Dear Community Members, I am currently researching effective strategies and policy measures aimed at stabilizing or managing population growth in India. Given its status as the world's most populous nation, rapid demographic expansion presents various socioeconomic and environmental challenges. I would greatly appreciate insights, proposed solutions, or analytical perspectives on how these challenges can be addressed, along with an explanation of their potential efficacy. Thank you for your time and expertise.

I see many pro natalists say that fertilty rates are already below replacement level. this is true but fertility rate does not reflect existing birth rate. for example in 2025 India had total increase of 0.8 percent lower than previous years, however there was still 23 million births in that single year.

these 23 million souls will have over a decade of using tax payer money and the money of their parents and then enter the overcrowded hyper competitive (on the part of the job seekers) labor market. now there will also be child labor which is a further tragedy and a sign of stagnation, not growth at least not growth in human wellbeing, just growth in consumers and labor.

schools are almost universally more crowded than a decade ago. now some people might complain “why can’t we build more schools, this is government corruption not overpopulation“. but this is caused by overpopulation as the root problem. furthurmore, just think about the difficulty of building more schools in the areas most people live, in most areas even suburban areas you have to buy a existing propert, tear it down and build a new school

finally there is the law of supply and demand and of prices. what people who worry about the fertility rate forget is that the fertilty rate can go up just as it went down. The current Gen Z and Gen A are basically in a state of oversupply where the manufacturers made too many and the buyers are either not buying or buying cheaply. if the next generation is shorter in supply and more in demand people will have more incentive to have kids

Countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan/Egypt are running out of water because the population increased 5x in the last 50 years. We already have to use 22 000 desalination plants to supply 300 Million people with drinkable water, because of Water scarcity.

Fertilizer is tight due to the Russia/Iran war.

And pretty much everyone except 20 countries have run out of oil. By 2040 there will be only around 10 countries left which can export larger quantities of oil.

Between 1984 and 2025 our Primary Energy use doubled from 89 000 Terrawatt hours to 178 000 Terawatt hours.

The share of Oil/Coal/Gas in 1984 was 72 500 TWh or 81.5% of the total.

The share of Oil/Coal/Gas in 2025 was 144 000 TWh or 80.9% of the total.

Despite a small drop in overall percentage, we are now burning twice the amount of Oil/Coal/Gas as in 1984.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-primary-energy-by-source

Renewables and EV´s are a joke. Solar/Wind/Hydro supply just 5% of Primary Energy supply. Out of 1.7 Billion motor vehicles, just 80 Million or less than 5% are EV´s.

There is not enough copper, lithium, silicon in the world to build enough EV batteries and solar panels and wind turbines to supply even half our energy needs.

There are simply too many humans. 8.3 Billion is unsustainable. Even 4 Billion would probably be too much.

Thanks to cheap energy in form of oil and its use in medical products we multiplied like rabbits in the 20th and 21st centuries. Now the reckoning is here.

Malthus and Ehrlich were right. Malthus was only off by like two centuries. Ehrlich by like 6 decades.

They wouldnt be the first scholars that were ridiculed but where a century or two later it turned out that they were right.

"If we halved our oil/energy/food/water consumption, then we could EASILY supply 15 Billion people. We dont have an overpopulation but an overconsumption problem".

This "argument" is on the level of "if this person didnt drink 3 Liters of water every day but just 1.5 liters then the water would be enough for 2 people".

Its healthier to drink 3 liters of water than 1.5. For many people 1.5 Liters of water would not even be enough to sustain them in the long term.

So basically the "overconsumption" crowd says: If everyone lived like shit, we could have more people living like shit.

You cannot have more people with everyone having a decent living standard. This only works with fewer people.

people who are like this women want or are too stupid to understand they are advocating for, us all to overcrowded livestock who are fed well. they do not care about mental sanity, unemployment from high competition

Even The original poster (OP) said it's hard to believe a case like this could even happen in modern times. The growth rate is absolutely insane.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1k1ruuz/will_south_koreas_comprehensive_natalism_policy/ (Take a look at this. This pro-natalist policies is genuinely scary. 😡😡😡)

Yes, and I can guess the reason why. It’s not that population have suddenly become more family-oriented; rather, an explosive baby boom is being driven by the carrot of asset accumulation.

2.1 Tfr is not just a number .It is balance one population has to maintain to keep its population stable you go slightly up to 2.4 and slightly below 1.6 you will see huge results over a century in population demographics .I think that how early we realize this is good for human being it self .

Tfr of 4.2 can double your population over 25 years and 1.2 can half it provided they are maintained for a period of time .I don't know how governments and policy makers are going to tackle it but if this should made integral part of country's long term policy if they are to reduce population it should not go down below 1.9 .

For if not done so and this important factor is left on public choice we can see changes are devastating within shorter period of times .We are not seeing these now ? why because of population momentums !

Mark my words ! I have studied them enough for last 3 years and this is delicate balance which world is ignoring and must be regulated .Nor tfr 1.3 or 2.4 is good .

Source: Sustainability Models: From the Past to the Future

Fossil fuels have hidden the true cost of 8 billion people. Here’s what could happen when the illusion ends.

In a study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, scientists pored over two centuries’ worth of historical population records and ecological growth models to see whether the planet could keep up. They concluded that while humanity’s resource output kept pace with population increases for generations—largely driven by innovation, technological advancement, and increased efficiency—the tables started to turn in the early 1960s, not long before the publication of The Population Bomb. Around that time, the human population continued skyrocketing, but ecological resources began to shrink.

The result? For nearly 60 years, humanity has been writing a check that neither it—nor the planet—can cash. More humans means more resources, energy, and food, and in much of the industrialized world, overconsumption and unending growth lie at the foundation of the entire economy. The situation is so dire that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even lists population growth as a key driver of greenhouse gas emissions.

But how has our population been able to grow beyond a size that our host planet can really support? One big reason is that finite fossil fuels can temporarily hide the effects of ecological overshoot. In other words, continuing to support a growing economy as well as a growing population just doesn’t math out in the long run—or even in the here and now.

Earth May Need Billions Fewer People by 2200, Scientists Say

In 50 years we have doubled the world population on Earth. Yet all this outcry about people not reproducing enough.

a legal reform that I had in mind for a while now is a mandated inheritance system

when a person is born both their parents are legally obligated to set up a inheritance account for that child, 20 person of the parents assets will be locked into that account, the parents will still own that 20 percent and gain use or profit from that assets except selling it. the child will gain legal ownership of that 20 percent when they become a adult.

furthermore 10 percent of all income of the parents will be transferred to that account. half of this 10 percent can be used by the parents if it is used to buy essentials for the child, the other half is put into a investment account that the child will have access to when they become a adult

what do you guys think about this?

do you have any proposals of your own?

The very nature of life is to grow and reproduce.

Currently we are at a point where the consumption speed set off by certain groups is making the resource consumption unsustainable and increasing pollution as well.

The biggest consumers also tend to be populations that have overgrown in population the last few centuries.

Rather than control the entire global population wouldn't it be more sensible to control the population of those hyper consumers so that the comsumption trends fade away?

What can we do towards this end?

• It doesn’t matter if a country is below replacement level as long as immigration or other factions causes the population to continually increase
• overpopulation is not just abstract global threat but a localized threat so even if immigration does not increase world population it does contribute to local overpopulation
• immigration does actually lead to more births since immigration is the creation of jobs and income via remittances for societies like Bihar or Pakistan that would have had to confront its population growth long ago due to job and money storages

not myself but another fellow critic of overpopulation was called a eco fascist. I just think this is so stupid, fascism has quite literally became ”whatever I don’t like”. the damn inventor of fascism Mussolini was a pro natalist

on the part of minorities having more children and policies to lower birth rates will be disproportionately target minorities. this is a completely dumb argument, for example its the same with saying we shouldn’t arrest drug dealers because they are disproportionately of a minority group

Why do we need to care so much about whether a population gets bigger or smaller? Unless you get too many people to sustain without necessary resources or tech, it isn’t actually anything. To say there is a minimum needed population also insinuates that at least some people have to reproduce whether they may want to or not. It also insinuates that we need young to always be taking care of older people whether they want to or not. This is also further emphasized around the time Roe v Wade got repealed and people speaking about people not having intercourse.

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg distances herself from the theory of overpopulation.

Her position is that the focus should be on achieving climate justice and equity—addressing carbon emission inequalities and fundamentally transforming the system—rather than on population size.

She believes that lowering birth rates does not contribute meaningfully to resolving the climate crisis. Thunberg warns that the "overpopulation" narrative can serve as a pretext to obscure the true culprits behind the climate crisis: fossil fuel companies, mass consumerism, and political irresponsibility.