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This article provides information about the global politics of population control and its consequences:
The UN too had taken upon itself the task of encouraging developing countries to include birth control and family planning within its official responsibilities. The general perception was that the primary reason for underdevelopment and poverty in developing countries is overpopulation, in that whatever is produced is spent on feeding that many persons. This keeps the per capita incomes low and people are unable to come out of situations of poverty.
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They live in unhygienic conditions, have no access to education, health facilities, and family planning techniques, and have more children with the hope that there would be more persons to labour and earn a living. According to the neo-Malthusians, it is this vicious circle that perpetuates poverty and the only way to cut through this mesh is by controlling population growth. This position is intolerant to the argument put forward by the developing countries that development is the best contraceptive.
The idea being that with socio-economic development and consequent improvement in the standard of living, population rates will slow down. This, however, is unacceptable to the neo-Malthusians on the premise that the world cannot afford to wait that long, given the alarming rate at which the population is growing. The impatience has also grown with an increasing awareness about the global ecological crises. The ecologists have drawn attention to the limited carrying capacity of the earth and the limit to its resources, an idea central to Malthus’ thesis.
The ecological movement, which gained momentum over the last century, has consistently predicted doom in the near future if the earth continues to be overexploited at the present rate. For the neo-Malthusians, this argument directly addresses the issue of overpopulation, that is, the overexploitation of the earth is a direct consequence of the larger number of people who feed on it.
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This argument however has been criticised for being simplistic and factually incorrect. The industrialised nations, which account for less than 25% of the world population, account for 75% of the world’s energy use and two-thirds of greenhouse gases that damage the ozone layer. The effects are global and affect everyone. Moreover, the developing countries have been used as dumping grounds for the toxics and chemicals produced by the multinational companies of the advanced countries in the developing world.
Thus it seems that the source of the ecological crisis is not ‘overpopulation’ but ‘over consumption’. The crisis lies in the fact that the rate of reproduction of nature is slower than the rate of industrial production. The neo-Malthusian position on poverty and population also fails to explore the role and extent of structural inequalities of class and status, unequal access to the means of production and a lack of structural reforms in the perpetuation of the conditions of poverty.
The mechanisation of the hitherto labour intensive agricultural sector has accentuated class differences and hastened the marginalisation of the lower strata. In India, the Green revolution, a movement to increase food production and to realise the goal of food self-sufficiency in the country, was achieved through technological upgradation of the methods of agriculture and the introduction of high yielding variety of hybrid seeds.
The example is of interest more so because it was introduced to boost economic growth and agricultural production. Despite the immediate gains of the green revolution, it triggered off a series of social, economic and environmental complications. In the absence of land reforms, the commercialisation of agriculture benefited the rich farmers and created conditions of indebtedness among the poor farmers. The poor farmers did not have as much land or the financial resources to benefit from the green revolution.