Master plan, miss

Public meeting in Bombay in mid-1994 featured several politicians, among them Manohar Joshi of the Shiv Sena, one year away from becoming Chief Minister of Maharashtra. There was some discussion about the increase in India's population. Joshi weighed in with this: "We will not allow Hindus to be overtaken by the Muslim population!" This statement accurately reflected Joshi's expressed sentiment in Anand Patwardhan's film Father, Son and Holy War. He is seen exhorting the Hindu women at an election rally to combat the spectre of a rising tide of Muslims by producing, I swear, eight children each.

Public meeting in Lucknow on January 6 2007 featured a Samajwadi Party politician by name Ahmad Hasan, minister of -- I swear again -- family planning in the Uttar Pradesh Government. This was after a "Pulse Polio awareness rally" to tell people about giving their kids the polio vaccine the next day. Hasan told the Muslim women in his audience that they could "produce as many healthy children as you can afford" and that his Government would give them Rs 1400 for each child.

Good start made by those two, don't you think? (One of them, let me remind you, minister for family planning).

So now we need politicians belonging to your other major religions -- your Parsis, your Christians, your Jains, your Buddhists, your atheists, your typists, your morningmists -- to step forward, pick up this gauntlet, bell the cat with two birds in the hand and run the proverbial 1.6 km with it. That's right: we need all these politicians to exhort their womanly co-religionists to produce major numbers of babies. (Men are, of course, irrelevant to this business).

Right away. Right now. Tonight if possible. No wussy excuses like waiting nine months. After all, our suburban trains -- to pick just one example -- are only packed to 54.73 times their capacity during rush hour. We had better up that to 148.928 as soon as possible.

Then we must immediately demand a backseat at the UN Security Council.

Make that a seat at the UN Security Council.

Better make it an extra large seat. Because we'll have several healthy children sitting there. No space for them here in India. But each one will carry Rs 1400 in cash.