India's 'population problem'

I don't believe India's population is as big a handicap for the country as it is made out to be. There's another dimension to it which always gets overlooked. The population should not be viewed in isolation. Rather it always should be spoken of as the population per square area.

Not many people know that the people density is much more in, say, Singapore than it is in India. And Singapore does not have any natural resources, mineral deposits, forests, rivers etc, to speak of. So how is it that Singapore is more successful than India, which is blessed with abundant natural resources ? How is it that their per capita income is better than ours ? I think we just need to attack the problem smartly. There have been some basic flaws in our approach to urban planning these past 5-6 decades

Yes, I do agree that India's cities are overpopulated. That's definitely true. So, I think that the real issue is that rather than over-population, India's problem is that
its population is concentrated in pockets. The real issue is that our cities are splitting at the seams while other areas are underdeveloped and hence sparsely populated.
There's so much of hinterland in India that's just sitting there doing nothing.

Since there are just 5-6 metros in India, all the migration that happens from our rural areas happens into these 5-6 cities. And this is a load even cities with good
infrastructure can't withstand; and we all know what the state of our cities is. So what's the answer?

The obvious solution is control the population growth. But let's be practical. This isn't going to happen overnight. Though the rate of population growth is on the decline
in India, it is going to take decades for it to stabilise.

So we need to look at other alternatives. Satellite towns. I believe that holds the key to this problem. We need to develop satellite towns and cities. These new cities
should be self sufficient in all respects - hospitals, schools, public transportation, railway stations, parks, security, industries: in short, the works. People living in
these towns should find no reason to come to the parent city on a regular basis.
People who leave villages in search of jobs, as indeed current residents of our existing cities, should be convinced that their chances of finding a job or their quest for
a decent standard of living, in these new towns will be just as even as in a Bangalore or in a Mumbai.
There is tremendous scope for growth here. Building these new towns and cities will spawn a huge demand for cement and steel. Millions of jobs can be generated. New vistas
for economic growth can thus be opened up by pursuing this approach.

Our existing cities have reached a point where further investments in infrastructure is not yielding proportionate benefits to their burgeoning populations. We need a
massive paradigm shift to happen to our demography. Future investments need to happen in areas which would result in a more even distribution of our people. The setting up of SEZs is a step in the right direction. (I'm not going into the contoversy of displacement of people, this entails. That's beyond the scope of the issue
this piece is trying to address.)
SEZs, in priciple, are good. Industrialization of an area automatically guarantees the breeding of other spheres of growth which support it.
People are drawn to these areas and this in turn ensures the achivement of self sufficiency of the entire area.

These are the kind of measures that should be taken to address the 'population problem' that India faces.