What has over four billion arms and legs and will likely add about 80 million more per year? The answer, unfortunately, is not a mythical beast. It's India, which would also be the correct answer to these: What country covers less than 3% of the world's surface but houses over 15% of its population? What country is projected to overtake China as most populous by 2050?

But this is the same nation that houses the third largest scientific and technical work force in the world, and is second only to the U.S. in the production of computer software. Despite a drop in India's fertility rate over the last 50 years from 6 to 3.4 children per woman it’s unlikely that the country will realize its economic potential without stabilizing its population.

Overpopulation underlies and perpetuates several problems that have already hampered India's development. More than 50% of the country's adults live on less than $1 a day. A similar proportion is illiterate. Malnourishment and poor sanitation are rampant, with over half of India's young children without access to proper nutrition and nearly that number without safe water. Over 70% of the population has no access to proper sanitation.

These figures are expected to grow alongside India's population. Similarly, overpopulation clearly erodes the environment; India's water table has dropped several feet per year, and Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai already rank among the world's ten most polluted cities. Overcrowding and unchecked population growths have been linked in general to other negative environmental changes (e.g., erosion of farm soil), increasing gaps among socioeconomic classes, an upswing in global disease rates, and civil conflict.

But how does a country even begin to address a problem this large, with such calamitous implications? First, it's important to understand the sources of India's overpopulation. Post independence, the country's population surged as birth rates outpaced mortality rates, due to healthcare improvements.

Poorer segments of the population have always yielded a greater number of children per family, with the view of offspring as sources of labor and security-especially as their parents face old age. The preference for sons-another contributor to overpopulation cuts across class lines, with daughters seen as less likely sources of income and as greater liabilities (i.e., requiring dowries).

Solutions to India's overpopulation- both historical approaches and emerging ones-generall  include components of laissez faire, force, and provision of education/opportunities. Policymakers had initially hoped that economic development would naturally slow the country's population growth. But Indira Gandhi-and, subsequently, her son Sanjay - took a much more active tack in the 1970's by suspending the constitution and forcing sterilization among the poor, often with only nominal compensation (e.g., transistor radios). Stuck between these extreme approaches, India's population policy stagnated for a long period.

More recent policies have tended toward education, with the belief that family planning should be voluntary. For example, the country dropped a plan to limit potential candidates for political office to individuals with no more than two children. One new government program-that is already attracting controversy known as National Rural Healthcare Missions aims to provide women acting as local "educators" with incentives for reductions in their villages' birthrates.

Some fear that this program will motivate its employees to push sterilization over the potentially less effective option of contraception, thereby raising the risk of AIDS and other sexually transmitted Diseases.

The most promising solutions involve the provision of better education and job opportunities for India's poor, especially the women and children. Greater levels of education-and, as result, literacy--for women would likely lead to marriage and childbirth at later ages, which should drive fertility rates down. Similarly, more job opportunities for women would make them less likely to depend on early marriage as a means of economic sufficiency. And educating the children of India's poor may lead to their being perceived as individually more valuable-because each could earn more as a skilled laborer-which would shift the emphasis from quantity of children to their "quality," in economic terms.

Comparing the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Kerala may see evidence of the effectiveness of such measures. UP, which still relies on policies such as gun-licenses-for-sterilizations, has a population growth rate of 26% and a female literacy rate of 43%. In contrast Kerala, which has placed increasing emphasis on education for women over the last 15 years, has a growth rate of less than 10%, with female literacy at nearly 90%.

But the most promising solutions to India's overpopulation would also be the most expensive ones, at least initially. That leaves policymakers with a more complex riddle: What set of measures will stabilize the country's population without breaking its bank? The answer to this one remains to be seen. But unless it is addressed, India will become a problem with no solution: a country whose blooms of economic potential have been crushed by the dense, weighty soil of its population.