Letter to the Minister of Health and Family Welfare

By Anavil Jaiswal:

Dear Ghulam Nabi Azad Ji,

Greetings. This is a citizen of the magnificent nation India. This letter to you is not an act of condemnation; rather it is a true concern of a person who wants to draw your attention to the calamitous consequences of the ever burgeoning population of our country, which is often considered as an elephant in the room. Being the seventh-largest by geographical area, ours is the second-most populous country. Right from my childhood, I have been witnessing as well as suffering with its negative repercussions, which is not the case with me only, the effect affects one and all, to you too.

Especially for a common man, since the time a baby breathes in the open air, he has to vie for his existence. Even in the hospital, he has to seek some sort of quota to earn a place to begin the journey of his life. At that time he is not aware that this is just his welcome to this world, the whole party of a manmade challenging life, awaits ahead. Gradually, he enters in the babyhood and along with his parents, has to face intense competition to secure an admission in a so called ‘good’ school. As he proceeds further, he is pressurised to stand out as a topper in his studies throughout his formative years, which will probably prove helpful to him in attaining a job, especially a ‘government’ one. Owing to huge population, he dwells an insidious life, full of traffic jams, insalubrious pollution, diseases, inflating prices of even the basic needs, unemployment, a dearth of facilities like shortage of water and electricity supply… the account of the issues is endless.

Numerous issues existing in daily life act as a hindrance in the path of his success, to his becoming a happy citizen. These issues altogether cost him of the most significant assets in life, i.e. time, health, money, etc. Even, his thinking ability is drastically affected as he is mostly engrossed in fighting with the sundry concerns. This leads to the overall loss of the nation also that of the mankind. That one baby, one child, one individual represents every citizen of our country. Now, imagine the loss incurred, integrated at a national level with more than 1.2 billion people.

For a mother, her love is same for her ten children as that for one or two. So, it’s better to enjoy smaller families. It’s my earnest request to you to form efficient policies, make stringent rules and check their implementation so that this rapid growing population can be arrested and even I humbly appeal to the ‘contributors’ to the same, to please co-operate so as to make our nation full of progress and prosperity. Also, let us not compete with China in terms of population, there exist sundry other fields to prove our ‘talent’ and our ‘potential’.

Jai Hind.