News Snapshot:
A standard topic at college debates in the 1970s, when I was a student, used to be ‘Population: Bane or boon’. The almost celebratory manner in which many reacted to the news that India has now become the world’s most populous nation, overtaking China, stands in sharp contrast to a widely-shared view in our student days that rapid population growth was India’s biggest problem. Certainly a bane, not boon. From institutions like the Population Council to the World Bank, from the erstwhile Planning Commission to politicians of all hues, from western aid agencies to religious bigots, everyone was convinced that...
