Though as a journalist, I mostly write about politics and economics, quite early in my career I became interested in a subject not directly political or of pure economics, yet impacts on both: Population. My interest was largely motivated by my own country, India, where its exploding population was impeding the well-being of Indian society.

Let me present one telling statistic. When India got its independence in 1947, its population was around 360 million. Today, it is 1.2 billion, more than three times as much (the statistics for Pakistan are even more startling, from a 35 million population to 185 million, a six-fold increase). No rocket science needed to conclude that if India had been able to control its population growth rate, its people would have been better fed, educated and housed.

In 1947, almost half of India was covered by forests that teemed with an incredible variety of wildlife. Now, the forest cover is down to 20 per cent, with several species of fauna and flora either extinct or on the endangered list, the tiger and the lion being the most prominent.

Anyway, when I was between jobs two decades ago, I approached the United Nations with a proposal to write a book on the population issue. Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani doctor, was then the head of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). She liked my idea and gave me the green signal to write about how some developing countries had been successful in curbing their population growth rates through voluntary means (India was not one of them, as it had not been successful, and China, though successful, had used coercive policies). Eight countries were chosen. Two of them were Islamic — Indonesia and Tunisia — and three Roman Catholic — Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. The point I wanted to make was that there was nothing intrinsic in these two major religions that went against family planning. I should also add that Iran, Turkey and Bangladesh have since then recognised the importance of family planning and taken the necessary measures to curb population growth rates.

My book was released at the momentous 1994 Cairo UN Conference on Population and Development. I found that though a number of factors went into a successful policy, two of them were absolutely essential: Literacy, particularly female literacy, and good healthcare.

With a good healthcare system in place, children then had a good chance of living to a ripe old age. If a couple were sure of that, they would have fewer children. Literacy, too, was crucial, because people, especially women, had to be educated to understand and appreciate the importance of family planning. It really boiled down to plain common sense and the political will to push the right policies through. An offshoot of my interest in population issues was an invitation from the Washington-based Population Institute to be Chairman of their Global Media Awards Committee. This gives annual awards to those from the print and electronic media whose writings and documentary films, even cartoons, have highlighted the population problem. Which is how I am sending this column from New York, where I am at the awards function. The USA does not have a significant population problem. Its population is increasing, but mainly from migration. And migration has been the life and soul of the USA. Indeed, the USA is a nation of migrants, a cliche but true.

However, many thoughtful Americans have begun questioning their hallowed immigration policy, in particular pointing out the millions, including Mexicans, Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, who have illegally come into the USA, many over the Mexican border. Be that as it may, population is one of the leading problems of the world. It affects almost every aspect of our lives. Poverty and hunger are linked to it. So are climate change and global warming.

“The more people there are, the more their energy needs,” says Robert Walker, President of the Population Institute. “And energy means the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil, which in turn leads to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere — the main reason for warming of the earth’s surface.” Last October 31, the world’s population reached the seven billion mark. And it is still growing by an unsustainable 75 million a year, almost all the growth being in the poorest parts of the developing world.

The UN projects it will reach nine billion by 2050 and then soar to over 10 billion by the end of the century. We have been warned. We must act fast to avoid the impending disaster.