Population Explotion

If there is another problem facing the country it is the explosion of the population, because, in the long run the nation will find it difficult to provide for all the children that are being born. Many countries had recognized this problem a long time ago and had been trying to put a cap on it, and if there is any nation that showed success it is only China. Even if in the country more than 80 percent of the population are dependent on farming the remaining percentage will be dependent on the available employment opportunity that will be created either by the government or the private sector, and the employment problem will be more sever in the urban areas.

Another point to raise is the arable land that had been put to work is only 10 percent, which means whenever the need arises it will be possible to open more lands, which will lead to deforestation where that in its turn will result in increasing pressure on available resources and the environment. Ever since the one-child-one-family, family planning was introduced in China it was possible to bring down the population to a sustainable level, yet the fact that it is still more than 1.3 billion people is not an easy matter that everyone is comfortable with, because there is still a high level of poverty in the country. Yet, the prevalent level of poverty is not due to lack of resources, in fact, there is enough food production in the country, but there is a distribution problem.

It is not only that, even if the population control had been working seamlessly among the urbanites that will find it difficult to evade the surveillance, for those who are living in the most remote areas there is no control, which means they can have as many children as they want. Those that are closer to the urban areas also could evade the authorities and have many ways to get around the lawmakers where forgery of many kinds are taking place, some with the help of physicians, some with the help of local officials where graft is involved in almost all cases, and because of that there is fear that the population could be on the rise again.

The effect of overpopulation surfaces when tallying the number of people that live in a given square kilometer where it is 126 per square kilometer in China whereas the average is 43 globally. Then the other area to look at is the amount of water that is available in relation to the quantity of water used per capita, and among those who are being born into the farming community, how many of them will become farmers is also another indicator on the future utilization of available water resources. In our country, even if there might not be a problem for now, this issue will make a big difference when the culture changes and people start to use irrigation to put a cap on the uncertainty of the rain water. It is also possible to have more than one harvest in most regions and it is not only that the yield of an irrigated land is always higher than the ones that are dependent on rain only. When people start to use such methods out of necessity that is when the scarcity of water might surface and the less the population is the allocating of the available resources will be manageable and there will not be unnecessary human suffering.

Until such a standard is attained one thing we will have to keep closed eyes on is going to be the standard of living of the people that will struggle to make ends meet on subsistence farming, because it will be at a much lower level, and it will result in affecting their health, their productivity level, their life expectancy, not to mention the life style they could aspire to live, and the education of their children that could fall behind unless there is heavy involvement by the government or the private sector where both could be hand-tied if the population explosion continues unabated because the available resources will be spread thin. Therefore, the focus has to be on paying more attention on the qualitative aspect of the farms, in terms of the return they would avail for those who are working on them. At the level where farming is now in the country, it is possible to use enhanced seeds hand-in-hand with irrigation and harvesting at least twice a year might be possible in all the regions, but to make it to that level it could take years. The reason for that is it is not possible to use available funds and resources for such purposes currently, when the high population brings to the fore problems that have an immediate nature.

Consequently, the nation does not have a better choice other than giving the population growth the attention it deserves, which is among the top priorities. The good news is there are tested methods that have shown good results wherever they were tried, with some livable side effects. The way the Chinese did it was first they talked about how appropriate it will be if every family has two children only. Then they came up with the one child each married family preference where a second child will be tolerated. At the same time they raised the age, couples will get married to 22-25 for women and 25-28 for men. Then they clamped down on the one-family-one-child priority and they started compensating those who only have one child by introducing various incentives like cash bonus, longer maternity leave, better child care, and preferential housing arrangements, where the incentives could be adjusted according where they are being introduced and there could even be more introductions depending on each situation. When that was the carrot, the stick was the government had put a law in place allowing the community to ruin any family that has more than one child.

To attain population control what they were using in China were contraceptives that are available in various forms, which include sterilizing for those that have reached a certain age, and already have a given number of children and it was mandatory for anyone that has more than one child to be sterilized, which is a one time affair. It could be reversed when the need comes, especially the one known as vasectomy in the West that even those that are not married can use, but as long as there are enough number of children it saves a lot of trouble and there might not be a need to reverse it.

In our country, there could be two plans one for the urban dwellers and one for the rural dwellers who might have more need for hands on the farm, but what is in practice currently, where there is no "family planning" should come to end and be done with. What this would mean is in the coming 20 to 30 years, which are not very distant, it will at least be possible to see some stability where there will be some balanced correlation between the available resources and the people that they are using them. When that is the case the poverty level could come down and the standard of living of the people will start climbing. At one point in the future there is no reason why what is being implemented now could not go back to normal and if there is the need all it will take is another 20 to 30 years to reverse it.

The Russians are talking about population decline, for example, and that could be because of the abundant resources they have started to have at their disposal which could again be because of abundant oil and the change in their system might also have something to do with it. When there are abundant resources and when there is a need to put them to work, there could be a shortage of people to do what is required, and that could also be another problem in some distant future, but it will not be as bad as overpopulation. Whenever there is a shortage of a workforce, it is possible to bring in people from outside, where monitoring the side effect is possible since there are many countries doing that, but in our case that might not ever happen, but at least if the majority of the people start leading a better life than the one they are leading now that by itself will be a significant achievement.