Ever since Malthus alerted the world about the dangers of the world's population overcoming the production capacity of the land, the world slowly woke up to the significance of the growth of population. From 1950 till today we have been hearing the curse it is. It may be a curse or it may not be. To curse a component for the ills of the whole is not wisdom. Mind is the source of all good or evil, all morality. Science does us good or harm as man uses it. So does the population. Some studies have discovered the virtues of population as a supplier of work force when its concentration is in the working age. It is high time Man comes to understand what he is doing. There is no virtue in switching from one set of superstitions to another set of superstitions.
I have often referred to a study that says India and China will vastly benefit from their enormous population growth. Anyway, that is not rational. As statistics developed, demographers studied the composition of population in various ways, yielding striking results. Peter Drucker once foresaw from studies of moving population patterns that the schools and colleges cannot construct their buildings without reference to local population growth. Except for two colleges, all of them were deaf. Fifteen years later, these two colleges which took the growth of population into account were able to manage the situation as they had constructed enough buildings. Anthropologists are able to assess the population thousands of years ago from various other factors, especially their tools. They see a correlation between tools and production; production and population.
Overpopulation causes problems. Certainly man can handle a greater population to a great extent, not forever. Man needs to shift from population to himself in cursing population. Not only from population, but from money, science and many other things. They are external factors, not the inner TRUTH. Also, they are creations of Man. It is not wise for man to become a slave to his own creation. Whatever it is, POPULATION that grows puts a severe strain on our resources and compels Man to think. He thinks of relieving the strain. I wish his thinking leads him away from the externals that are his own creation to his own inner truth. TRUTH is inside, not outside. He seeks domestic happiness, well being, mental peace, absence of violence in the society more than domestic comfort, welfare, mental conquest and violent suppression of violent disorder. For that, he must reach INSIDE.