NEW DELHI: Television is responsible for myriad behavioral and social phenomena, if all research is to be believed. Studies link TV with obesity, violence, sleep deprivation and stupidity. Now, however, an official with the Health and Family Welfare Ministry in India suggests TV can control population growth. Ghulam Nabi Azad reasons that people who stay up late watching TV will be too tired to produce offspring, the U.K.’s TimesOnline said.

Azad is pushing for nationwide deployment of electricity to bring TVs into homes across the over-populated country. India is home to about 1.2 billion people, or 17 percent of the world’s population on 3 percent if its land mass. The country’s expected to surpass China’s population in the next two decades.

“When there is no electricity there is nothing else to do but produce babies,” the Times quoted him saying. “Don’t think that I am saying this in a lighter vein. I am serious. TV will have a great impact. It’s a great medium to tackle the problem . . . 80 per cent of population growth can be reduced through TV.”

One current birth control method involves expediting gun licenses to men who have vasectomies.
-- Deborah D. McAdams