Not many seem to have turned their attention to the issue of population control raised by the incumbent Prime Minister in his address on the occasion of this year’s Independence Day delivered before the large gathering, including school-bound children by their impressive turnout, on the open space facing the iconic Red Fort in the National Capital Region of Delhi. Unarguably, keeping the unabated annual increment to the nation’s headcount, estimated at nearly 15 million, in check ranks at the top of a plethora of concerns riding on the back of, nay bugging, successive Governments. That concern on population control, like the proverbial army uniform fitting every soldier in general but no one in particular, concerns every Indian citizen in general but no adult of reproductive age bracket in particular. Given the feature of all too familiar lack of concern about virtually any concerns both presented by the land’s alert media and talked about among the concerned members of society at large, governing this country is no joke.
American short story writer, William Sydney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry (1862-1910) coined the expression banana republic in 1901 based on his experiences in the economically exploited Honduras of the late 1800s. In Political Science, the term describes a politically unstable country, much like India following the end of colonial rule and coming under the influence of despots at the helm, barring exceptions.
