“The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” This is a quote that was initially given by Vladimir Lenin and is often misquoted to Karl Marx. This quote in its most basic essence describes the capitalists or the proletariats as shortsighted beings as they could not identify their own ravagers. Lenin originally quoted it as, “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” This was then published in ‘The Commonwealth: Official Journal of the Commonwealth Club of California’ by Major George Racey Jordan in 1955. There were several versions of the same that came up even before in 1955 but the one remarked by Major George Racey Jordan had the highest similarity. The same quote is often associated with Joseph Stalin and even Karl Marx. It was misquoted so often that in 2007, before a US Senate Committee, the quote was blindly attributed to Karl Marx saying, “The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope.” It was indeed an error in deliverance that associated Karl Marx with this quote.

The quote can be interpreted as that Capitalism would be responsible for the provision of the means to their own fall. The capitalists are even described as myopic beings who cannot see what would cause their own doom. The rope is only a metaphor for some of the things that are in the clutches of capitalism. These things or even activities include selling weapons and causing wars between nations, by creating and delivering avenues and whose effects could potentially destroy capitalism as well.

Capitalism has seen immense criticism by several political economists and anthropologists around the world. Some wanted to change the whole absolute concept of capitalism whereas somewhere only against the outcomes that capitalism brought in. Karl Marx was one such personality. He said that capitalism is a progressive stage in human evolution which would eventually stall and be succeeded by a revolution bringing in socialism. Capitalism is defined by Marxists as a social or economic relationship between people and not between people and things and they wish to abolish capital. According to them, the owners of the means of production are benefitted while the labour class perishes or in other words they exploit the labour class after earning profits off their hard work.

Karl Marx sure did not quote the aforementioned quotation but rather he might have used Lenin’s words as a metaphor to express his disapproval towards capitalism. Marx remarked that a time would come when the labour class who are being exploited now would not tolerate the same anymore and the capital also would become centralised. All of this would occur only as an aftermath of their capitalistic exploitation and long periods of plundering such that they would inflict this upon themselves, in which case the the above quotation would hold true.

The western capitalistic world in the process of showing their disapproval for socialism, forgot to do a fact check as to who said these words and in what context. Thus, the same got associated with the popular comrades such as Marx and Stalin.

Population crisis or human overpopulation can be fundamentally defined as a situation wherein the resources available in a human habitat is less than what is actually required to suffice the needs of those inhabitants. Having a large population of healthy and productive working age people is always valuable and beneficial for a country, in economic terms especially. The world is at an all-time high level of population at 7.7 billion people and is expected to hit the 9 billion mark in the next 30 years. It is very ironic that the world’s resource endowments seem very unlikely to be able to support all these many billions of people or even if there was an abundance of these resource endowments, but if being managed and utilized in a very poor manner, would not make a difference in its ability to sustain such a large population. There are a multitude of causes when it comes to human overpopulation; demographic, social, ecological, economic etc. Population increasing exponentially being considered as a positive or negative aspect is highly debatable minding the fact that the world’s resource endowments are limited but have not yet been exhausted.

An Indian Overview

India is the seventh largest and the second most populated country in the world. As of 2017, population in India counts to 1.34 billion people and is projected to surpass that of China and become the world’s most populous country by 2024. It is expected to be home to almost 1.5 billion people by 2030 and 1.7 billion by 2050. The Indian population is growing at a rate of 1.13 percent every year. Currently, a significant proportion of the Indian population can be placed under the category of being young or middle-aged and belong to the working age i.e. people under the age of 25 constitute 50 percent of the population and those under the age of 35 form the 65 percent of the population. The population growth rate is basically the difference between birth rates and death rates. In India, the birth rates have always been rising whereas the mortality rates were continuously declining, which possibly led to the addition of a large number of people over the last decade. The death rates have fallen to a new low in contrast to the birth rates such that, population could be a function of just the birth rates alone. Some people believe that our country is not overpopulated because we have plenty of resources and the only reason it seems to be overpopulated is because the resources and the abundantly available manpower are not being managed and utilized in the most productive manner.

Causes and Impacts

There are very many reasons to why there exists such a severe situation of overpopulation in India. Our Indian population is highly diverse in many terms; ethnicities to social standing and even the income they earn. Some of the major causes of overpopulation is as follows

Income inequality and poverty

It is very evident that there is a steep inequality in income of the people in India. It is this inequality which defines people as rich or poor. With such an ever-growing population, the national income is also further divided among those many people, which reduces the per capita income very much. When people remain poor, they do not experience the same standards of living as of those who are not poor. Education and proper healthcare are some of the major components that decide a person’s standard of living. When people compromise on education and healthcare and remain greatly ignorant, they are not aware of concepts like family planning, birth control, adoption or even why overpopulation is a great risk for the world. Illiterate people tend to think that more the number of children, greater the number of bread earners for the family, but often they forget the fact that even these children have to be fed and if unable to do so, the children then become the victims of starvation. The govt. comes up with several new actions plans to regulate and control the population, but due to lack of awareness, most of the efforts mostly goes in vain.

Status of women

In India, women are always looked on to as mere machines that produce babies, no matter how well one is educated or not. Gender discrimination, therefore, could be well another reason for overpopulation in India. Mostly, women are confined to the walls of their houses taking care of their kids and doing household chores. It is only 27 percent of the population that constitutes the working women category. Women lack proper education and healthcare services in our country. If these services are provided to women in an efficient manner, then, they would be more empowered and thus would not simply remain stay-at-home housewives. Although, the legal age for women to get married is 18 years, but in India most women are also subjected to being married off at a young age which prolongs their child bearing age, which only adds to the problem.

Old and conservative social norms

Indian population lack open minds. They cannot accept or adapt to a social change very easily nor quickly. They consider women as mere means to bear and rear children. They think only men are supposed to be sole bread earners for the family, thus they insist couples to keeping having kids until a boy child is born or if not a boy child, they induce the couples to commit female feticide which adversely affects the sex ratio in the society. Concepts like adoption, birth control devices etc. are considered very much wrong and impure actions in their conservative minds.

Other causes would include low quality of the population, illegal migration etc.

Population crisis has its own set of effects as well.

High degree of dependent population

From the 2011 census, as a result of the high birth rate, there is a very high proportion of people who are dependent on adults, which is very close to 40 percent of the total population, i.e. 40 percent of the population is under the age of 15. This causes a dilution in the standard of living of that particular family or group of people as the income they earn might not be sufficient enough to meet the needs of all those people.

Requirement of greater economic activity

A really large population and the same level of economic activity generating the same level of national income and thus the same per capita income would ultimately not suffice the economic needs of such a large population. This is where, economic agents like investment and capital formation come in, such that they can drive up the economic activity to achieve a newer level of national income and consequently, a greater per capita income, which should now be able to meet the greater population’s requirements.

Food supply crunch

If the growth of the population is very rapid and available sources of food cannot feed all of the new large population then it would result in the malnourishment of the people, leading to a fall in their productivity, low productivity means low income leading to poverty. To counteract this issue, if government begins to import food grain from outside the country then, it is going to spend a great part of its foreign exchange earnings for this purpose.

Environmental pressure and land requirement

As and as the population increases, it calls for a great toll on the environment around. More population causes more pollution, more emissions, more waste generation ultimately leading to the degradation of the environment. Similarly, when the population increases, the per capita availability of land also decreases significantly, which consequently leads to congested housing facilities especially in the cities.

Unemployment and low standard of living

If an economy is unable to cope with the increasing levels of population, by generating required degree of economic activity, this would reduce the overall efficiency and productivity of the economy i.e. the economy would not be running at its full employment level, that said there would be a significant amount of people who would be unemployed due to this reason. Unemployed people would then will not be able to even afford the basic necessities of life resulting in a fall in their standard of living.

There are a lot of other effects a population explosion can result in, like improper sanitation and hygiene or civil issues like theft, adultery, traffic congestion etc.

Population control measures

There are many ways to regulate or control the overpopulation that our country is facing.

Adoption

Couples can think of this as an option as this helps to reduce the birth rates considerably as well as provide the orphan kids a family.

No early marriage

Girls should be allowed to marry only when they have crossed the age of 21 years, similar to that of boys. Moreover, girls should be allowed to pursue their aspirations and dreams so that they are able to stand for themselves and do not have to be dependent on anyone. This would not just empower the women in the country but also reduces their child bearing age so that the birth rates are under check.

Spreading education and transforming social outlook

An educated person is aware and has the rationality enough to make wise choices, this is very unlike in case of illiterate ones. Education and training facilitates a person’s views about things in life. They would be more sensitive towards overpopulation and undertake measures like birth control devices and avoid frequent pregnancies. Sex education should be an integral part of school education.

Family planning

A family should be made out of a choice not by a mistake. It concerns with usage of contraceptives and planning out the family structure such that the economic the condition of a family does not take a hit. It aims to promote the existence of more and more nuclear/small families, as well as the norm of having just two children. In the long run, family planning would reduce the fertility rate in the society.

Overcrowded cities: A solution

In case of overcrowded cities, like Delhi NCR where the population is over 24 million, there is a constant influx of population every now and then. Such constant influx leads to congestion in the living conditions of the cities causing traffic and other problems to the citizens. Considering the lower income working class people of the city, who now face increased competition in the job market now. In such a situation, it should be made mandatory for every other new person coming to that city should have proper job available as well as they should have access to housing facilities too guaranteed either by themselves or else by their employer. Since, this does not happen anyway, would prohibit the entry of the newer population into the city territory. This should also be applicable to those people who have migrated to this city earlier itself. Due to this, there would occur a sudden fall in the population in city, thus, reducing the working class population causing a surge in the wage rates of the people as now there is reduced supply at the same level of demand for workers by employers. Such an increase in the wage rate would in turn increase the production cost for the employer firms. Now, the government should construct Special Economic Zones (SEZs) slightly away from the main city in an underdeveloped region and incentivize the firms to set up their firms in the so called SEZs. Setting up a business wholly in an SEZ or just any other concern of that business there, would reduce the production costs for the firms significantly. This would also create new employment opportunities for the people living their therefore, generating more economic activity in and around that location. Thus, would result in that whole location being better developed. The level of employment generated in this place would prevent the people wanting to migrate to the cities in search of a livelihood, thus, reducing the population pressure off the urban cities. This is a two dimensional plan aimed at reducing the population pressure on the cities as well as developing the underdeveloped peripheral locations of the city.

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