The world's population has grown more in the last 50 years than it had
             done in the previous 4 million years[1]. This quantum leap in the human
             population has put severe strains on the finite resources and the fragile
             environment of our planet. What is more, the present rate of the galloping
             population growth shows no signs of slowing down, especially in the
             developing countries. Such a high rate of growth is clearly unsustainable
             and needs to be controlled before the runaway human population proves to be
             the ultimate undoing of the human race itself. In this essay I shall
             discuss why the population growth is such a serious problem and the effect
             it is having on the earth's environment.
             Debate about the effects of population growth has raged ever since,
             Thomas Malthus, a British intellectual wrote his famous Essay on the
             Principle of Population in 1798. Malthus contended that the tendency for
             the population was to grow exponentially while food supplies could only
             grow arithmetically. His theory meant that the human population was
             destined to outstrip the global food supplies that would eventually lead to
             widespread starvation and disease. This has clearly not happened[2] so far,
             mainly because Malthus had not foreseen the extent to which technology,
             farming techniques and the Green Revolution' would increase food
             production. (Hardaway 1188) Despite adequate availability of food in the
             world as a whole, the WHO reports that as many as 19,000 people (mostly
             infants and children) die each day from hunger and malnutrition. (Quoted by
             Brown et al, 6) The difference in the situation predicted by Malthus and
             the present scenario is that large numbers of people starve, not due to
             shortage of food, but due to poverty. It is arguable, of course, whether
             poverty too is the result of over-population. The Malthusians[3] fervently
             believe it is so, while the anti-Malthusians are equally...