One of the best letters to emerge in a long time is "Census of Nepal-2021, THT page 4, Jan 31" by Ujwol Shrestha.

I share Shrestha's sentiments that decreasing population is not an indicator of labour shortage, empty villages, contraction of the economy, loss of youth and growing older population. These are all untruths that spring out from ignorance.

How? Look at Qatar, a country of fewer than 3 million people, Switzerland or Israel, with fewer than 10 million people or our hobo politician's favourite, Singapore, of only 5.5 million. Compare this with our own: 29 million-plus. The number of people aged 65-plus in Japan reached 36.4 million last Wednesday. All the countries mentioned are way above the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal in the economic index, despite our population count being higher than Qatar, Israel, Switzerland and Singapore or younger than Japan's.

Compare our population with our next door neighbour, an emerging superpower. The unemployment number is 52 million in a nation of 1.35 billion.

Some 12.5 million candidates applied for 35,000 jobs.

We don't want to have the problem that our neighbour faces, do we? Think where India would be today in economic terms if they had only 20 per cent less population. People might argue India would not have seen the development without 1.35 billion people. But what can 52 million unemployed contribute? Nepal's population density is nearly half of India's at 203 per sq km. Despite this, our problems stemming from the population are acute and beyond the capacity of the government to manage.

The explosion of the population is neither good for the families nor the country. So, like Shrestha, I welcome any decline in our demography that will improve the quality of life of the Nepali brethren. Tracts of forest and nature reserves, full rivers with cleaner water; happy, smiling mountains; fresh, dust-free air, swathes of farmlands, and more gods than people and temples than houses will turn us into a happy nation with prosperous people.

Years ago, my favourite Radio Nepal jingle was 'Santan le danda kanda dhakos nabhana'. The second one was 'Nanu, hathi ra hathi chap chappal ustai ho', which has come true. I am waiting for the prediction in the first jingle to come true. If we can further knock down the growth rate, to slightly above zero, we might manage our population well.

I received an A+ grade for my paper supporting forcible sterilisation as a family planning mechanism in the short term. I created a furore in college. Fortunately, we do not need such an extreme step to control the population in the country.

A version of this article appears in the print on February 4, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.