What are the main recommendation of population policy in India?

Population Policy in India

The size of India’s population has already reached a high dimension. Moreover, presently the population is growing at a very high rate. Existing size of population of the country is quite larger than what it can sustain. Thus all the fruits of economic development are being eaten away by the growing population of the country. Thus the Government should adopt a proper population policy of the country.

As the country is passing through a phase of population explosion, thus the adoption of more positive and more effective policy of population control is very much required in India.

A sound population policy should possess the following short-term and long term objectives:

(i) Significant reduction in the birth rate;

(ii) To stabilize the population through fall in death rate;

(iii) To improve the quality of population;

(iv) To raise the pace of economic development and the rate of growth of per capita income;

(v) To integrate population with economic planning of the country.

National Population Policy of 1976

The new national population policy of 1976 was announced on April 16, 1976.

The main features of the national population policy 1976 are started below:

(i) To raise the age of marriage to 21 for boys and 18 for girls;

(ii) to raise the monetary compensation for individual acceptance of family planning to Rs. 150 for sterilization with two living children, Rs. 100 with three children and Rs. 70 with four and more living children;

(iii) to introduce group’ incentives for the involvement of teaching and medical profession, Zila Parishads, Panchayat Samities, cooperative societies and also labour in the organised sector through their respective representative to national organization;

(iv) implementation of new multi-media national strategy for availing all media-newspapers, radio, T.V., films etc., to move urban approach to rural oriented approach and to spread the knowledge of family planning and family limitation;

(v) To adopt small family norms for the employees of the Union Government and necessary changes to be made in their service conduct rules. The states may also follow the Central model;

(vi) Introduction of special measures to raise the level of female education in all states; and

(vii) Freezing the population base at the 1971 level for 25 years to determine central plan allocations to states and their representation in the Lok Sabha and to Indian Economic Development and Elementary Statistics earmark eight per cent of Central Assistance to State Plans on the performance of family planning.