India’s Burgeoning Population
By Dr Arvind Kumar
India is likely to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2025. Accordig to the US Census Bureau forecast, released in the last week of previous month, India would have 1.396 billion people in 2025, surpassing China, whose population growth is more modest. China’s one-child policy since 1980, thogh controversial, has created a more sustainable populaion. However, the population policy in India has been a neglected sector. The sceptre of Emergency excesses in implementing family welfare programmes and the resultant electoral reversals in 1977 still haunts almost all political parties thereby preventing them from taking stringent measures to curb uneven growth in population. Keeping in view the finite resources and shrinking natural resources and exigencies of climate change, some one has to bell the cat some time.
India can learn from the Chinese experience in population control. The average Chinese woman now has 1.5 children in her lifetime, compared with 2.7 children for the average Indian woman, although the so-called fertility rate has also been declining in India due to rising education and urbanization. Much needs to be done to implement the two-child per family norm in the country. Apart from sensitizing the people about family welfare programmes, some incentives as well as disincentives have to be worked out to effect population control. This is a national issue on which all political parties should have consensus in national interest.
