Overpopulation in India - Research Paper Example

?Running head: Overpopulation in India Overpopulation in India Introduction It has been said that among the government’s duties and responsibilities is to care for the people under its subjection, feeding them and providing them with the means to make their living – and the education necessary for them to do so. In this regard, some countries do better than others, even succeeding on many levels, allowing its citizens to enjoy life to the fullest. There are also countries that instead fail miserably, due to the untimely interplay of certain factors. Unfortunately, whether this failure results from an actively malevolent government, or from a merely neglectful one, the result is still the same; it is the people who suffer. Sometimes, though, it so happens that while the government may indeed be willing to care for its citizens, the fact that there are just too many of them may prove to be a hindrance. After all, the government will always be composed of human beings who are flawed, and will consequently be unable to watch over every single citizen living in the country at all hours. Even worse is that some governments may not be that effective at providing for their far-too-many citizens to begin with, resulting in widespread suffering all over the country. It is bad enough that, for whatever reason, these countries find it difficult to provide their citizens with at least the basic level of care and support that they need. But when there are too many people in one place, the government’s already limited ability to provide for its citizens becomes even more constrained. And when this happens, people suffer – which can then give rise to a whole new range of issues. Sadly, such countries still do exist in this day and age. For instance, China’s status as one of the world’s superpowers has done little to alleviate the suffering of its 1.3 billion people, no thanks to issues such as corruption and poor legislation. And considering how the issue of overpopulation is a major, major concern even in economically powerful countries, the same can be assumed to be just as applicable in the case of the many developing countries all over the world, maybe even more so. This particular paper focuses on the issue of overpopulation in the Indian nation in the context of concurrent environmental issues, analyzing it in comprehensive detail in order to hopefully suggest solutions to the problem. Additionally, the main problem of overpopulation shall also be connected to other pervading issues within the country in order to shed more light on the situation. Overpopulation in India – Poor Water Sanitation The deplorable state pervading in India is definitely a disquieting sight to behold. Not only does it share the same problem of overpopulation with the People’s Republic of China, it does not even have a strong economy to help it cope effectively with the problem. This becomes an even more urgent concern when one takes into account how India’s population is exceeded only by the Chinese, and how even this state of affairs may not last much longer. More to the point, the fact that India is exceeded by one other country in terms of overpopulation does not make it any less overpopulated. Indeed, unlike China, India cannot adequately rely on its economy to compensate for its excess where the population is concerned. For while the steady and consistent growth of the Indian economy is definitely a positive sign, it loses much of its meaning when one considers the horrendously skewed wealth distribution pervading in India, so much so that 33% of the income is earned by the top 10% of income groups (Civil Society Information Exchange, 2003). The Indian government’s ability to provide for its people is already severely limited on its own, and is further stretched to the breaking point in its efforts to provide for its 1.1 billion citizens (Hoevel, 2007). This same source also quotes the US Census Bureau, which estimates that this number will have ballooned further by 700 million people by the year 2050, noting that the issue of overpopulation also entails consequences with respect to human rights and the environment. Pollution is yet another factor further aggravated by the problem of overpopulation currently plaguing the nation. While India has never been known for being the cleanest country in Asia, let alone the world, the fact that there are too many people living there serves as one of the biggest reasons for its deplorable state in this regard. Out of over 3,000 cities, India only has a little over 200 sewage treatment facilities, which becomes a problem when 114 of those cities dump untreated sewage and, in some cases, the bodies of the dead, into the Ganges River. Those downstream then use this water for drinking, bathing and washing, blissfully unaware of exactly what they are ingesting into their bodies (National Geographic Society, 1995). Adding more irony to the situation is that even the supposedly sacred Yamuna and Ganges Rivers have not been spared. In fact, their current status is such that the former has been characterized in Newsweek Magazine (2008) as looking more like a putrid river of sludge than of water. While journalists are known for exaggerating at times, even blowing their stories completely out of proportion, their comments on the Yamuna river were just the opposite – too accurate for comfort. The Ganges, while also being known for being polluted, is sadly deemed to be unworthy of as much concern due to it having the uncanny ability to purify itself – a phenomenon commented upon by scientists and religious leaders alike (Hollick, 2007). As such, it has been of lesser priority compared to other polluted bodies of water in India – though at least one activist, Swami Nigamanand, died in 2011 after fasting for 73 days in order to raise awareness of the problem plaguing the Ganges River (Dube, 2011). These two examples should serve to highlight the magnitude of the problem posed by pollution, especially water pollution, in India. The Ganges’ ability to purify itself notwithstanding, one might think that the Indians would take better care of the rivers they supposedly hold sacred to their faith. This is not only for religious but for practical reasons as well, especially when one considers how nearly 57 million people are dependent on the Yamuna’s waters in particular (Jain et al, 2007). Yet for some reason, despite the government spending exorbitant sums of money to purify both rivers, such efforts have yet to substantially bear fruit (Pepper, 2007). The magnitude of the problem becomes even more severe when one takes into account the rather awful water sanitation systems Indian citizens are forced to put up with in their daily lives. In fact, even two of India’s supposedly holy bodies of water, the Ganges and the Yamuna, are not exempt to the subpar (albeit steadily improving) water sanitization system plaguing India’s citizens. Both of these cases are extremely ironic in light of the overt spirituality characteristic of the Indian people – in fact, the latter is actually named for one of the goddesses in the Hindu religion (Hoiberg, 2000). And while the Ganges has long been noted to possess an uncanny, maybe even supernatural ability to spontaneously cleanse itself, such knowledge may end up perpetuating the problem, chiefly by creating a lack of concern among Indian citizens regarding its pollution. Despite more than adequate infrastructure, none of India’s 35 most populous cities are capable of distributing water to their citizens for more than a few hours a day. A survey was also conducted in which it was discovered that among 20 cities, the average duration for access to potable water was only a little over 4 hours. And even this conclusion is rather misleading; the actual range is terribly, terribly wide, with some cities having 12 hours’ worth of water access, while others have less than an hour’s worth. Clearly, this state of affairs cannot afford to continue on. The sewage systems are likewise not something to be proud of, and pose yet another problem that India’s 17 currently operating sanitation facilities are far from capable of rectifying. Even worse, India is also known for having people relieve themselves out in the open, frequently in the water. Combined with the poverty characteristic of the Indian people, death by diarrhea can be assumed to be alarmingly common in the country which, indeed, is known for having unsafe water and whose citizens are known to have poor hygiene. In short, lots of Indians die of diarrhea each year. To the government’s credit, they themselves have become aware of this, judging from how their sanitation coverage reached 21% in 2008, as compared to only 1% in the year 1980 (Planning Commission of India, 2010). Additionally, approximately 88% of all Indian citizens have been said to have access to improved sources of water as of 2008. At the same time, though, even such marked improvements in the water sanitation systems are not enough to significantly improve the quality of life enjoyed by most Indian citizens, necessitating even more improvements to be made. If anything, it should be noted that the sheer size of India’s population itself has a hand in worsening the problems, environmental or otherwise, plaguing the nation. For instance, a whole third of India’s population is known for their unfortunate practice of defecating in the open (Gupta, 2006). This obviously becomes a problem considering that they are dumping their bodily waste into the very same bodies of water from which they get their drinking water, and in the process are putting themselves at risk for all sorts of infections and diseases – and, ultimately, painful ways to die. The issues of overpopulation and water pollution become even greater concerns when one also considers the state of poverty under which far too many Indian citizens live. In fact, one-third of the entire Indian population is said to live below the poverty line. And while such a fraction may seem small at first glance, it becomes an exponentially larger problem once one considers that one-third of the Indian population as of 2007 would equal over 300 million people – a number equaling the entire population of the USA. Even worse, this number constitutes one-third of the world’s poor all on its own (The Times of India, 2008). Various sources such as Schifferes (2008), The Hindu (2008) and Reuters (2007) have noted that out of India’s population of 1.1 billion, 456 million – 41.6% of the total population – live below the poverty line of $1.25 per day. Given how these people already struggle to feed themselves, the very real threat posed by the terrible, terrible problem of water pollution plaguing India is all too clear. Ingesting contact with tainted water can result in a plethora of ailments, many of which can severely lower one’s quality of life (which, in India, is not that high begin with), if not even end it prematurely. And considering how many of India’s people – not only the poor – derive their drinking water from such tainted sources, the body count could very well skyrocket should the problem of pollution go unchecked. Considering all of India’s abundance when it comes to agriculture and crops, it is very disturbing indeed that a sizable chunk of the population continues to starve, not having enough to eat. As a matter of fact, the country managed to rank at #15 in the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (2011) latest Global Hunger Index Report. In spite of the unquestioned abundance of food in the country, it is rarely made readily accessible to the ones who need it most, and instead ends up being monopolized by the rich at the expense of the poor. Indeed, the fact that more Indian children suffer from malnutrition as compared to their Ethiopian peers should speak for itself (Page, 2007). And while this would be awful enough on its own, it becomes downright distressing when one considers that they barely have any clean, drinkable water either. The distribution of wealth within the country is also very uneven, with a bare few getting to enjoy the nation’s riches at the cost of the many. Westernization is in full swing among the country’s bourgeois, whose purchasing power is expected to skyrocket in the coming years, and who numbered at approximately 50 million people as of 2007 (Saxena, 2010; Farell and Beinhocker, 2007). This is in stark contrast to the squalor that rural areas in India continue to experience, with most of them having only rudimentary medical facilities – some even having to make do without them. While a lot of these still manage to live above the poverty line, their quality of living is still a far cry from what would be considered ideal. In fact, it can probably be said that they are not so much living, but merely existing, roughly $40 a month being far from enough to adequately live on. The fact that 2/3 of India’s entire population lives above the poverty line does not necessarily mean that they enjoy better lives compared to their countrymen living below the threshold – indeed, many more of them only barely manage to get by each day, more often than not hanging on by the skin of their teeth. To further illustrate the point of this section, the difference between the two thresholds can be likened to the difference between a man living in a cardboard box, and a man living in a run down, one-room shack. From the comparison, it may be easy, not to mention misleading, to conclude that the latter has a greater standard of living than the former. However, on the whole, neither of the two are living a life one would call ‘adequate’ or ‘appropriate’; it just so happens that while both of them are languishing in poverty, the second man just happens to be a little less poor. In this case, both men are in need of assistance in order to improve their quality of life. In the same way, overpopulation in India cannot be completely surmounted as long as poverty continues to be omnipresent wherever one goes. Poverty, in turn, can never be completely advocated as long as a large chunk of the population lives on the sidewalk, in cardboard boxes, in shantytowns or in dank, one-bedroom apartments. Indeed, the choice should not be between options that have a varying lack of quality. Rather, the choice must be made to go against the status quo and set a higher standard of living. Synthesis – Environmental / Societal Issues The issues discussed above, namely poor water sanitation, poverty and uneven wealth distribution are all interconnected with overpopulation, the specifics of which are as discussed above. In their own ways, these equally important concerns take effect all at the same time, resulting in an even bigger problem. This part, then, aims to better correlate them with each other in order to arrive at a more substantial conclusion. As already noted, the deplorable standard of water sanitation in India is definitely a major, major problem, and has been shown to share the strongest links with poverty and lack of education. This is especially true in India where the poorest of the poor are said to live, oblivious or otherwise apathetic to the ways by which they make their lives worse each day. As already noted, they practice some poor health habits that not only do nothing to better their quality of life, but in fact serve to degrade it even further. Their practice of open defecation, even and especially into bodies of water, is the worst example of this. And coupled with the aforementioned lack of access to clean water, to say nothing of other problems such as air and land pollution, this becomes a greater problem. As noted by Kumar (2007), over half of all children in Bangalore alone suffer from chronic asthma. Reddy’s (2007) report also supports this, citing how smoke emissions and road dust are a very big part of this problem. More recently, the uranium poisoning incident in Punjab led to severe birth defects in children, especially those from the Faridkot and Bhatinda districts (Yadav, 2009). All in all, India really needs to clean up its act – in more ways than one. These factors all serve to aggravate the overarching problem of overpopulation. Family planning may serve as an excellent way of alleviating all three problems; for one thing, more responsible parenthood ensures that less families are poor, and have more children than they can adequately sustain. Having less people around should also help lessen the widespread pollution, especially water pollution, plaguing the country. Unfortunately for advocates of family planning in India, though, most of the religious denominations active within the country happen to oppose modern family planning methods, chiefly on the ground that to do so would be to go against the wishes of God. Such groups, whose beliefs can be called fatalism or blind faith at best, and religious fanaticism, fatalism or zealotry at worst, are of the mindset that it is God who ordains how many children one is to have. To go against this in any way, shape or form, would be to commit a mortal sin worthy of divine retribution. However, it should be reiterated that all these groups are making at least one glaring omission. Specifically, these groups are all guilty of disregarding the fact that no God condones the deaths of the innocent if such outcomes could possibly be avoided. More to the point, no God condones such blatant disregard for one’s surroundings. This becomes even more applicable considering that India’s citizens really ought to know better than dump their trash into supposedly sacred and holy waters, not least because these also double as sources of drinking water. In this context, while God may will that a given family has a certain number of children, he would most probably opt to discard this if the children to be born will only end up having to suffer under poverty, malnutrition and poor overall health throughout the course of their lives. The uneven distribution of wealth also factors into the equation. India happens to be one of the countries that not only suffer from having a wide gap between the rich and the poor, but also have an environment which makes it likely for the rich to get richer and for the poor to just multiply. Indeed, while India’s steady and consistent economic growth is undeniable, this becomes less meaningful in light of how a sizable chunk of the income earned within the country is earned by the middle class and the upper class. Exactly why India is home to so many of the poor and the marginalized is mind-boggling, considering how rich it is in terms of natural resources. Indeed, the country has been known for its potential to rank very high among the nations in terms of crop production, and has in fact managed to produce the second highest yield of rice and wheat as of 1999. And while India’s overall economy has been getting better and better, it is the middle class that have been the main beneficiaries of such economic growth. Needless to say, a sizable chunk of the Indian population is still out of luck. Such would not be a problem if those who were well-off were kind and compassionate enough to share their blessings with the poor in their midst. Sadly, though, this does not appear to be the case anytime soon – a mindset further aggravated by the pervading caste system, which sorts people within different levels in society. In this way, the blame lies not only on the government for failing to adequately respond to the needs of the poor, but to those of the middle class and of the upper class who are either blind or apathetic to the plight of their less fortunate brethren. As Mother Teresa put it, all those years ago, ‘[they] are guilty because [they] do not share’. Arguably the most obvious of all, though, is the relationship between religion and poverty – and the glaring contradiction. In acknowledgment and respect for India’s status as a deeply spiritual nation, this is not, and should not be construed with an insinuation that religion is the root cause of the poverty and the overpopulation plaguing India today. In and of itself, religion is neither good nor evil. If anything, when taken in the proper perspective, religion and faith can become positive forces in one’s life. However, due to the ignorance prevalent among the masses, not to mention the blind faith that passes for true spirituality nowadays, religion inadvertently becomes an obstacle to the long-term resolution of the issues currently facing the nation. Again, while the fact that the Indian people as a whole is fiercely devoted to its faith is admirable, what most fail to realize is that faith is not merely about believing in miracles and signs, but is more appropriately seen in the way one lives his daily life. As already noted, the Ganges river has been said to possess an almost supernatural ability to cleanse itself, convincing most Indians of its religious significance. However, this would be better shown in a greater respect for the Ganges by combatting water pollution, rather than carelessly dumping all manner of waste into its holy waters. Conclusion In light of all that has been said, the best solution would be for the Indian government to not only focus on stepping up its campaigns on the environment, especially where water sanitation and treatment are concerned. The Ganges’ ability to purify itself may be extremely helpful in providing the people with at least one reliably clean water source, but this is hardly an excuse for them to continue dumping their waste into their bodies of water. This is therefore something in clear need of intervention. And in this case, the duty falls not only on the shoulders of the government, but also on India’s upper and middle class citizens – who are more likely to possess the means and the resources to make a difference by fighting not only to preserve, but more importantly, restore India’s bodies of water. In this regard, it would also help to improve the quality of education in the country. Education would be most useful in tempering the spirituality that Indians are known for with a sense of logic and reason to become more cognizant as to the consequences of pollution – especially water pollution, or more specifically the current state of both the Yamuna and the Ganges. From a social point of view, values education in particular would be useful for closing the gap between the rich and the poor. For the rich and the middle class of India to show a greater level of care and concern to the poor would already arguably go a long way on its own, and in more ways than one. Both parties need to be taught the value and importance of interdependence on and respect for each other’s dignity as human beings. Last but not least, it is through adequate education that the poor are equipped with the basic skills, knowledge and competencies needed to get by in the world and contribute to its betterment in their own little ways, rather than merely remaining dependent on the charity and the kindness of others. Indeed, instead of merely donating things to them, it would be much more prudent to teach them the skills they need to know, to educate them as to which habits they really ought to continue, which ones they need to start practicing, and which ones they need to put a stop to. References 2011 Global Hunger Index Report (2011) International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Retrieved on October 26, 2011 from http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi11.pdf Deka, P. (2007). The great Indian corridor in the east. Mittal Publications. Dube, P. 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