Overpopulation in China and India
China/India Compare and Contrast Essay China and India’s populations have both started to become a serious problem. China’s population is now up to an astounding 1.35 billion as of 2013 and India’s is catching up with China with 1.27 billion. The governments of both China and India were forced to do something about this issue. India has taken a couple different measures to fix overpopulation including forced vasectomies, providing contraceptives, and creating different incentives for women and men to lower the number of children they are having; China was forced to limit its citizen to only one child per family; they went as far as using punishments, both mild and severe, for those that had more than one child. India’s way of dealing with the extreme overpopulation is majority incentive based. The Indian government made goals for the country and their reach practically ends there; they left the decision of what to do about overpopulation up to its many states. Some states reacted with coercion and are succeeding in meeting the set goals. These states pushed hard with serious action such as “forbidding parents with more than two children from holding local office, or disqualifying government workers from certain benefits if they have larger families” (NY Times). Other states have been in idle and done little or nothing about the issue. Other steps take to lower India’s population include “the honeymoon package” that rewards young couples with 5,000 rupees if they wait two years after marriage to have children, if they continue to wait for three years, they then receive 7,500 rupees. (Niambar) Other, harsher methods were used as well, such as the sterilization camps former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi put in place. At these camps there were forced vasectomies; reports say that “103 women were sterilized by two doctors in a single day at the Manikchak Rural Health Center in the Malda district of West Bengal, before being dumped in a nearby field without any