The RSS leadership is not known to speak immense sense at all times.There are times when they go overboard in their zealousness to pushwhat they perceive are religious causes. Impression goes around, and rightly so, that they are neither realistic nor in tune with the times. In a recent instance, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has posed a question to the Hindoos while addressing students and teachers in Agra, as to what law prevents them from producing more children – implicitly saying they should match with the performance of Moslems. This essentially is a problem with all those who are cut off from society and lead a cocooned life, far from realities of the world around them.
According to official estimate India’s population is crossing 1.27 billion, it being the world’s second most populous country. An UN estimate has it that India’s population will surpass that of China in the next six years, making this nation the world’s most populous – and most chaotic — habitation on earth. Unofficially however, planners and people in power in India believe it has already touched 1.50 billion. Crazy India, that occupies 2.4 per cent of the world land area, holds 17.5 per cent of the global population. Over 30 per cent of this population is living in urban areas, as means of living in rural areas are very fast dwindling. At the same time, life across cities are bursting at the seams. Drinking water, electricity and garbage disposal have become problems not just in urban sprawls but also in rural areas – and the scenario is worsening daily. Jobs are fewer, and the rise in vehicle population is raising the pollution levels. Curiously, the main culprit in India’s rising pollution levels is vehicle emission, and not industrial activity – a recipe for a future economic disaster. Cities have no means to dispose of garbage, and water bodies are getting polluted, leading to mosquito menace and eruption of contagious diseases. The more the growth in population, the more the struggle for the nation and its teeming millions. Under the circumstances, for someone supposedly responsible like Mohan Bhagwat to utter that “let there be an increase in population,” if only to be one up with the Moslems, God alone can save this nation and its Bhagwats. In response to this, the tweet of Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal asking Bhagwat (an unmarried Pracharak) to produce 10 progenies before passing such comments, sounds credible.
It is unlikely that Bhagwat himself had ever taken the trouble of seeing around his organisation’s base in the central Indian city of Nagpur, and take stock of the situation vis-a-vis disposal of the city’s dirt, or the failure of the municipal administration to cope with the ever-growing piles of garbage and drinking water shortage. Nor is it likely that he had made any effort to see the life around other cities and habitations where he goes on visit once in a while. Much less Agra, where he passed such unacceptable comments. Sitting pretty inside the four walls and holding court of an organisational set-up and opining on all things under the Sun based on hearsay or bookish knowledge poses its own problems. Those who move around in their surroundings will know things with clarity and are better equipped to form opinions and make suggestions.
All this is not to say that the Moslems in this country are justified in engaging in a pastime of proliferation of the community’s numbers either with good or bad intention. They are doing a disservice to the society and also adding to the poverty levels of families by refusing to have restrictions on child birth. The educated among them are also generally not much better or more sensible in this respect, unlike the educated among the Hindoos. But the larger segments of both the communities are yet to see the benefits of having small families. It helps families take care of children in their growing age; it helps children from even families with limited means to get better education and better health. It helps society cope better to offer children a healthy life and joyful childhood. By engaging in a religious fight through procreation and proliferation people, irrespective of them being Hindoos or Moslems, are putting the nation’s future in immense peril. This is a dangerous situation. Governments that have a lifespan of five years are not being able to plan long-term on such issues. Fear of hurting community sentiments has prevented successive union governments to withdraw from family planning initiatives. The stigma attached to sterilization, as was seen during the Emergency due to Sanjay Gandhi’s drive, scared the successors to rename the concerned ministry from Health & Family Planning to Family Welfare.
Can we last long as a scared nation that refuses to recognize an imminent danger as large as an bulging unmanageable population, is the question every responsible India should be pondering about.