demographics

"Assam has been a big victim of demographic change. In 2021, the Muslim population crossed 38 per cent, and as we speak, it is about 39.5 per cent of the state population"

"If people from other parts and communities are excluded, Assamese Hindus are not more than 40 per cent today."

"What we think of as national boundaries can be expected to change, while countries themselves will generally become smaller. With less energy per capita, the quantity of government services provided can be expected to fall. Government organizations can be expected to become smaller and simpler. It is unlikely that democracies can continue; single rulers with a support staff are more likely. Plagues may cause the overall population to fall."

"… any plan to mitigate the effects of human overshoot like climate change, species extinction, pollution, or resource scarcity, with population reduction policies, or a steady-state economy using a full-reserve asset-backed monetary system, or voluntary degrowth, or balanced budgets, will cause a reduction of complexity, and therefore the population and its lifestyle that depends on growing complexity for resources will collapse, possibly quite quickly due to the many self-reinforcing feedback loops in supply chains, and the extreme level of current human complexity and overshoot."

"Degrowth will happen, but it will do so involuntarily due to energy and resource decline."

"[Eight] billion people will die. The bigger question is: will millions still live?"

"Decline does not have to be sudden to be devastating. Instead of a dramatic crash, the world may experience a stair-step descent: recessions leading to energy shocks; energy shocks leading to more recessions; recessions leading to financial crises; each one stripping away another layer of security. Social services erode. Infrastructure decays. Trust in government evaporates. Life [becomes] simpler [and] more local [in] smaller communities. Desperate humans may [exacerbate] environmental destruction for a time, until [their own] populations collapse, too."

"[It's] likely that, within the lifetimes of many people alive today, widespread breadbasket and supply chain failures will rapidly cause horrific famines and migrational chaos for billions, rapidly leading to societal and cultural breakdown..."

"The sudden — and surprising — end of the fossil fuel age will stun everyone — and kill billions."

"Cancer is the only thing in nature that grows indefinitely at the same pace as the human economy. It is no surprise[,] then, that there have been a host of consequences from our political leaders’ endless pursuit of growth. Global warming is the best known, least deadly, and most over-hyped of the fallout crises – resource shortages, soil depletion, deforestation, desertification, species extinctions, agricultural run-off, toxic water courses, are just a few of the less publicised environmental crises that threaten to wipe out billions of humans long before the temperature really starts to heat up."

"Starvation, social strife, and disease interact in complex ways. If famine were the sole mechanism of collapse, the species might become extinct quite suddenly. A population that grows in response to abundant but finite resources, like the reindeer of St. Matthew Island, tends to exhaust these resources completely. By the time individuals discover that remaining resources will not be adequate for the next generation, the next generation has already been born. And in its struggle to survive, the last generation uses up every scrap, so that nothing remains that would sustain even a small population. But famine seldom acts alone. It is exacerbated by social strife, which [hinders] the production and [distribution] of food. And it weakens the natural defenses by which organisms fight off disease."

"[The operative] mechanisms [leading to] the collapse of the human population will be starvation, social strife, and disease. These major disasters were recognized long before Malthus and have been represented in western culture as horsemen of the apocalypse. They are all consequences of scarce resources and dense population."

"People who believe that a stable population can live in balance with the productive capacity of the environment may see a slowdown in the growth of population and energy consumption as evidence of approaching equilibrium. But when one understands the process that has been responsible for population growth [the extraction and use of fossil fuels], it becomes clear that an end to growth is the beginning of collapse."

"Peak [living] human population will… lag… peak [extraction of] oil and peak [extraction of other] mineral resources until these conditions express themselves as food shortages. This means that the human population will continue to rise for a while, even as we begin to encounter these… limits. It’s not possible to estimate how much the [living] population will increase because the relationship between energy and mineral resources and food production is a very fragile equation, subject to any number of discontinuities. To these, add the complications of weather disasters arising from climate change, including drought, the spread of plant diseases, and so forth. This lagging further rise in [the living] human population will only make the inevitable contraction more acute once food shortages begin. […] We're putting a strain on everything the earth has to offer us. While the combination of peak stuff and… billion[s of] [living] humans is forcing the issue, ...the truth is that circumstances will now determine what happens, not policies or personalities. […] Population overshoot is therefore unlikely to yield to management. Rather, the usual suspects will enter the scene and do their thing: starvation, disease, […] violence […] [and] death […]."

"… technology use harnesses far more energy and materials than we could ever manage without it, and while doing so may make our lives much easier and more comfortable, it comes at the cost of increasing ecological overshoot. As we increase overshoot, we concomitantly increase all the symptom predicaments that overshoot causes. Technology use also has another nasty side effect. It reduces and/or eliminates negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in check. Many diseases we once suffered from like smallpox, measles, whooping cough, tetanus, etc. have been temporarily eliminated by the technological development of vaccines. Our medical industry has also wiped out many other diseases through proper sanitation, use of antiseptics, anesthetics (allowing surgeries to correct most internal ailments), antibiotics, antifungals, and antivirals to kill or prevent many diseases, and many other innovations that allow us to live better, more comfortable lives. The development of indoor plumbing, electrical systems, heating and air conditioning systems, insulation, refrigerators and freezers, and cooking devices all allow us to accomplish daily tasks either much easier or provide more comfort to us by regulating temperature and humidity levels in our living spaces. Therefore, technology use reduces or removes negative feedback, thereby promoting population growth, which also promotes technology growth. However, in terms of reducing overshoot (and symptom predicaments such as climate change, energy and resource decline, pollution loading, and biodiversity decline), technology use is maladaptive. This will become painfully clear as time moves forward when more or different technology does not actually solve overshoot. Population decline is what will actually work to reduce overshoot, caused by the failure of our agricultural systems, increased disease caused by antimicrobial resistance and new viruses emerging, and increased failures of infrastructural systems caused by extreme weather events. Reduced technology use will be facilitated by this mechanism, and all species [will ultimately experience] die-off..."

"A basic understanding of overshoot reveals that our modern industrial way of life is unsustainable at anything like its current scale and intensity. Whether as a result of pollution or resource depletion, human population and per-capita consumption will peak and start to decline, most likely during the next decade or two. But it gets worse: during our brief binge of industrialism we humans have found strategies (including corporate globalization and the proliferation of credit and debt in a widening variety of forms) to maximize consumption in the short term; when these strategies inevitably falter, the result will likely be an even faster decline in population and consumption than might be expected on the basis of ecological factors alone."

"Humans, like many mammals, have hormonal and genetic mechanisms that help control procreation. In good times females reach puberty earlier, and their chances of getting pregnant are a bit higher. In bad times puberty is late and fertility decreases."

"One doesn’t even need a model to put the main pieces together: [the] human population has been significantly inflated by [the] extensive exploitation of a non-renewable finite resource. Because the declining availability/use of that resource is inevitable (and likely near-at-hand), it stands to reason that present levels of population will be unsustainable—and that the necessary transition down from an overstuffed population will be very difficult to bear. The world left in the wake of our binge will be less able to support us than the one we inherited, exacerbating the hardship."

"The attrition of global populations by disease may be unavoidable. Some readers may regard it as the inevitable revenge of nature against the hubris of a human species arrogantly exceeding the carrying capacity of its habitat. Some may regard it as a moral victory against wickedness. Some may view it in the therapeutic mode as a positive development for the health of the planet. Many self-conscious "humanists" have militated for the goal of reducing population growth—though most of them would have probably preferred widespread birth control to a die-off. But that kind of thinking might have been just another product of the narcotic comfort of cheap oil, as merely stabilizing the earth's population at current levels (or even 1968 levels) would arguably still have left humanity beyond the earth's carrying capacity. Apart from these issues of attitude and ethics, however, a major decline in world population, or [a] change in demographic profiles, is apt to have profound and strange repercussions on everyday life."

"… the coming century contains a population problem that should be of great concern because of the ongoing momentum that will cause global population to crest just as global population growth hits its nadir. This means that the resource scarcity problem foreseen by Malthus will become most severe just as the technological solutions provided in the past become most costly to produce. Ironically, the population problem foreseen by Malthus is one where declining population growth rates may be the primary reason for substantial increases in global resource scarcity."

"Detritus ecosystems are not uncommon. When nutrients from decaying autumn leaves on land are carried by runoff from melting snows into a pond, their consumption by algae in the pond may be checked until springtime by the low winter temperatures that keep the algae from growing. When warm weather arrives, the inflow of nutrients may already be largely complete for the year. The algal population, unable to plan ahead, explodes in the halcyon days of spring in an irruption or bloom that soon exhausts the finite legacy of sustenance materials. This algal Age of Exuberance lasts only a few weeks. Long before the seasonal cycle can bring in more detritus, there is a massive die-off of these innocently incautious and exuberant organisms. Their "age of overpopulation" is very brief, and its sequel is swift and inescapable."

"The first dramatic effect of food shortage is upon fertility."

"A lot of technologies have been utilised in storing food or growing more of it. And we know that increased access to food increases population size. The reverse is also true, of course, so we should expect population to fall as harvests come under stress from the effects of climate change. […] At every possible fork in the path of the future, humans, generally, will always choose the route that gives them more convenience or more comfort. Only when none of the possible routes provide that option will humans start down the contraction and lower energy path."

"In nature, population overshoot is usually remedied by a higher die-off rate, not a lower birth rate."

"We cannot know in advance exactly how the economy will [reduce] its energy consumption, besides regionalization and pushing the US dollar (at least partially) out of being the reserve currency. Some other areas where the physics of the economy might force cutbacks include the following: Vacation travel; Banks, insurance companies, pension programs (much less needed); The use of financial leverage of all kinds; Governmental programs providing payments to those not actively in the workforce (such as pensions, unemployment insurance, disability payments); Higher education programs (many graduates today cannot get jobs that pay for the high cost of their educations); Extensive healthcare programs, especially for people who have no hope of ever re-entering the workforce. In fact, the population may start to [decline due to] epidemics, poor health, or even [insufficient] food. With fewer people, [the] limited energy supply will go further."

"[The world] population may shrink for multiple reasons, including poor nutrition and epidemics."

"The low-fertility trap, once in place, is irreversible."

"There are more forty-year-old women than there are thirty-year-old women, who outnumber twenty-year-old women. That's what makes population decline so implacable; once it sets in, it’s virtually impossible to stop, because every year there are fewer women of child-bearing age than there were the year before."

"All of this is completely, utterly wrong. The great defining event of the twenty-first century—one of the great defining events in human history—will occur in three decades, give or take, when the global population starts to decline. Once that decline begins, it will never end. We do not face the challenge of a population bomb but of a population bust—a relentless, generation-after-generation culling of the human herd. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

"Among millennials, especially, the fertility rate is very low. Between 2007 and 2012, the birth rate among Americans who came of age after 2000 dropped by 15 percent, to the lowest birth rate ever recorded in the United States: 0.95, less than one baby for every mother."

"In the 1990s, as the consequences of a chronically low birth rate begin to sink in, Ottawa opened the floodgates, inviting 250,000 immigrants a year to come to Canada."

"With populations aging and declining almost everywhere, countries may one day be competing for immigrants."

"On a farm, a child is an investment—an extra pair of hands to milk the cow, or shoulders to work the fields. But in a city a child is a liability, just another mouth to feed."

"The ultimate measure of human success is not production but reproduction. Economic productivity and profit are means to reproductive ends, not ends in themselves."

"Fertility, sexuality, strength, and the ability to create and nurture life: These were the powers of women ... It was a ripening, yes, but not just for the purpose of bearing children, or being a wife. It represented a claiming of one's self..."

"A dynamic and evolved care model focused on body literacy, cycle tracking, and individualized women’s health markers, [Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM]) practitioners work to restore a woman’s reproductive health to conceive naturally. Several large groups and clinics have formed over the years to support and expand this version of care, describing it as the superior option for women and couples. RRM practitioners typically identify treatable underlying causes for infertility, such as low estrogen and progesterone, insulin resistance, thyroid disease or dysfunction, and endometriosis, resulting in improved fertility and healthier patients."

"Fertility meant nothing to us in our twenties; it was something to be secured in the dungeon and left there to molder. In our early thirties, we remembered it existed and wondered if we should check on it, and then—abruptly, horrifyingly—it became urgent: Somebody find that dragon! It was time to rouse it, get it ready for action. But the beast had not grown stronger during the decades of hibernation. By the time we tried to wake it, the dragon was weakened, wizened. Old."

"Food supply has been made heavily dependent on fossil fuels, whose inevitable decline very likely partners with a population decline."

"Baljit Rai, a retired police officer who was a personal witness to India's failure in con­tain­ing the rising tide of il­legal im­migration from Bangladesh, refu­tes this ar­gument by poin­ting to the birth rate among Kerala Muslims, who have a high level of education and a relativ­ely high stan­dard of living. Mani Shankar Aiyar had clai­med on the basis of statewise figures for the south­ern states that "Muslim birth rates in all these en­light­ened states are very much lower than Hindu birth rates in unen­lightened states like Uttar Prad­esh". However, Rai's clos­­er­­ analy­s­is of the figur­­­­­­­­­­­­­­es­ shows that the Kerala Mus­lims have a higher birth-rate than the natio­nal Hindu average and even than the Hindu average in poor and back­ward states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan: the population growth (+28.74% for 1981-91) in the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram (with female liter­acy at 75.22%, far higher than among Hindus in the Hindi belt) is more than twice as high as the aver­age for Kerala (+13.98), and well above the Hindu national aver­age (+23.50). A secularist journalist confirms: "In spite of this 'near total literac­y' the popula­tion growth rate of Muslims who constitute one-fourth of Kerala's population is as high as 2.3 per cent per year, which is more than even the natio­nal PGR [= population growth rate] of 2.11 per annum and is almost double the PGR of Hindus in Kerala it­se­lf.""

"The clearest eye-opener is the birth-rate in the relatively affluent Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in highly-literate Kerala; at 75.22%, the female literacy rate in Malappuram is twice as high as for most Hindu communities in the Hindi belt. In the decade 1981-91 its population grew by 28.74%, well above the national average of 23.50% and more than twice the Kerala average of 13.98%. This disproves the usual excuse that the birth-rate automatically follows the poverty rate and the illiteracy rate. Most Hindu Scheduled Caste people whom I know have settled for smaller families, but by and large, Muslims have not changed their appetite for large families. Ever since the propagation of birth control among the Hindu masses, rich and literate Muslims have more children than poor and illiterate Hindus."

"What may cut short all denials of this continued pestering of Hindus in Muslim states, are the resulting migration figures: in 1948, Hindus formed 23% of the population of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan), in 1971 the figure was down to 15%, and today it stands at about 8%. No journalist or human rights body goes in to ask the minority Hindus for their opinion about the treatment they get from the Muslim authorities and populations..."

"It's roughly a 40/60 split. We have more large concentrations of people than we've ever had before. That is new. And those concentrations themselves, they have momentum."

"Thus, we encounter a scenario of ‘missing Hindu population’ in the successive census periods. The extent of this missing population was about 1.22 million during the period of 1974-1981, and about 1.73 million during the last intercensual period 1981-91. As many as 475 Hindus are ‘disappearing’ every day from the soil of Bangladesh on an average since 1974. How this phenomenon would be interpreted in terms of demography? The relevant parameter is obviously ‘migration’ which provides a clue to the missing link."

"In 1951, after the dust of Partition-era transfers settled, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus in East Bengal was about three and a half to one. Three years after Bangladesh won its independence, the ratio of Muslims to Hindus was still only a little higher than six to one,. By 2001, Muslims outnumbered Hindus by a ratio of almost eleven and a half to one. Bangladesh's Hindu population is dying. ... A the time of India's partition in 1947, they made up a little less than a third of East Pakistan's population. When East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971, Hindus were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than eight percent today. (30)"

"The most severe anti-minority activity, however, has been directed at Hindus, in part because they are the largest religious minority, in part because of the larger Hindu-Muslim conflict that so characterizes South Asia. Hindus are not safe in Bangladesh; not from radicals, not from their government. They were almost a third of the population after the population transfers that accompanied the Indian subcontinent’s 1947 partition. After Bangladesh gained its independence, they were less than a fifth; thirty years later, less than one in ten; and several estimates put the Hindu population at less than 8 percent today... Professor Sachi Dastidar (2008) of the State University of New York estimates that about 49 million Hindus are missing from the Bangladeshi census. This is not a phenomenon, as apologists try to assert, that is a mere consequence of demography or the actions of a small group of radicals. Rather, as Samir Kalra (2012), Senior Director and Senior Human Rights Fellow of the Hindu American Foundation, notes, there have been “nearly 1,200 incidents of violence directed against religious minorities (mostly Hindus) between 2008 and 2011.”"

"That this natalist position has struck roots among ordinary Muslims may be illustrated with the case of Moham­med Tofazzal Mollah: he was sacked as Imam at the village mosque of Bahipara (northern Bangladesh) because his wife had been sterilized after having given birth to six childr­en. The village population ral­lied behind the two Maulanas who had issued the fatwa condemning the poor Imam."

"In Pakistan and Banglad­esh, the Mus­lim per­centage has con­tinually increased, partly by pester­ing the non-Muslims out, partly by conver­sions under pres­sure (pres­surizing people to marry their daugh­ters off to Muslims, allocating jobs on condition of conver­sion, etc.), and partly by higher birth-rates. Bangladeshi Muslim expan­sion has al­ready destroyed the Chakmas and other non-Muslim popu­lat­ions in the Chitta­gong Hill Tracts, with the eth­nically cleansed minorities fleeing to India's North-East, there to create friction with the host popul­ation. But the most wor­rying from the Indian viewpoint is not the rise in percentage but the rise in absolute figures: in parts of Pakistan and in the whole of Ban­gla­desh, sheer living space is becoming extremely scarce, and these countries may pursue a policy of pushing their surplus population into India."

"Immigration from Bangladesh is of two types. Firstly there are members of the minority communities fleeing occasional waves of per­secution or the more general sense of being second-class citiz­ens under the Islamic dispensation. Few Hindus would disput­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­e their right to settle down in India. Secondly, there are Mus­lims seek­ing econom­­ic oppor­tunities or sheer living space, which dirt-poor and inten­sely overc­rowded Banglad­esh cannot offer to the ever-larger num­bers of newcomers on the hous­ing and labour market... The BJP argues that refugees from persecution and illegal economic migrants merit a different treat­ment, as is assumed in the arrangements for refugee relief of most countries. But sec­ularists see it differently, for "unlike the BJP, the Congre­ss (I) views both Hindus and Muslim from Bangladesh as in­filtrat­ors". Terminology is a part of the problem here, with secularists systematically describing Hindu refugees as "migrants" if not "infiltrators", and Muslim illegal immigrants as "refugees"... The Hindu population in East Bengal had declined from 33% in 1901 to 28% in 1941. It fell to 22% by 1951 due to the Partition and the post-Partition exodus, and to 18.5% in 1961. By 1971, it had fallen to 13.5%, partly due to the 1971 massacre by the Pakistani Army, partly due to intermittent waves of emigrati­on. The 1981 figure was 12.1%. In 1989 and 1990, due to "large-scale destru­ction, desecration and damage inflic­ted on Hindu temples and religious institutions", "clandestine migrat­ion­­­ by the Hindus to India went up"."

"A 1992 report prepared by B.B. Dutta for the North-Eastern Congr­ess Coordination Com­mittee meeting in Guwahati looked into both types of im­migration and notes: "Between 1971 and 1981, Bangladesh census records show a reduc­tion of 39 lakhs in the minority population. "Between 1981-89, 36 lakh religious minorities were missing from that coun­try."

"“You know, the worst thing is that a mass exodus from the country has begun. There seems to be no way to stop it. The government always says that the Hindus are not leaving the country, but this is not true. Maybe you've read about itin the Desh magazine published in Calcutta. Apparently at least 150,000 Bangladeshis have infiltrated into Indian territory, and the majority of this number have not returned. In the last two decades more than half-a-million people belonging to minority communities have been forced to leave the country. Note what has been said in six census reports. In 1941, the Muslims were 70.3 per cent of the population, while the Hindus were 28.3 per cent. In 1951, the Muslims were 76.9 per cent and Hindus were 22.0 per cent. In 1961, the Muslims constituted 80.4 per cent, Hindus 18.5 per cent. In 1974, there were 85.4 per cent Muslims and 12.1 per cent Hindus. In 1991, the Muslims were 87.4 per cent, and the Hindus approximately 12.6 per cent. What do we understand from this? That every year the number of Muslims is increasing, while that of the Hindus is decreasing. What is happening to the Hindus? Where are they going? If the government insists that they are not migrating, then how will they explain away the figures of the census? Do you know the latest about the new census? Apparently Hindus and Muslims will not be counted separately.’ “Why not?’ “Because, the Hindus are dwindling so rapidly they may as well be clubbed with the Muslims, instead of being considered a separate entity,’ Kajal Debnath said sarcastically. “This government is very shrewd, what do you say, Kajal-da?’ Suranjan said."