‘India is not a nation’: Why Orissa High Court quoted Winston Churchill in landmark two-child policy ruling

Justice Dixit, who authored the verdict, quoted former British PM Winston Churchill’s lines as saying, “India is not a nation, but a mere population.”

The bench added that Churchill said this line long before the partition, when the then population of undivided India was about 30 crores or so, and what caustic comment he would have made, had he been alive today, will drive one to wild imagination.

Emphasising the danger of a growing population, the judge further quoted British philosopher Bertrand Russell as saying, “Population explosion is more dangerous than hydrogen bomb.”

The order went on to quote British Economist Thomas Robert Malthus on population as saying, “The ratio of increase, though short of utmost power of the population, yet as the result of experience, we will take as our rule, and say, that population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every twenty-five years or increases in a geometrical ratio.”

Even British Poet Lord Byron’s poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” found a mention in the order which quoted a few lines from it saying, “A thousand years scarce serve to form a State; an hour may lay it in the dust.”

Findings

• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) India Policy, for the year 2023-2027, enlists four states, namely, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Odisha, as priority provinces for addressing population growth rate.
• It mentions that the population of Odisha is 3.32 per cent of the nation’s population, and it is a vibrant mix of traditions, languages, and communities.
• According to the UN World Health Organization, Health Data Overview 2023, India’s population was about 1.43 billion. Obviously, now it has crossed that figure.
• It is projected to increase to 1.7 billion by 2050, the growth rate being 17 per cent for the period, if not the Malthusian Thumb Rule of 100 per cent hike once in 25 years, and this is alarming, to say the least.
• The policy makers, more particularly the political executives, do not appear to have duly adverted to the warning of Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) administered in his poignant write-up “An Essay on the Principle of Population” published in 1798.
• The gigantic population of the country, it is obvious, is coming in the way of the implementation of several socio-welfare schemes.
• The value and dignity of individuals, even in any civilised jurisdiction, which our constitution and the courts so jealously seek to cherish & protect, would diminish in their content as against the increase in population.
• This needs no research for affirmation. It is high time that ‘powers that be’ turn the pages of this essay before the ‘population explosion’ happens in the country.
• A collegium of 11000 world scientists’ warning inter alia as to population growth and its ill effects is pertinent to reproduce, “profoundly troubling signs from human activities include sustained Increases in both human and ruminant livestock populations, per capita meat production, world gross domestic product, global tree cover loss, fossil fuel consumption, the number of air passengers carried, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.”
• The UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar expressed concern as to over growing population as a global phenomenon in the following words, “If rapid population growth in the developing nations is left unchecked, it will evidently undermine all efforts for economic and social development and could easily lead to widespread depletion of each nation’s resources.”
• Human over population on the globe is a major driver of biodiversity loss and proves to be a key obstacle to fairly sharing habitat and essential resources with other species.
• Failure to address the root causes of biodiversity loss, one of them being the rapid growth of the population, will doom conservationists’ efforts.

‘More not necessary to specify, less insufficient to leave it unsaid’

• Over population, which is a complex and multifaceted issue, presents a mammoth challenge to the delicate balance of our only planet and its limited resources.
• The unchecked population growth places immense strain on environmental, societal, and economic systems.
• It is not in the domain of the court to enlist all other disastrous consequences of rapid population growth in general and the demographic changes associated with such growth, in particular.
• People are degrading ecosystems so thoroughly that future generations likely will have a hard time living decent lives.
• More is not necessary to specify, and less is insufficient to leave it unsaid.
• There is almost a global unanimity of opinion that over-population causes environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and intensified societal challenges.
• It is appreciable that the parliament decades ago sensed the danger and brought about the Forty-Second
• Amendment to the constitution, introducing entry 20A to the concurrent List as already mentioned above.
• This was to enable the promulgation of policy, legislative or otherwise.
• We are constrained to observe that the measures hitherto taken to retard the population growth rate are far from satisfactory.
• It is high time that the constitutional institutions and the civil society do something in the matter.

Background

• The petitioner challenged his termination from membership of the gram panchayat under Section 25(1)(v) (disqualifies a person from being a member e.g., sarpanch, ward member if they have more than two children) of the Odisha Gram Panchayat Act, 1964.
• The petitioner sought protection under a provisions to the Act, which offers an exemption for an individual who already has more than two children at the time when the Odisha Gram Panchayat (Amendment) Act, 1994 commenced, provided they did not beget an additional child after a one-year grace period.
• The counsel for the petitioner argued that, although his client begot the 3rd child in 1993 and the 4th in 1994, he enjoys protection under Section 25(1)(v) of the 1964 Act.