Molina’s Planet is Full

Molina Morales, 35, was alone with her children in a remote village up in the Sonoran heights of Mexico. She was nine months pregnant. Her husband was far away with the builders in a valley of a rich country. She was in pain. She was afraid and anxious. Her last baby could not struggle much and died in her womb causing her unbearable pain. As this time also the pain was overcoming her, she took her best kitchen knife. How often she used it to clean a slaughtered animal for the kitchen. She slit her belly and then her womb to help the baby have a caesarian birth. Having relief from the pain she sent her eldest son, a 14 year old boy, to the only nurse in the village, beyond the next hill. The nurse sewed the cuts with sewing needle and cotton thread. Then they took a taxi. After almost a day’s drive they reached the nearest hospital. Molina and her baby both could be saved. A glorious Molina with a hilarious achievement.

Glorious? Hilarious? Or was it a matter of remorse, pity or dumbness? It was her ninth child.

In the 60’s in a demographic essay published in a journal like Newsweek or Time the author warned that the world population will rise even with one child per woman. For many of us it appeared as a paradox. Today our planet is already overpopulated. This planet is, so to say, infested with human beings. This is seen most vividly in India.

Professor Tobjorn Caspersson from Stockholm was visiting our laboratory in Benaras. I was asked to take him around in the town. After parking we were walking to see the famous Dasashwamedh Ghat. He started to take pictures. When I asked him to wait with taking pictures, because we did not yet reach that Ghat, he said, he has never seen so many people so close to each other.

Western people in their fascination for India may say:
- “India is a beautiful country. Is it not?”
- “Yes, of course, it is, but only in spots free of human habitation, where there are no Indians”

In the crowded cities and towns of India hardly anything is left with natural beauty. Instead they are littered with man-made trash.

About a decade ago on landing at Bombay Airport I saw in the local newspaper a report of parliamentary enquiry commission. Villagers complained that tigers are menacing them. They are snatching away not only cattles but also their field workers even during day. They could not get any help from the hunters of the Forest Department. Armed Police from the nearby station also did not come. The enquiry commission reported, it was not that the tigers are disturbing the village. The villagers have extended their fields into the protected areas for the tigers. Somewhere else in India people are having daily contacts with lions, crocodiles, snakes and elephants.

India is a highly congested country. The number of people living in a square mile in China is 430, in Germany 600 and in India 800. What about U.S.A.? Here we have plenty of space, enormous opportunity for growth and prosperity. We hear sky is the limit. Cars and homes are getting bigger and bigger. Some may also think of having better and bigger elephants. Here in U.S.A. towns are growing and roads are increasing.

Did we not already strike the limit of growth also in U.S.A.? Last year three incidents were reported in our local newspaper within a course of three weeks which reflect the realities of this country.

School children went for hiking in the State of Massachusetts and met a bear. Panic stricken they run. Thereby one boy died of exhaustion and heart failure. In California a family went out for a weekend outing. At dusk the mother, while getting some food from the parked car, was attacked by a cougar. Her husband and two children rushed for help. For a while they had to fight the beast. The mother was relieved but lost one eye. In Tucson, Arizona, families moved in their homes in a newly developed area of the town. Seven people were bitten by rattle snakes, two of them died. Elsewhere people are forced to build home at dangerously low lying areas or at mountain inclines, which get either flooded or washed off. That means even the South-West of U.S.A. has almost reached the limits of growth.

At the same time Molina Morales, the glorious mother of nine, is neither alone nor isolated in a geographical region. It is also not the poverty and want of alternative entertainment that drives Molinas to bed giving us oversized families. Also the privileged Molinas with better means of livelihood and some degree of education are indulging in having excess of children.

Many consider children as God’s grace. Here in the South-West it is the belief of Hispanics and Latinos. Here and elsewhere it is also the Catholic belief and practice to have larger families. In yet other places it is the Islamic belief to collect God’s grace in the form of children. Besides burdening our planet it has got a number of other collateral effects.

Israelis are criticized of killing Palestinians in number. It was perhaps a collateral blast of a shell in the Gaza strip. A Palestinian family was having a picnic: the man with the youngest of his three wives and 13 children. Casualties were naturally high. In Berlin if a collision of two cars causes high casualties, immediately the involvement of Turkish cars will be suspected.

If families are large they may become poorer and the members of those families may suffer to have healthy food and necessary education or vocational training. On top of their poverty they may also have high rate of unemployment. Immediately then they may shout that the society is discriminating against them. Such complaints are audible in Arizona, North Ireland, Paris, Israel as well as in India, Thailand and Philippines.

Demographic census of several countries since the advent of family planning indicated that birth rate receded in Jew, Hindus, Protestant and Buddhist communities, but not in Muslim and Roman Catholics.

Molinas, Marias, and Mumtajs along with their partners are to be taught that the children are not simply God’s gift but the result of their unprotected intimate activities of love and lust.