Why India remains one of the most populous subcontinents

It was one of those days when the hoi polloi stood looking anxiously at the railway tracks, carrying their bags of shopping, their laptops, their I-pads and wailing babies. They hardly had place to stand on the platform, their bodies pressing against each other, fighting for a toe-hold. They were waiting for the Delhi Metro, a benign centipede, to take them to their destination. But when it arrived it left a number of people standing on the platform since they all could not fit into the narrow compartment. Some of the less aggressive lot had to wait for the next train.

Populous

The metro, is the perfect microcosm of a populous city, one that is stretched beyond its means; while the Delhi Metro remains one of the most efficient, it is only one of the public amenities currently under the strain to accommodate the growing population in the country's capital city. According to a recent UN report, Delhi has become the world's second most populous city in 2014 after Tokyo, more than doubling its population since 1990 to 25 million.

When I unscrambled this data, it tells me two things, first that people from smaller towns and three-tier cities are continuing to moving to the Capital to find work and avail of the creature comforts a big city has to offer. Secondly and perhaps more alarmingly, it tells me that the 'Hum do Humare Do' campaign of the early 1980s population control has not been as effective as we had hoped it would. India's population continues its alarming 0.73 per cent growth rate and the pressure on cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore continue to escalate.

There are many reasons why India remains one of the most populous subcontinents. To me the primary cause is the Indian mindset that is torn in two opposing directions. On the one hand, world health organisations like NACO and UNAIDS are encouraging Indians to practice contraception and safe sex through their ad-campaigns. On the other conservative rightwing politicians are advocating the ABC theory that mandates Abstinence-Be Faithful-Condom, which truth be told, has proven to be rather ineffective.

While Health Minister Harsh Vardhan denied opposing the promotion of condoms, he continues to advocate a combination of condoms and abstinence which he sees as necessary to fight HIV/AIDS. What he has left out of the argument is that the condom continues to be one of the most non-invasive and woman-friendly forms of contraception. According to Sushma Swaraj, safe and contraceptive sex ad campaigns need to focus on A and B before one gets around to C. In other words, condom promotion is a low priority. It took Anbumani Ramadoss, the UPA's health minister, to turn that policy around and bring our condom use campaigns in line with international standards. Currently with the renewed emphasis on A for abstinence, we may land up with E for explosion.

On the other end of the spectrum, Indira Gandhi's attempt to control the population of India in 1975, with her large-scale sterilisation campaign, was not the ideal way to do things. The militant drive reduced the working class male to the status of a stray dog on the streets, picked up in a truck and neutered at shady clinics. It was not an efficient form of birth control. Instead it garnered her much unpopularity and was thankfully done away with.

Extremities

So what does a country like India need? Certainly it is not these two extremities. Perhaps it is minister Renuka Chowdhury's suggestion that not only should sex education be taught in schools, but that Indian women should learn to take the initiative in safe contraceptive sex by buying condoms themselves because men tend not to bother. However given our conservative mindset, a woman at a chemist store trying to buy a condom is highly unlikely, given the sniggers of the chemist and the added likely-hood that she would be labelled 'loose.' Condom vending machines that were introduced in 1928 by Julius Fromm's company are a popular form of safe contraception in the West, since they provide the user with anonymity, but for them to be effective in India we need to change our mindset.

Education

We need sex education in our schools and colleges, we need access to contraception, and we need families to stop reproducing till they get a 'male heir'. Whether the mindset is a rural one or an urban the distinction does not matter. Currently though, the sad truth is that teachers have been encouraged by the likes of Om Prakash Sharma to create bonfires out of books that teach sex education. Ministers in MP are more intent on banning the sale of condoms that go by the name Crezendo (tacky name but must we ban it?). The name as it turned out was conflated with a battery charged ring that is used as sex toy. And In India how can contraception and pleasure possibly be said in the same breath? The truth be told, it is this disassociation with our population and Indian's pleasure seeking nature that has led to the big bang - our population explosion that rises and ebbs with ruling parties and their policies or policing around safe sex and contraception. In a land where the Kama Sutra and Khajurao are part of our cultural history, we are unfortunately being forced to talk about sex in hushed tones, despite the fact that we live in a post-Victorian era. This practice can only lead us to overcrowded trains, poor sanitation, more homeless people and more mouths to feed; like a friend once said, the population explosion is like a ticking bomb, one that is perhaps as deadly as a nuclear weapon.

- The writer is Chairperson, Grievances Cell, AICC. Her twitter handle is @Archana Dalmia