India intends to harness the passion-killing properties of late-night television to help to control a potentially catastrophic population explosion.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, the Health and Family Welfare Minister, has called for the country to redouble its efforts to bring electricity to all of its huge rural population.

The introduction of the electric light and television sets to those vast areas that still did not have them would discourage procreation, he argued.

“If there is electricity in every village, then people will watch TV till late at night and then fall asleep. They won’t get a chance to produce children,” Mr Azad said. “When there is no electricity there is nothing else to do but produce babies.”

He added: “Don’t think that I am saying this in a lighter vein. I am serious. TV will have a great impact. It’s a great medium to tackle the problem . . . 80 per cent of population growth can be reduced through TV.”

India’s population has trebled since independence in 1947 to about 1.2 billion after an agricultural revolution, which helped to banish famine, and developmental progress extended life expectancy. The country, whose population is growing by about 1.6 per cent a year, accounts for about 17 per cent of the world’s people but occupies less than 3 per cent of its land area.

India’s population is expected to exceed that of China in the next 20 years and experts are warning of violent internal conflicts over resources unless urgent action is taken.

With hardline policies such as China’s one-child-per-couple mandate ruled out as politically inexpedient in the world’s largest democracy, the question of how to cap the population explosion has encouraged lateral thinking. In the Shivpuri district of the central state of Madhya Pradesh, an area known for its machismo culture, authorities offer fast-tracked gun licences to men who have vasectomies.

Mr Azad has also suggested incentives to encourage people to wait until they are in their 30s before marrying. Such a plan would shake up cultural norms in a country where child marriages, a key factor behind high birth rates, remain common.

The minister called on India’s television channels to provide high-quality programmes, arguing that enticing content would offer alternative late-night entertainment.

The UN warned last week that the number of people on the planet — at least 6.7 billion — would double in the next 40 years if growth rates remain unchecked. Singling out India, it said that population explosions risked exacerbating problems such as famine, disease and struggles over resources.

“We are looking at tens of millions more mouths to feed, children to school and people to house in the countries that are least able to accommodate that,” a UN spokesman said.

Professor Arvind Pandey, of the Indian Association for the Study of Population, agreed that television could help to slow population growth. “But it is the education and empowerment of women that is key,” he said.

Cutting numbers

Colombian men have been offered land in two towns on the Caribbean coast as an incentive for undergoing a vasectomy. The 2003 plan was sponsored by a film producer.

Iranian vasectomy clinics were issued copies of a religious edict from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirming that vasectomies were compatible with Islam. The move was intended to slow Iran's birth rate.

In the 1960s the Indian Government tried paying men small cash amounts if they would agree to a vasectomy. But doctors found that they would volunteer several times, for the income.

Jonathan Swift, in his 1729 work A Modest Proposal, suggested feeding the children of poor Roman Catholic families to wealthy Protestant landowners to deal with Ireland’s unsustainable population growth. The satirical piece was attacked as barbaric.

Source: Times Database

Times Recommends

• Violent video games won’t corrupt
• Pope Benedict XVI: Alma Mater
• Chávez should know what’s good for him