It’s a bitter pill

I often feel guilty at my concern over how the country's, population is growing, uncontrolled. I know I say this at the risk of being lync...

I often feel guilty at my concern over how the country’s, population is growing, uncontrolled. I know I say this at the risk of being lynched by those who know better about the welfare of the nation and of the entire species. But it is precisely this self-righteousness of which I myself feel guilty.

Why do I want to condomise the entire nation, that is the men, as condoms for women are still in the research stage? Why do I want all the women in the reproductive age in India and sometimes when my concern for humanity transcends boundaries and crosses over to include our sometime brethren, or sisters in this context, in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afg-hanistan to have IUDs implanted inside their wombs? Why do I want them, the scientists that is in some far off laboratory in the West, to come up with some super method to stop child birth?

In fact I was ashamed at the enthusiasm with which I discovered a report and later re-reported it in my newspaper about how a new gel condom for women was all set to hit the market once it goes through the human trials. It had already proved itself effective in animal trials! The guilt I feel has little to do with the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the idea of birth control and here is my chance to save my skin.

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My concern stems from the fact that I am a part of a tiny group of all-knowing persons who know what is best for the rest of us. And I feel uncomfortable being part of such a small group. I feel like a dictator of sorts. The rest of us are plebeians who do not know that having six or seven children will make them weak, leave them all with little food to eat, with little money for medicines… The rest of us are, in plain terms, idiots. So we have wailing headlines in newspapers expressing concern that half the couples in the country are not using condoms or any type of contraceptive.

I was, I must admit, thrilled at one point about a certain legislation attempted in the Delhi Assembly which thankfully failed due to overwhelming opposition. The proposal was to ban all politicians with more than three kids or was it two? from the Assembly. They would not be allowed to contest polls. That is it, I had thought. Let the leaders set the example.

But then I was shocked when I thought of the consequences. For instance, what is the guarantee that these educated small family MLAs will care to make living conditions better for the masses, for the idiots? All our concern at population has an undertone of accusation directed at the masses that they are to blame for our woes, for our not being a rich, glamourous, successful nation. But don’t the wise men see a finger pointed at them from the masses, that the oligarchy of the few wise, rich and all knowing men had kept them poor and sick and illiterate?

Why should a few know everything, or assume to know everything better than the rest? When the reality is that these handful of pundits who have been ruling this nation have not been able to improve the lot of the masses in the last 50 years.

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So isn’t that why we want them to wear condoms, the pundits may reason. But dear pundit, instead of supplying condoms, had you supplied books and pencils to the quiet millions of this country, then probably they would have been teaching you a lesson or two in governance and welfare now.

Maybe the one thing that poor, unfashionably dense populations like ours can be grateful for is the call of the Cairo Conference to do away with targets for birth control. India, which does not enforce targets any more, is slowly getting used to considering human beings as such rather than cattle and dogs meant to be sterilised.

So wise men, preach on, but add a coating of love to the bitter pill.