Would I be wrong to assume that it is a paraphrasing of the story? Or is it the original text?

Now coming back to the reproductive rights tale. It was my understanding from the initial proposal that the sterilization would be one that would be irreversible.

If it isn’t irreversible, then what is the point of having it at all? Why not just have credits and allow people to have bear children based on the number of credits they own? The sterilization doesn’t enforce anything in this proposal if it can be reversed.

Alongwith the “Man Who Planted Trees” it was really an enjoying time I had!

For some reason I thought the first paragraph was written by you as an
introduction to the story and that you had understood the story after
going on this long voyage somewhere…

At the risk of being branded a pessimist, I’ll say that there is no short cut or magic bullet. Sustained growth is the only option. In terms of specifics, microfinance aimed at the bottom 20% of the population is a good place to concentrate. Independent banks are better off at this than government ones. Where the government has to concentrate on is education and health care. Food security is not an issue today in terms of production. So the rigor mortis in the PDS has to be addressed.

In my opinion, the credit system that Atanu proposed earlier is not workable. For any such system to work, enforcement is key, and for enforcement to work in such a fundamental human activity, that is not possible without a dictatorial regime in place. Further, you cannot do that in only one aspect. Regulation in something as basic as reproduction will lead to regulation in other aspects of life, some of which we don’t want. In fact there is too much regulation in India, which is what we bitch about anyway. Unless you are willing to transform a multi-cultural, diverse, democratic society into a one-party dictatorship like China, social engineering will not work. It has not worked in history otherwise. Notwithstanding other carrots, fear was the main catalyst in this working in China. Stong-arm coercion worked there, will it work in India? Sanjay Gandhi tried it in the 70s, where is he now? I don’t know about historical comparison, but the last 50 years have caused considerable cultural differences between Indians and Chinese that is not acknowledged in a lot of social and political literature. People can protest in India, they can’t in China.

In addition, there is the issue of skewing the population distribution in favor of older people and males by controlling reproduction. It remains to be seen how this will affect society, but China is going to face it. Now from a global perspective, it is argued that 20th century nation-states, passport controls and citizenship rights have restricted immigration that actually skews population problems more than they will in a freer environment. While I don’t know what can be done about it now, it is a real issue, as real as just population growth in India.

While I don’t disagree that population is a real issue, I prefer to concentrate on things which are practical and positive and have a reasanable chance of acceptance and success. Things like RISC, microfinance etc give hope and optimism while ideas like population credits and controls are restrictive, pessimistic, and scary. It is a path of high resistance and will not get traction when alternatives exist.