What is currently perceived as a massive, low-tech liability could become a high-value, export-oriented economic engine, points out Ajit Balakrishnan. When I was a student at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, passionately interested in societal trends like all college students from that era, the biggest topic for intellectual debate was -- hold your breath -- 'Family planning as the key to India's economic development'.