If you've ever wandered around any of India's big cities at rush hour you'll know the feeling. Crowds, crowds and more crowds. Our cities would really be so much more comfortable if there were less people. There'd be fewer cars, less pollution, more green spaces, less trash strewn around, and less poor people. After all, if there were fewer mouths to feed there would be less hungry people and more food for those who really needed it. Maybe if there were less people we'd be less like a developing country, with all its problems, and more like the developed countries. After all, the countries with the highest populations -- India and China -- also seem the have the poorest people. No one ever reads about the richer countries being overpopulated; their populations in fact seem to be going down.

But is this a true picture? Are there too many people in India?

Although many experts still feel that population is a development problem, others disagree, saying that this view is racist. They say it's a way for richer people (both in our country and in developed countries) to claim that the poor are breeding too fast and should be 'controlled'. According to them, richer people fear they may have to alter their lifestyles because of population growth. Think about it: if the population is to be 'controlled', who's going to do the controlling? It's mainly the rich, western white people who will do the controlling.

Let's look at the real population picture and see if we can decide for ourselves.

Three things are usually mentioned in relation to overpopulation: numbers, resources, poverty and immigration

First, what, if anything, does number of people mean?

When we look around us and see crowded cities, packed public transport, busy roads and lack of green spaces we are not actually talking about the total number of people but about population density. True, India is next only to China in terms of total population, with about 1.1 billion people. Yes we are highly populated. But India is also a geographically large country; there's actually lots of space to go around. Space, rather than pure numbers, is important when talking about population and population density.

Population density is the number of people living in a square kilometre of land area. It is not a number that tells us how many people there are in a country, but the far more important figure of how many people there are with respect to the size of the country, city or state. In this respect, India is not really as populated as many countries in the western world.

So we can see why the term 'overpopulation' is often seen as a political statement rather then a scientific one. Look at the figures: Bolivia is considered overpopulated with eight people/square kilometre, while Sudan is also labelled overpopulated with 16 people/square kilometre. The Netherlands has more than three times the population density (395 people/square kilometre) of its former colony Indonesia. But Indonesia (126 people/square kilometre) is said to be overpopulated, not the Netherlands.

The second point relates to resources: if overpopulation is actually a problem, it is not a problem of just number of people but how many people the whole earth, or a particular area on it, can support. This is a question of exploitation of resources. Resources are land, agricultural crops, other plants and trees we use, all the food we eat, the material we build our houses with, what we use as fuel, in fact everything we need to live. All of us use or exploit some resources in order to survive. Should we not recognise how much of these resources a population or an individual uses before we attach the label of 'overpopulation'?

For example, if there were a certain number of animals (say, deer) on a small island, could you say the island was overpopulated just by knowing the number of deer on that island? The number would not make a difference unless it was in relation to how much the animals ate, how much space they needed to live, how rapidly the island's plant life recovered once it was eaten or trampled upon by the deer. It's how resources are being exploited by the animals that makes the difference.

Similarly, while studying populations, if instead of saying 'overpopulation', what if we said 'human overconsumption'? The US constitutes less than 5% of the world's population, yet it uses more than a quarter of the world's resources and, at the same time, produces a quarter of the global pollution and waste products. Comparing an average US citizen to an average Indian, you find that the American uses 50 times more steel, 56 times more energy, 170 times more synthetic rubber, 250 times more motor fuel and 300 times more plastic. What if everyone, every living person, was to live like the population of the US or Europe? Does the earth have enough resources to support all of them? Calculations show that another 30 earth-sized planets would be needed!

Yet, images of overpopulation usually depict poor people in developing countries who use the least amount of any resources.

Finally, a point often made is that there is a connection between poverty and overpopulation. Many countries with large populations are in the developing world, and many of these have poor populations. But what exactly is the link between the two? Is a large population the cause of the poverty or a result of it?

Or perhaps there is actually no connection between the two.

Of course we cannot deny that a high population puts pressure on food supplies, hospitals and schools, government institutions, and water and other natural resources -- all things that people need to get out of poverty. But it is not simple cause and effect; population itself does not cause poverty but can be seen as a symptom of poverty, like fever arising out of an infection. The doctor does not set out to cure the fever, he looks for the cause of the infection.

Another way to understand the complexities of population and poverty is to look at migration. People move from rural areas to towns, cities, other states and more developed countries. Richer countries want to limit the number of people coming in from poorer countries. Similarly, people living in cities often want to limit the number of people moving in, creating slums and burdening the infrastructure. Why do people move from where they were born and where their families traditionally lived? Supposedly, people want to move because they cannot earn a living in their own villages or countries because of overpopulation -- too many people fighting for the same jobs.

It may be true that people migrate in search of livelihoods. But the reason they move is because the resources they depend on to make a living and survive are being depleted. For example, even the export of farm produce from India to another country means that only export-oriented crops are grown, which leads to monoculture, which requires less people, and which, in turn, means people cannot support themselves. In many cases, globalisation is a process by which traditional grown and processed foods are given up in favour of products grown and made in other countries.

Also keep in mind that a lot of poor countries were colonised by countries that are now considered developed. Many poor countries are poor because they were colonised and their resources, from which people could have made money, were looted. For example, it is said that Britain took at least $ 10 trillion out of India. That amount of money is what kept one country rich and the other poor. Britain is a rich country now because of her past.

So, what do you think? Is India overpopulated?

--Manoj Nadkarni

InfoChange News & Features, January 2007