Less Sex, More TV Solution to India's Overpopulation?

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Remember the Indian minister who suggested that late-night television could curb India's birthrate by making people too tired for sex? His proposal to wire every Indian village for boob-tube viewing made the airwaves of CNN this morning when a reporter asked members of the world's second-most populous country what they thought of the idea.

Their reactions don't bode well for the plan. Take Omar Mohammed, for instance, who has never heard of population control in all his 80-plus years. He has 24 children. Education, family planning, and contraceptive programs, of course, are crucial to any attempts by the Indian government to slow its population growth, which is projected to surpass China's within the next 50 years.

But electrifying villages may not be so harebrained an concept, after all. One 2006 study by an Italian sextologist revealed that couples with televisions in their bedrooms had sex half as often as those without. Still, men like Mohammed aren't buying that."After watching TV," he says, "when we look at scintillating things we will probably want to make more children."

[Via CNN]

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