how little

When we grew up in an India of less resources we fought for more and more for ourselves. The age was characterized by have nots and an amazing string of shortages. I have heard stories (probably not apocryphal) about 7 year waitlists for cars. I know for sure that when my dad came to Mumbai from Dubai, he bought the Bajaj Chetak scooter and got it immediately by paying in foreign currency. I think it was almost exclusively available in foreign currency. A lower end brand was available if you paid local currency.

Like idiots we fought and discussed all the issues that lay before us. Corruption, economics and everything else. The big cause as we and almost everyone saw it was a Malthusian curse of over population. It was only natural to think so. When you have less to go around, you think the best solution was to have less demand to start with. Everything boiled down to lowering population. Having less children was patriotic. First I remember the family planning programs having this slogan – hum do humare do. (we two ours two), alluding to one couple having two kids.

I remember noticing when the not so subtle shift happened to the program showing one couple and the male child simply removed from the posters. It was one couple with one girl.

All of us looked forward to the China model where they strictly enforced a one child policy to curb the effects of population growth and enough and more statistics emerged which showed that while being larger for now China will soon be eclipsed by India as the most populous country the world. We would have the ignominious reputation by, I remember, something like 2035! Wow that was a scary statistic. If you thought there wasn’t enough, here – have even less. Compete with more people. Eat less food. Wear less clothes. It was crazy.

I am suddenly reminded of these arguments as on Independence Day I was at the club where there was a bit of flag hoisting and celebration. The chairman or someone got up to make a short speech and he highlighted the population problem. He obviously was from the 60’s. I sniggered to my wife that he definitely hasn’t heard about the demographic dividend. China with its one child policy has another weird set of issues. You have older population that now has a much smaller younger  population to support it. India seems to have a, what they now term as, demographic dividend. A larger younger population earning money for a smaller older population. Some even split India into four zones and talk about how the demographic dividend has already been witnessed in the west and south while the north and east are now poised for reaping the benefits while a host of factors need to be considered.

So it’s a bit of a U turn that we see. Similarly such views are also seen in immigrants. At first cities flourish thanks to the waves of immigrants that come in and then we suddenly hate them with the right wing stroking fears of ‘them’ overpowering ‘us’. Then we want to throw them out. Then different statistics come out explaining how the immigrants that come in are the best brains from around the world and that if we shut them out our own innovations die out and we as a city we will die. Today India’s (arguably) two richest cities – Mumbai and Delhi are completely immigrant led. You would struggle to find anyone in these two cities who could trace their ancestry for greater than two generations. I haven’t found any son of the soil in Mumbai at least, nor known of anyone like this in Delhi.

Such u turns are common and thanks to the amount of reading I do –I am reconciled to them. In fact the law of unexpected consequences shows up almost in everything. In a lot of my life I have seen myself turning around and questioning my own beliefs. There are two sides to the coin. These days I have been far less opinionated on a lot of issues. I have spoken of this in my earlier blogs as well. This has also led to me blogging a lot less. If you have fewer opinions to talk about you obviously are going to talk less. Unless of course you have this space and time to rant on both sides. It becomes difficult to talk to start with.

You can hear about a bit of it the demographic dividend and other stuff at this talk.

And here is the link to why population growth is required –

In fact I never would have imagined seeing a story title like this  - ‘Low Birth Rates: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies.’ Remedy for LOW BIRTH RATES? I thought that was the cure. Oh man… how little we know. How little.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/08/low-birth-rates-causes-consequences-and-remedies-becker.html