from the government and figure out herself what she wants to do with that money, I think she would clearly go with the second option. Similarly, if asked whether a man would want electricity that hardly ever comes or want assured one hour supply each day for his tube well, he would happily opt for the latter.
The desire, the hope, the expectation of the people at large, those same very poor people who earn a dollar a day in UP is to get power in their hands. YES. They would love Visa power, but in the absence of that, even a Rs. 30 per day power would do them much good, beyond anyone’s expectations. Once they get money in their hands, the government can happily, quietly, gradually ease off all the other direct and hidden subsidies like those on PDS, Kerosene and so on which seldom reach the poor as mentioned even by Rahul Gandhi and exemplified by NREGA.
It is simply math to calculate how much more beneficial this direct assistance would be, not only in terms of pure economics but also in terms of its effectivity and its vote catching ability. The key is for Mayawati to do this immediately and effectively. She could start with urban centres and Ambedkar villages.
Is there any harm in trying this out? Let's at least do a pilot program in Lucknow as the urban centre and some Ambedkar villages around here and see how it fares, socially, economically and politically.