It's not working. These days, everybody and his grandfather wants to live to be a hundred, even if it's in a hospital ICU. And if we continue to make babies at the current rate and impose an 18 per cent GST on condoms (28 per cent for flavoured ones, as they come under the category of fruits), by 2050 we would have eaten every animal, bird, fish, reptile and insect on the planet, except perhaps cockroaches, which are hard to digest (as Mr Modi is finding out). And by 2100, we would have started eating each other, which is actually not such a bad thing.

For the plain fact is that this planet simply cannot support its current population of eight billion, expected to swell to 12 billion by 2100. A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters reveals that the planet's natural resources can sustain only 2.5 billion sapiens, homos included.

Take India — currently at 1.4 billion, expected to grow to 1.7 billion by 2070, most of this growth coming from bhakts. Our government, of course, assures us that our fertility rate has dropped to 2.1, less than the replacement rate, and that soon the acchhe din will be here. I don't believe a word of it, for all figures released by this regime are fudged.

And we keep finding innovative ways of reducing our population, on paper at least. For example, the recent SIR has cut the population by 70 million — people who don't exist because they have been deleted from the voter rolls. The government refuses to acknowledge their existence. That should reduce our fertility rate to 1.8 or so, and by the time Mr Gyanesh Kumar completes his unholy exercise, it should be down to 1.5!

So you see why the only figure I approve of is that of Sunny Leone: it's a sight for sore eyes, has been consistent for many years, and what you see is, as........

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