Solved Exercise for Precis writing with Title “Containing World Population Growth” Precis for Class 9, 10, 11, 12 and Higher classes.

Passages with Solved Precis

To deal with this problem it will be necessary to find ways of preventing an increase in world population. If this is to be done otherwise than by wars, pestilences, and famines, it will demand a powerful international authority. This authority should deal out the, world’s food to the various nations in proportion to their population at the time of the establishment of the authority. If any nation subsequently increased its population it should not on that account receive any more food. The motive for not increasing population would therefore be very compelling. What method of preventing an increase might be preferred should be left to each state to decide.

 But although this is the logical solution of the problem, it is obviously at present totally impracticable. It is quite hard enough to create a strong international authority, and it will become impossible if it is to have such unpopular duties. There are, in fact, two opposite difficulties. If at the present moment the world’s food were rationed evenly, the Western nations would suffer what of them would seem starvation.

But, on the other hand, the poorer nations are those whose population increases fastest and who would suffer most from an allocation which was to remain constant. Therefore, as things stand, all the world would oppose the logical solution.

Taking a long view, however it is by no means impossible that the population problem will in time solve itself. Prosperous industrial countries have low birth rates; Western nations barely maintain their numbers. If the East were to become as prosperous and as industrial as the West, the increase of population might become sufficiently slow to present no insoluble problem. At present, Russia, China and India are three great reservoirs of procreation and poverty. If those countries reached the level of diffused well-being now existing in America, their surplus population might cease to be a menace to the world.

In general terms, we may say that so far as the population problem is concerned a scientific society could be stable if all the world were as prosperous as America is now. The difficulty, however, is to reach this economic paradise without a previous success in mating population. It cannot be done as things are now without an appalling upheaval. Only government propaganda, on a large scale could quickly change the biological habits of Asia. But most Eastern governments would never consent to this except after defeat in war. And without such a change of biological habits, Asia cannot become prosperous except by defeating the Western nations, exterminating a large part of their population, and opening the territories now occupied by them to Asiatic Immigration. For the Western nations this is not an attractive prospect, but it is not impossible that it may happen. Irrational passions and convictions are so deeply involved in the problem that only an infinitesimal minority, even among highly-educated people, are willing even to attempt to consider it rationally. That is the main reason for a gloomy prognosis.

Coming, finally to the psychological conditions of stability, we find again that a high level of economic prosperity is essential. This would make it possible to give long holidays with full pay. In the days before currency restrictions dons public school-masters used to make their lives endurable by risking death in the Alps: Given secure peace, a not excessive population, and a scientific technique of production there is no reason why such pleasures should not be open in everybody. “There will be need also of devolution, of great extension of federal forms of government, and of keeping alive the kind of semi-independence that now exist in English Universities. But I will not develop this theme as I have dealt with it in my Reith lectures on Authority and the Individual”.

Precis

Containing World Population Growth

Abnormal increase in world population is to be brought under balance for, preserving equal distribution of food. There is the need of an international authority to supervise this distribution of food. But the scheme, concerned, has to face a number of difficulties, as the density and scarcity of population vary from country to country and that the quota of food production to be contributed to this system will not be at proportional face with the standard of distribution. The diplomatic gumming’s and bickering also stand in the way. Passions for dominating one another among the major political powers in the world wilt prove yet one more stumbling block to the creation of such an international food-distributing authority. Besides, for the stability of our modem scientific society certain psychological conditions are also to be fulfilled. For instance, the element of fear-complex in the mind of the people of the world must be banished. Finally, individual initiative and individual creative impulse must be given a fair-play by the political authority in almost all the avenues of thought and action.