Who is us? India went past China to become the world’s most populous country, with 1.4 billion people. In this issue, we analyse whether this is a boon or a bane? The problem is that India’s family planning programmes have always put the pressure on women, not men. Can this change with a proper publicity strategy? A growing population will also put more pressure on key resources, but will it add to the unemployment problem or will it be an explosion of the workforce? Is it also an explosion of identities? What about ageing? Because people are living longer, but how are they placed in the spectrum of development and young people, and what about their welfare?
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We also dispel several myths—that the poor are guilty of depleting our natural resources and the Muslim population explosion. Is a caste-based census a political game or does it provide an opportunity to retrospect on where we have gone wrong and what needs to be fixed? Will population-based delimitation unfairly treat southern and eastern states because they were successful in controlling population?
(This appeared in the print as 'More of Us')
