A group of 80 gather in São José dos Campos, Brazil, to celebrate Christmas in a fundraising dinner for the oppressed in the world.

This is the 21st installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

When all political parties agree on something, you know you might have a problem. Giriraj Singh, a minister in Narendra Modi’s new cabinet, tweeted this week that our population control law should become a “movement.” This is something that would find bipartisan support – we are taught from school onwards that India’s population is a big problem, and we need to control it.

This is wrong. Contrary to popular belief, our population is not a problem. It is our greatest strength.

The notion that we should worry about a growing population is an intuitive one. The world has limited resources. People keep increasing. Something’s gotta give.

Robert Malthus made just this point in his 1798 book, An Essay on the Principle of Population. He was worried that our population would grow exponentially while resources would grow arithmetically. As more people entered the workforce, wages would fall and goods would become scarce. Calamity was inevitable.

Malthus’s rationale was so influential that this mode of thinking was soon called ‘Malthusian.’ (It is a pejorative today.) A 20th-century follower of his, Harrison Brown, came up with one of my favourite images on this subject, arguing that a growing population would lead to the earth being “covered completely and to a considerable depth with a writhing mass of human beings, much as a dead cow is covered with a pulsating mass of maggots.”

Another Malthusian, Paul Ehrlich, published a book called The Population Bomb in 1968, which began with the stirring lines, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” Ehrlich was, as you’d guess, a big supporter of India’s coercive family planning programs. ““I don’t see,” he wrote, “how India could possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980.”

None of these fears have come true. A 2007 study by Nicholas Eberstadt called ‘Too Many People?’ found no correlation between population density and poverty. The greater the density of people, the more you’d expect them to fight for resources – and yet, Monaco, which has 40 times the population density of Bangladesh, is doing well for itself. So is Bahrain, which has three times the population density of India.

Not only does population not cause poverty, it makes us more prosperous. The economist Julian Simon pointed out in a 1981 book that through history, whenever there has been a spurt in population, it has coincided with a spurt in productivity. Such as, for example, between Malthus’s time and now. There were around a billion people on earth in 1798, and there are around 7.7 billion today. As you read these words, consider that you are better off than the richest person on the planet then.

Why is this? The answer lies in the title of Simon’s book: The Ultimate Resource. When we speak of resources, we forget that human beings are the finest resource of all. There is no limit to our ingenuity. And we interact with each other in positive-sum ways – every voluntary interactions leaves both people better off, and the amount of value in the world goes up. This is why we want to be part of economic networks that are as large, and as dense, as possible. This is why most people migrate to cities rather than away from them – and why cities are so much richer than towns or villages.

If Malthusians were right, essential commodities like wheat, maize and rice would become relatively scarcer over time, and thus more expensive – but they have actually become much cheaper in real terms. This is thanks to the productivity and creativity of humans, who, in Eberstadt’s words, are “in practice always renewable and in theory entirely inexhaustible.”

The error made by Malthus, Brown and Ehrlich is the same error that our politicians make today, and not just in the context of population: zero-sum thinking. If our population grows and resources stays the same, of course there will be scarcity. But this is never the case. All we need to do to learn this lesson is look at our cities!

This mistaken thinking has had savage humanitarian consequences in India. Think of the unborn millions over the decades because of our brutal family planning policies. How many Tendulkars, Rahmans and Satyajit Rays have we lost? Think of the immoral coercion still carried out on poor people across the country. And finally, think of the condescension of our politicians, asserting that people are India’s problem – but always other people, never themselves.

This arrogance is India’s greatest problem, not our people.

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
Follow me on Twitter.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

A member of the team, a water boy, accidentally stumbled upon a stone that turned out to be the first step of an ancient staircase.

The Jerusalem Post Podcast - Travel Edition, Episode 93

Title: Young Football Players Tackle Greatest Concussion Risk at Practice
Category: Health News
Created: 8/23/2016 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/23/2016 12:00:00 AM

Title: Stress May Take Greatest Toll on Younger Women's Hearts: Study
Category: Health News
Created: 8/24/2016 12:00:00 AM
Last Editorial Review: 8/25/2016 12:00:00 AM

AI companies hope that feeding ever more data to their models will continue to boost performance, eventually leading to human-level intelligence. Behind this hope is the "transformer", a key breakthrough in AI, but what happens if it fails to deliver?

15 years on, Winamp "still lives"—but mismanagement blunted its llama-whipping.

In honour of the icon's 81st birthday, we're celebrating the best music she's made — so far.

The Key to Inspiring Innovation: Brought to You by the National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees

Rob Stevens presents groundbreaking AdlensFocuss� eyeglasses at New York�s CE Week.

Vader really is the galaxy's greatest detective because he kills anyone who doesn't give him the answers he wants. Just watching him walk up to you, pipe in face mask, fire in his eyes, intimidates you into giving away who the murderer on Cherry St. is. Also, his Force sensitivity is greater than anyone else's. He can just sense if the killer is hiding in the cupboard under the staircase. He doesn't even have to look. He'll hold his lightsaber up to the door and activate it, making it thrust through the guy. This is the kind of shirt you wanna wear around your torso if you're in the middle of writing a genre-bending fan fiction. $7-21 | URL | Paypal Credit | S - 3XL ')}

A very few century in the past seamen were the first person to possess celeb wrist tats. Several mariners were superstitious as well as sea-loving movie star for their hand showed its northern border superstar which was intended to...

       The office worker is general will see much of a scene, at new of the year split a head, you nearby of person or many or little all someone drive the inner part...

Tenting tent, Mummy Down...

On March 24, 1944, 76 Allied prisoners attempted one of the most ambitious escapes from a German prison camp, dramatised in the film, The Great Escape. The quiz is all about famous and narrow escapes

On 12 September1943, German Commando Otto Skorzeny and his forces rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from house arrest. This week’s quiz is about escapes and rescues

'My tool is the way I look. This is the only thing that distinguishes me.''Most of us dress similarly. What sets you apart is your face. If you change that also, you're like anybody else.'

London : Faber and Faber, 2009.

New York : Random House, [2017]

Remember that game of Dungeons & Dragons you started when you were 11? What if it never stopped? Robert Wardhaugh has been the Dungeon Master for a D&D game that's been going on for over 40 years. In his game, once you start playing...you keep playing.

The best data room solutions enable you to firmly share delicate files to parties across the world wide web. These digital platforms are extremely beneficial when doing M&A or due diligence orders. They can likewise streamline organization collaboration and increase responsibility in the workplace. To find the right remedy for your firm, you must glance […]

Usha Uthup’s exit songs are often a tribute to the late American singer who inspired her career

Anirudha Srikkanth heaped praise on talisman batter Virat Kohli's captaincy and said that he was the reason why India could win Tests outside home soil.

Former Mayo manager Stephen Rochford feels the difference between a Dublin side he calls the "greatest in history" and the Mayo, Kerry and Tyrone teams they have beaten on the way to five in a row is the ability to convert scoring opportunities in finals.

No one can do a Little Richard composition like Little Richard. In the finest moments from the rock and roll pioneer — who died Saturday at the age of 87 — self-penned songs were as flamboyant as his appearance. Informed by his Georgian roots in the Pentecostal church and the nightlife business (tellingly, his dad […]

US President Trump has congratulated UFC for restarting the sports world on Saturday night after a nearly two-month hiatus.

Mark Webber said his win in the Monaco Grand Prix was "one of the greatest days" of his life.

       The office worker is general will see much of a scene, at new of the year split a head, you nearby of person or many or little all someone drive the inner part...

Tenting tent, Mummy Down...

DALEY THOMPSON: Ennis-Hill would be among the five greatest British female athletes of all time and, had she not suffered a few injuries over the years, she could have been one of our best athletes in history.

The Inka Empire is one of the greatest civilizations in the Western Hemisphere, spanning from the 13th century until the Spanish invasion in 1532. To […]

The post 5 Reasons the Inka Road is one of the Greatest Achievements in Engineering appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Latest COVID-19 Conversations webinar discusses implementing crisis standards of care.

An early-warning system developed by researchers could help forest managers in Europe predict which trees are at greatest risk of bark- beetle infestation. The study looked at the probability of bark-beetle outbreaks on two important conifer-tree species in Slovenia: the Norway spruce (Picea abies) and silver fir (Abies alba). It found that high temperatures, and extreme weather linked to climate change — including droughts and ice storms — weakened trees, making them more vulnerable to attack by bark beetles.

Large carnivores play important roles in ecosystems by regulating populations of herbivores and other species. Understanding how human activities affect the role of predators, particularly within human-modified systems such as agricultural landscapes, is therefore important. This study investigated how predator and prey populations were distributed in Transylvania, Romania, and assessed them in relation to human activities. The research highlights how relationships between large carnivores and people need to be considered as part of biodiversity conservation efforts, especially considering the successful recovery of several large carnivore populations within the EU.

European Atlantic countries are, in general, at higher risk of being affected by oil spills than Mediterranean and Baltic countries, with the United Kingdom most affected, according to new research. The study developed a new risk index for analysing the potential vulnerability of coastal regions to oil spills at sea.

Kenaf, the carbon-sequestering monster plant, provides food, shelter and carbon credits.

Peter Dykstra counts down his top 20 eco-songs. Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, and a few other strange bands make the cut.

From the unbearably cute to the utterly absurd, these pet and animal vines are bound to crack you up.