In the midst of political uncertainty and communal fury over the past few decades, the problem of population explosion has been relegated to the background. Neither the social scientists nor the political parties or the governments seem to think it necessary to focus attention upon what is surely the most crucial single problem facing the nation. There is no dearth of studies and views of the scholars to highlight the fact that India is falling behind in the race for economic and human resources development mainly because it has not shown much progress in containing its population growth.
Increase in Population
India with a population of about 1,210 million (in 2011) accounts for 17.5 per cent of the world population. It is the second largest country in the world, next only to China with a population of about 1,341 million (in 2010). Six countries (China with 19.4%, India with 17.5%, US with 4.5%, Indonesia with 3.4%, Brazil with 2.8% and Russia with 2%) account for nearly half (49.6%) of the world population. In other words, the population of India, at 1,210 million, is almost equal to the combined population of USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan-the population of these six countries totals 1,214 million.
Causes of Population Growth
1) Widening Gap Between Birth and Death Rates
The average annual birth rate in India, which was 42 per thousand population in 1951-61, came down to 24.8 per thousand in 2011. The death rate also came down from over 27 per thousand population in 1951-61 to just 8 in 2011 (Census of India, 2011). Thus, since birth rate has shown a moderate decline and the death rate has gone down rather sharply, the widening gap has increased our population rapidly. The total fertility rate (average number of children born per woman) came down from about six in the fifties to three in 2011. Yet, for the past ten years, the median household size in India has stayed out at less than four children in cities and between four and five children in villages. If we add the annual figures of abortions (6.20 lakh in 2010-11) to the estimated annual number of live births (2.05 crore in 2010) that take place in the country, we come to the shocking conclusion that in this age of family planning, one out of every four Indian women in the reproductive age group of 15-45 years is pregnant at any time.
2) Low Age at Marriage
Child marriages have been very common in our country. According to the 1931 census, 72 per cent marriages in India were performed before 15 years of age and 34 per cent before ten years of age. Since then, there has been continuous increase in the mean age of marriage among both males and females. At present, in India, average age for men is 26 and 22.2 for women. The average age at marriage of females increased from 17.7 in 1971 to 18.7 in 1981 to 19.3 in 1991 to 20.2 in 2001 and 22.2 in 2011. Against this, for males, the corresponding figures are 22.7, 23.4, 24, 24.8 and 26 (medindia.net). Thus, though the age of marriage has been continuously increasing, yet a large number of girls even today marry at an age at which they are not ready for marriage either socially and emotionally, or physiologically and chronologically.
3) High Illiteracy
Family planning has a direct link with female education, and female education is directly associated with age at marriage, general status of women, their fertility and infant mortality rate and so forth. According to the provisional report of the 2011 Census, the overall literacy percentage in India is 74.04 as compared to 64.83 ten years ago. The male literacy percentage is 82.14 while the female literacy percentage is 65.46. Education makes a person liberal, broad-minded, open to new ideas, and rational. If both men and women are educated, they will easily understand the logic of planning their family, but if either of them or both of them are illiterate, they would be more orthodox, illogical and religious-minded. This is evident from the fact that Kerala which has the overall literacy rate of 92.92 per cent and female literacy rate of 91.98 per cent (in 2009) has the lowest birth rate (14.70 per thousand) while Rajasthan's appallingly low female literacy rate of 52.66 per cent (in 2009) gives rise to the third highest birth rate in the country (27.20%), the highest having been registered in Uttar Pradesh (28.70%), followed by Madhya Pradesh (27.70%). These statistical figures hold good for most of the other states too.
4) Religious Attitude Towards Family Planning
The religiously orthodox and conservative people are against the use of family planning measures. There are women who disfavour family planning on the plea that they cannot go against the wishes of God. There are some women who argue that the purpose of a woman's life is to bear children. Other women adopt a passive attitude: "If I am destined to have many children, I will have them. If not, I will not have them. Why should I bother about it"
Indian Muslims have a higher birth rate as well as fertility rate than the Hindus (Muslim women having fertility rate of 4 as compared to 3 among Hindus women). According to surveys conducted among the Muslims from time to time, it is found that despite awareness about modern family planning methods, most of the respondents-both male and female-were either against using them on religious grounds or they lacked clear and adequate knowledge about them
5) Family Planning
India was the first country to evolve a government-backed family planning programme in the 1950s. Developing countries like Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea that followed suit have successfully stabilized their population growth but India, even after 63 years, is trailing behind. Indira Gandhi government at the Centre implemented a forced sterilization programme. A separate Department of Family Planning was created in 1966 under the Union Ministry of Health. During the notorious emergency regime between 1975 and 1977, the Indira Gandhi government at the Centre implemented a forced sterilization programme against popular wishes and even used such harsh and coercive methods that today one is reluctant to talk of family planning to the populace. The programme is still criticized, and is blamed for creating a public aversion to family planning, which hampered government programmes for ad che decades. In fact, for all practical purposes, the country is without an effective jective programme for containing growing population. Political parties studiously racep dirt the subject, and election campaigns are conducted without a word of it. integre What was once a highly dramatic political issue has suddenly become taboo
A New Approach
A social policy with a new integrated approach to population stabilization has now been adopted. Following are the components of this new approach:
i) Target-free Programme
A significant shift in the family planning programme is the introduction of target-free programme from April 1996. Targets were a major obsession in our family planning programme in which village patwaris, school teachers and government functionaries had to achieve the minimum targets of sterilization and other measures. Postings, promotions and transfers of functionaries depended on the fulfilment of targets. A target-free approach is indeed a welcome change. But only time will show the extent to which the estimated 25 lakh personnel involved in family planning activities will succeed through the new package of reproductive and child health (RCH) without empha- sizing on achieving the set targets.
ii) Bottom-up Approach or Decentralized Participatory Planning
Hitherto, planning was done at the top level and percolated down to the grass- roots for implementation. Now, the programme is to be chalked out at the village level in consultation with health workers of sub-centre and PHC, ie, male and female workers (ANMs), panchayat members and active individuals. Planning for the district will be the aggregation of PHC plans plus the require ments of district hospitals. These District Plans will together make the State Plan and the State Plans will be aggregated to prepare the National Plan.
iii) State-specific Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) Strategy
Since states display a wide variation in health parameters, such as infant mortalities, maternal mortalities, birth rates, etc,, area-specific RCH approach has been worked out separately for three groups of states plus the special category states where considerable infrastructure input flows from state health systems projects.
iv) Integrated RCH Package
It provides a minimum model framework for reproductive health services at different levels in the district, namely, sub-centre, PHC and district hospitals. These services are related to prevention and management of unwanted pregnancy, maternal care, services for the new-born and infants, and management of STDs.
Increase in Marriage Age
There is a direct relationship between age of marriage, size of family and attitude towards family planning. Several scholars have devoted their sttention to explain this unprecedented phenomenon in Kerala. During the 1950s, population growth in the state was one of the highest in the country. However, by 1970s, it began to fall significantly and subsequently became the lowest among the Indian states. During 1981-1991, the growth rate dropped to 14.3 per cent and in the next decade it further came down to 9.4 per cent whereas the corresponding figures for India were 23.9 per cent and 21.3 per cent. This all happened due to the rise in age at marriage and higher level of contraception. Sociologically, this is an important reason for the dramatic decline in birth rate in Kerala. Raising the marriage age is, thus, bound to reduce the family size in other states too. This calls for serious and whole-hearted efforts for creating the necessary public awareness.
Economic Development
Economic development may prove to be the best contraceptive. We have to go for quick population control at any cost on sheer economic principles of supply and demand. To balance any economic equation, we can either increase the supply which depends on both financial and material resources, or reduce the demand which depends on the number of people asking for varied services and commodities. For example, on the supply side, in housing alone, an annual outlay of Rs 10,000 crore would be required to build four million houses for the 16 million people added to country's population every year, assuming that we require only Rs 2.5 lakh to build one small house. But if we tackle the same problem from the demand side and prevent the annual addition of 16 million to the population through an effective population control strategy, the demand for three million houses or Rs 10,000 crore required per year for constructing the houses will disappear. Thus, preventing the demand is as good as working for the supply. This is balancing the supply and demand at no cost. And, it is the no-cost solution we are looking for. What applies to housing also holds good for education, jobs, transport and health sectors. Tackling each problem from the demand side will have an enormous pay off
Conclusion
The population policy of our government should aim not only at controlling the unregulated human growth of numerical strength (population explosion) but also at checking the unregulated movement of population and the increasing concentration of people in the urbanized areas (population implosion), and providing adequate living space and attractive environment to heterogeneous mixture of people (population displosion). These goals have to be jointly linked with the formulation and implementation of policies aimed at population regulation and planning for harnessing both natural and human resources. Thus, only population growth per se may not be perceived as a problem but its relation with the availability of resources may be viewed with great concern
Population Explosion in India