India to Control Population Growth by Giving People Television (Not The Onion)
July 30th, 2009Via: Times Online:
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.”
I went looking through the Cryptogon archives but could not find the device that Kevin and Becky used when they WANTED to have a baby. That would be something so much less damaging to the world and Indian society than hooking them up to the grid and for crying out loud, the freaking television.
My God/dess, its horrific for me to grasp Mr. Azad’s thinking, but I hate to admit it, he’s right about the TV, or electricity in general.
We are all zapped by light and EMF when we look at our computer screens.
But watching a television IMHO is a soul-spirit-libido zapper for sure. TV watching at the heart of it, creates too much inner conflict. Am I good enough, smart enough, sexy enough etc.
So I can agree with Mr. Azad that TV is a great form of birth control.
My Amish farmer- who does not have electricity on his farm – against his religion – is not yet 40 and has 6 kids and number 7 on the way. I’ve taken boxes for his market use and windfall apples to feed his pigs to the storage shed on his farm late on Sunday evenings (with permission due to my weird schedule)and see the ambient, glowing light from one kerosene lantern burning on the first floor. No sound from the house. Looks and feels like a love shack to me. So intimate. It seems so intrusive to drive a car (even though mine is very quiet) onto the premises.
It somehow though, always lifts my soul to have these people in my world who live as they do. Somehow, the experience of knowing and meeting with this family each week seems to cancel out so much of my personal life bad juju.
Come to think of it, didn’t the baby boom after WWII in the US end when the TV was introduced to American households? Wasn’t that a great big condom on the US population boom?
Hi Eileen, it was the Ladycomp. I wrote about it here:
https://cryptogon.com/?p=527
Useless, completely useless thoughts.
He is soooooo 20th century-thinking. Look, today, mobility and flexibility or total darkness (stay-in-the-mud) are the options.
If the only option for a little communication with a girlfriend are the internetz, the internetz will be associated with pleasure, fun and fundamental contendedness of knowing that she is alive and well. This internalized connection will render this plan obsolete. I know that he is talking about TV, but the basic technology is so cheap, mesh-networks and city WANs will be available for almost nothing – and humans will organize. After they get together, the internetz will stay in the social life as it was usual during pre-“marriage” times. And there comes the internalized pleasure. But…what am i writing about workforce? He talks about slums… as if he knows what he is talking about. Maybe the propagandamachine works there, but i doubt it.
Long story short: The porn won’t help you to prevent pregnancy… d’uh.