An acquaintance once remarked, “If anybody came up to me and said ‘India’s problems can be solved if the population is reduced by half’, I am willing to die”.

It doesn’t require such a great sacrifice to set India right. Nor does that kind of sacrifice guarantee things will be right in the end. Wasn’t our population half the present size only a few decades ago? Haven’t we managed to bungle? Far from any guaranteed success, we would have the additional problem of disposing off 500 million bodies!