The unrest over the Cauvery river water-sharing was waiting to happen. It didn’t take place for the first time, and it’ll not be the last time either. Water will remain an issue as needs and populations grow
The shockingly violent agitation over the Cauvery water dispute has been discussed threadbare. While a number of causes, including the response to the Supreme Court’s order to Karnataka to release water, the fairness of the Cauvery Award, the Karnataka Government’s role in the shocking lawlessness that swept the State, have been discussed, the primary cause, the steep rise in population in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, has not even been mentioned. Population growth has led to the construction of a large number of settlements in the Cauvery basin, resulting in a rise in demand for water, both for drinking and agriculture to feed growing numbers. The demand for water will rise further as the region’s population continues to grow and the water dispute will lead to much greater violence than now.
What is happening in Karnataka will happen throughout India, and over not just water but a wide array of resources like minerals, agricultural products and energy sources. And this would happen not just in India but the entire world. The latter’s population, 252 crore in 1950, is set to become 775 crore in 2020, 850 crore in 2030 and 972 crore in 2050. Climate change will worsen the impact of this steep increase as rising or declining regional rainfall and temperature patterns affect cropping by making some crops impossible to grow where these have been traditionally cultivated; floods and droughts caused by excessive rainfall or heatwaves respectively, will play further havoc.
Meanwhile, experts have been saying for some time that water will in future be a cause of war. In India, soaring demands for increasingly inadequate resources, will lead to many more violent agitations like the ones in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. While methods of managing such conflicts will have to be devised, and ways found of both managing with increasingly scarce supplies and enhancing the quantum of the latter as much as possible, all such efforts will not be able to prevent a Malthusian catastrophe if population growth is
not curbed.
India needs to act. Its population, 36 crore in 1951, according to the National Census that year, rose to 105 crore and 121 crore in 2001 and 2011 respectively, and was put at 134 crore in May, 2016. It is set to become 152 crore in 2030 and 170 crore in 2050. The annual rate of growth has doubtless been falling. Its impact, however, will begin to be felt after 2050. The danger of demands on resources rising steeply and the consequent tensions and conflicts escalating to a level where they cause irreversible damage to the law and order situation and the social fabric over wide tracts, is very real.
Clearly, the Union and State Governments need to regard the formulation of a far more effective population policy, leading to a continuing decline in population growth, as one of their principal concerns. Unfortunately, they do not seem to realise this. Not only that, a vocal section believes that all talk of the dire consequences of population increase is alarmist; on the contrary, this country's growing skilled manpower, a spin-off of its growing population, is a huge economic asset.
The skilled segment, however, constitutes only a part, often a small one, of a country’s workforce. Second, it is an asset only as long as the skilled workforce is smaller than the opportunities available to access gainful economic activity. If this is not the case, lack of employment will lead to frustration and anger against the Government, and even the country itself, fuelling extremist and secessionist sentiments. For, the frustration will be all the more intensely felt by those who have spent time and money to acquire specific skills in the hope of these opening up rewarding opportunities but find these elusive. This is certainly one of the main reasons why a number of technically and professionally qualified people have joined Islamist terrorist outfits and Maoist groups in India. They have brought to both movements the tactical and strategic thinking, communication skills and leadership qualities they would have otherwise lacked.
The situation is grim in India from this perspective. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s latest Asia-Pacific Human Development Report, released in April 2016, the size of this country’s working age population increased by 300 million between 1991 and 2013. India’s economy could employ only 140 million of these. Further, estimating that by 2050, at least 280 million more people will enter the job market, the report added that countries like India with large low income populations, big agriculture sectors and large migrations from rural to urban areas, should focus on specific industries, particularly in the manufacturing sector, to create more jobs. The switch, according to it, has led to high job growth in China. “In India, in contrast, the manufacturing base is still small, contributing to only 15 per cent of GDP and 11 per cent of employment.”
The question is: Can India expand its manufacturing sector fast enough to be able to absorb not only the new job seekers but also those constituting the backlogIJ It is difficult to give a positive answer considering past performance. One doubtless hears that India, which has weathered the global meltdown of 2008 and minor tremors during the period of its tapering off, much better than most countries, will succeed in accelerating growth to the extent necessary. Such optimistic assertions overlook that setting up defensive economic bulwarks is a very different process than boosting express growth.
One might, of course, be told not to worry too much. The spread of education, development, the desire for higher standards of life and educating one’s children would lead to people limiting the number of their offspring, which, in turn, will impact on population growth. The argument carries weight up to a point. As pointed out, much will depend on the character and pace of development. It is not just a question of expanding the manufacturing sector. A pattern of development that does this but benefits only the super-rich, rich and the middle classes, and plunges the poor deeper into poverty, would aggravate and not reduce tension and conflict.
India needs, besides rapid, employment-oriented and inclusive development, a package that comprises means of spreading more effective awareness of the urgent need for limiting population growth, expanding the family planning infrastructure, ensuring the easy availability of contraceptive devices and incentives for using these, and undergoing voluntary sterilisation. It will not be easy to devise and implement it. But what is at stake is perhaps the future of the country.