On one of my recent train trips Delhi-Chennai-Bangalore-Delhi, I couldn’t help but contemplate the amount of uninhabited land that one comes across. With that kind of land, one wonders why we cry of overpopulation? Is it because we intellectuals sit in overcrowded cities and think that the problem is of overpopulation! Missing the wood for the trees?

We did a little basic calculation. If you provide every family in India a 1200 sq ft flat and lay them side by side and take into account factors like habitable land in India, ecological footprint etc, we could all live in the state of Meghalaya. Is there really any such problem as overpopulation? Or is it one more convenient excuse of the state for its past poor performance and future garnering of resources?

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The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the authors. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of CCS.

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Naveen Mandava

Naveen is Co-Founder at XamCheck, an organization that partners with schools, supporting them in processes they follow, with learning materials and processes that are all crafted to work together as an interconnected system to drive learning. He is a Doctoral Fellow from RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, United States of America. He has worked extensively on assessment based decision support for governments, non-profit organizations and schools chains in India and the USA for over 10 years. He has been a Lead Consultant with the World Bank’s Innovations for Poverty Action Consortium, a Policy Analyst with RAND Corporation and a Research Manager at Centre for Civil Society.