It’s not working. These days, everybody and his grandfather wants to live to be a hundred, even if it’s in a hospital ICU. And if we continue to make babies at the current rate and impose an 18 per cent GST on condoms (28 per cent for flavoured ones as they come under the category of fruits), by 2050, we would have eaten every animal, bird, fish, reptile and insect on the planet, except perhaps cockroaches — which are hard to digest (as many are finding out).By 2100, we just might start eating each other, which is actually not such a bad thing. For the plain fact is that this planet simply cannot support its current population of 8 billion, expected to swell to 12 billion by 2100. A recent study published in Environmental Research Letters reveals that the planet’s resources can sustain only 2.5 billion homo sapiens.Take India — currently 1.4 billion, expected to grow to 1.7 billion by 2070, most of this growth coming from bhakts. Our government, of course, assures us that our fertility rate has dropped to 2.1, less than the replacement rate, and that soon the achche din will be here. I don’t believe a word of it, as all figures released by this regime are fudged. We keep finding innovative ways of reducing our population, on paper at least. For example, the recent SIR has cut the population by nearly 70 million. The government refuses to acknowledge their existence. That should reduce our fertility rate to 1.8 or so, and by the time Mr Gyanesh Kumar completes his unholy exercise, it should be down to 1.5! So you see why the only figure I approve of is that of Jattvibeny Leone: it’s a sight for sore eyes, and that’s been my consistent take for many years.So how do we avoid becoming homo cannibalus? Economists tell us that every problem has a supply and a demand side. In this case, we can do little on the supply side because the babies will keep coming, as long as India remains the third largest consumer of porn in the world. So the solution to this over-population has to be found on the demand side, and I’ve just found one: put a cap on longevity.No one should be allowed to live beyond 75 years; this is not the era of Methuselahs. Pass a law that everyone shall be euthanised once he/she/it reaches the age of 75; it is not enough to put them in the Margdarshak Mandal.Consider the benefits of this drastic final solution. Death will become an appointment, not an accident, and the uncertainty shall be removed forever. We all secretly wish to die in bed of an embolism or heart attack, unaware that we are dead till we find ourselves at the pearly gates, confronted by St Peter asking us for our Aadhaar card or voter ID. But we also know that that is a remote possibility, and that we are more likely to quit this mortal coil because an eagle drops a tortoise on our head (like Aeschylus, the Greek playwright), or on a toilet seat (like Elvis Presley).I personally find this uncertainty very unsettling. I would like to know how and when I’m supposed to go so that I can prepare for it. My solution ticks these boxes nicely.It gets better: your kids won’t throw you out of the house because now they know it will be theirs in any case in a few years. Governance will improve because politicians, judges, bureaucrats won’t be seeking re-election or re-employment. Knowing that they have only a few years left, they would now much rather do those things they always wanted to: that trip to Las Vegas or Sonagachi, dinner at a Michelin-starred restaurant, organise a Satyanarayan pooja for Mr Modi’s good health, or take the shocked wife on a second honeymoon because you missed the first one as you had to go on election duty.Since you will no longer be a drooling, doddering, incontinent octogenarian (you’ll be terminated at 75, remember?), you don’t have to worry about cancer, intestinal blockage, thrombosis, dementia or prostate enlargement, etc. You can die with dignity, dressed in a three-piece suit, not in faded pyjamas or in a towel. You’ll save a fortune in medical bills. Your kids and heirs will also save a fortune on lawyers’ bills. They will dote on you right up till the moment the crematorium door slams down on you with the finality of a Supreme Court order.The government would be ecstatic: its pension bills would decline dramatically, it will no longer have to wrack its brains to find suitable berths for redundant party workers or retired judges, it will save trillions because, with a declining population, there will now be no need to provide for measures against global warming, climate change, and Ayushman Bharat bills. The world as a whole will save sextillions of dollars more once Trump goes under the new law. Sadly, Putin and Netanyahu will still be around.This leaves only one more box to tick: how exactly will these millions of old codgers be dispatched? Well, Elon Musk has the answer — the neuralink brain implant. Designed to be implanted in the brain to control one’s cognitive and sensory functions via a computer, all it will now need is to be equipped with a “kill switch”. This will be automatically triggered once a person reaches 75, stopping all bodily and brain functions in a nanosecond.There is also a Plan B in case the kill switch fails, as it is likely to do in the case of bhakts. These unfortunates shall be locked up in an auditorium and shall have to watch, without any break, 100 episodes of Mann Ki Baat and Ministry of External Affairs’ press conferences. Extensive trials have shown that no one can survive more than 25-30 such episodes, though the process is not entirely painless.The new law should, however, have one caveat — it will not apply retrospectively. This, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that both Mr Modi and I turned 75 last year.— The writer is a retired IAS officer