Essay on Population Explosion:A Grave Challenge

Essay on Population Explosion:A Grave Challenge

Introduction:

India is the second most populated country of the world, next only to China and has been pursuing a policy of planned devel­opment for the desirable improvement in agriculture and industry to achieve self-sufficiency in all spheres especially economy. As such, it is very important to curb the rising trend of population growth in order to achieve the desired results.

Development of Thought:

One of the most serious problems that India faces today is the problem of overpopulation. In our country, a baby is born every two seconds i.e., more than 40,000 children are born everyday. If the present tread continues, our population might touch the fantastic figure of a thousand million at the turn of the century.

The evil effects of over­population are too obvious to need any explanation. Pt. Nehru once remarked, “India’s population problem is not one but 400 million problems”. Today this number has swelled up to 810 million.

The uneven distribution of population in the world has severely affected the fragile ecological balance in many countries. The unbridled growth of human population has also brought problems like unemployment, urbanization, pollution, etc.

Here, in India, it is necessary that the problem of population growth is attacked on a war-footing. The masses have to be motivated and not coerced to adopt family planning. And the best method to motivate is to educate. The education of women, in particular, should receive greater atten­tion of our planners.

Television can play a very useful role in this area. Living standards of the people should be raised and health care and educational institutions should be actively involved in the family planning drive to supple­ment the efforts of the Government.

Conclusion:

We should not spare any attempt to educate our people and convince them of the benefits-both social and individual-about the check in growth of population as well as calculated steps towards health and pros­perity.

The statement that our teeming lions have set at naught decades of devel­opmental efforts, overcrowded our cities and rendered living conditions appalling has become trite. Yet, the fact remains that in the face of such obvious chaos all around, population growth continues to be unrelenting.

The 2001 census figures place the number of our compatriots in the region of 1.027 billions. India added 182 million people between 1991 to 2001 which is more than the estimated population of Brazil. By 2035 the population will touch 1.46 billion outstripping China.

The population of the northern state of U.P. was 166 million, more than the population of Pakistan. While these are disturbing enough, what is even more alarming is the fact that a good proportion of the female population today is in the age group of 20-35.

That should set back our population control efforts by a few decades at least. Given the immutable Indian preference for large families and more sons, given the political attitude towards population control, is there any way out of the gloomy prospect?

It is well-known that India’s population will overtake China’s in the third decade of the next century. At the rate we are going, we will have the dubious distinction of being the most populated nation in the world, having at last over­taken our neighbor China. India with 2.4 per cent of the area of the world has 16 per cent of its population.

In fact, the problem of rapid population growth is one of the serious prob­lems confronting mankind. Statistics reveal that the rate of population growth is higher in the less developed countries than in the developed world.

Therefore, any development policy in a developing country must encompass the problem of population growth as also the social, environmental and technological phenom­ena. This could be done in respect of a country as a whole or on an inter-regional basis within the country.

Countries, in Europe, the USA, Canada, and Japan have birth rates below 20 per thousands, and death rate below 15 per thousand, so that the population growth rate is below 1.5 per cent.

On the other hand most countries in Asia and Latin America have birth rates above 3.7 per thousand and growth rates above 2.0 per cent. A large proportion of the world population (71.5 per cent) is concentrated in the economically less developed countries.

So far, demographic issues have not yet been integrated in our scheme of life. To most of us, vitalism is dominant and life is sacred. It is not yet appre­ciated that any population strategy will serve in a more effective manner if it is combined with achieving a better quality of life.

For the economic planners, an understanding of the socio-economic determinants of population trends is essen­tial in the formulation of appropriate measures and strategies to raise the levels of living.

In the primitive societies, where resources were abundant, the rearing of many children into healthy and useful adults was not overtly difficult. The community and the family did not have to count the cost of institutionalized health care and education, for instance.

On the other hand, the child contributed to the welfare of the family and community by the work he or she learnt to do at an early age. This still holds good in some parts of the world.

In India too it is not easy to counter the poor peasant’s argument that the more children he has. The better-off he is. But as we move inexorably towards more development, the investment per child inevitably becomes much greater both for the family and the community.

By and large, the biggest increase will be in the poorest countries which are the teast able to support them. As a result of this increase, the availability per person of critical resources such as water, fuel wood and crop land will drop at an unprecedented rate.

Even without increased per capita consumption in devel­oping countries, the projected doubling of world population in the next century is likely to further degrade the critical-support systems of the planet.

In many areas, population densities by far exceed the carrying capacity of the physical environment and could ultimately threaten the very eco-system on which human survival and economic development depend. Even though the number of children per woman has decreased, the number of women of child-bearing age has in­creased more rapidly.

On a national scale, the age structure of a country’s population is crucial to development planning efforts. On an international scale, the implications of this rapid population growth are enormous for regional and global environmental issues such as climate change.

A very youthful population such as in most developing countries or an aging population like in many industrialized countries has different implications for future population growth and for social needs.

The youthful age structure of the population in much of the developing world would mean that the absolute num­ber of births and the total population will continue to rise rapidly for the next 20 or 30 years, if present trends continue.

While Europe’s population would grow- by only 4 million between 1991 and 2025, that of tropical Africa would grow by 826 million, and that of South Asia, by 920 million,

There is hardly any issue on the global environmental: agenda unaffected- by population growth- Poverty, demographic dynamics, human settlement, fragile ecosy6tehis. Agricul­ture, biodiversity, pollution of rivers and oceans, and others.

Just to survive, burgeoning populations place ever-larger burdens on water, farmland, forests and coastal habitats. As those natural resources deteriorate, “environmental refugees” flee to urban areas, where sanitation and other basic services are overloaded.

While the impact of population growth varies from place to place and from one environmental domain to another, the overall pace of environmental degra­dation has been accelerated by the recent expansion of the human population.

The concentration of population growth in the developing countries and eco­nomic growth in the industrialized countries has deepened, creating imbalances which are unsustainable, in either environmental or economic terms. High rates of population growth can dilute or negate modest gains in national economic growth.

The migration of millions upon millions of people into large cities is another great issue of humanity in the present century. This surge of migrants to the World’s cities poses a major challenge to sustainable development.

Cities currently account for two-thirds of the population growth in the developing world, the United Nations projects that by the year 2000 there will be 60 metropolitan areas with four million or more inhabitants. So rapid is the projected growth over the next decade that more than half of humanity are expected to be living in urban areas.

By the end of the 1990s, Mexico City will have 26 million people, Sao Paulo in Brazil 22 million, Mumbai and Kolkata in India and Shanghai in China each more than 15 million. Urban sprawl in these countries is closely- linked to rapid population growth rates.

It is also fed by massive rural-urban migration from villages and remote towns to large cities, in the belief that urban centers provide better job opportunities, social services and wages.

Mexico City, Kolkata and Cairo are examples of explosive urban growth in the Third World, which has resulted mainly from unprecedented rural-urban migrations and high natural population increase.

Many migrants live in abject poverty in cities. Their swelling numbers far outstrip the availability of shelter, potable water, jobs, transportation and clinics.

According to the World Bank, about a quarter of the urban population in devel­oping countries was living in absolute poverty in 1988. By the year 2000, more than half the poor will be concentrated in urban areas.

Already, the beginnings of environmental disasters are being felt. They range from air pollution, faecal contamination of drinking water and hazardous waste pollution, to depletion and degradation of freshwater resources, occupation of high-risk land, and damage to eco-systems and cultural property.

Family planning has played an integral role in reducing fertility throughout the world. At present, the total fertility rate (TFR) is thought to stand at 3A children born to the average woman.

The WHO report shows that the fertility rate in developing countries declined from 6.1 children per woman between 1965 and 1970 to 3.9 children per 6 women between 1985 and 1990. This corresponds to a rise in the use of contraceptives in developing countries from 9 percent in 1965 to 1970 to 51 per cent between 1985 and 1990.

Over the past 25 years, the TFR has dropped from 5.9 to 2.4 in East Asia. 6.0 to 3.6 in Latin America, 6.0 to 4.4 South Asia. 6.9 to 5.1 in the Middle East and North Africa and 6.7 to 6.6 in sub-Sharan Africa.

Largely because of China’s strong popula­tion control programme, which resulted in a total fertility rate of 2.3? Rates in East Asia have declined dramatically over the past four decades.

Countries such as Singapore. Thailand. Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India have also made significant progress towards lowering birth rates, yet the absence of reproductive freedom, discrimination against women, and poor-quality family planning services hamper these efforts and jeopardize their environments and food producing capacity.

The situation is worse in India, which has had a family planning programme since 1951. Its population of about 882 million is growing at about 2 14 percent per year, compared to 1.5 per cent per year for China’s population billion. India is expected to replace China as the most populous country by 2035.

It has a new model plan for improving family planning services, but still has to convert it into action in hundreds of thousands of villages. Its official goal is to reduce the TFR by 50 per cent by the year 2000.

At the second International Population Conference held in Mexico City in 1984 all the 149 nations which participated, unanimously agreed that socio­economic, development and population are clearly inter-related.

In India, due to rampant illiteracy and widespread ignorance a large majority disbelieve that less children are hindrances to their economic interests because, for them it means less work hands. However the reality is that high population growth rates have a negative effect on economic growth rates, especially in developing countries.

But there is also the more significant plane at which the output itself is affected by the rate of population growth. This is essentially because of a reduction in savings for investment and diversion of larger amounts of resources to welfare and to indirectly productive investments such as health and education needed to support a shooting population.

The Indian state has to sponsor and heavily subsidies these projects not only because it is a welfare state, but also because, if some of these investments are withdrawn, the speed and structure of economic expansion could be impaired by the resultant lower productivity of an uncared labour force.

India being a democratic welfare state is committed to provide jobs for as many people as it can. This has lead to over staffing and thereby under employ­ment. Both together synergistically lead to gross inefficiency. This has contrib­uted to both the public sector and the government being in the red.

According to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 1993 all over the world, economies grow faster than jobs. This in effect means jobless growth.

Literacy and a small family size seem to be directly proportional it is generally believed that a higher literacy rate in a region, especially female literacy, promotes the acceptance of family planning methods. However a new study paints a different picture.

It says there is no correlation between female literacy and the population growth rate (PGR). For example, while the female literacy rate of W. Bengal and Maharashtra increased by 16.90% and 15.72% their PGR also showed an increase of 0.12% and 0.10%. Compare this with Rajasthan where the female literacy grew only by 9.42% but PGR dropped by 0.35%. Gujarat is a sort of combination of both, with a female literacy growth of 16.20% and a decrease of PUR by 0.53%.

Similarly, there was no correlation between total literacy rate and PGR. With increase in total literacy PGR de­creased in 11 states (Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Manipur, Punjab, Rajasthan and Sikkim) and increased in seven states (Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Tripura and W.Bengal), and remained unchanged in two states (Uttar Pradesh and Orissa).

The only state which follows the rule to a ‘T’ is Kerala where both illiteracy and PGR have decreased consistently. Hence, it can perhaps be reasonably concluded that a person’s ability to sign his name, (a criteria adopted to declare a person as literate) has nothing to do with his ability to wear a condom! Therefore, literacy should not be viewed as a sure fire means to achieve population control.

With growing numbers the problem of employment also grows. While on the one hand staff in government and public sector offices are underemployed, on the other the number of unemployed persons keeps on rising.

The problem, is compounded when the unemployed are educated. They become a public nuisance’ and are unwilling to take on an unskilled job.

According to the statistics released by the Deptt. Of Economic Affairs, there were 36.5 million applicants on the live registers of Employment Exchanges in India during 1992-93. In the same period placement was effected for 2.11 lakh people.

According, to the Planning Commission’s estimates, 3 million educated people are added to the labour market every year. This may increase because of expan­sion of the educational facilities. There is also a decline in the intake of the organized sector, which attracts the educated.

The Tenth Plan faces the daunting task of creating job opportunities against a potential job demand of more than 70.14 million persons per year. The tenth plan seeks to create 29.6 millions jobs annually. Normally, about 45% of the jobs go to the educated.

More than half of the world food output is gorged by the rich who constitute less than 30% of mankind, while the 70% poor are left to struggle and scramble for the remaining food output. After the Green revolution India’s food produc­tion increased and after the Fifth Five year Plan India became self-sufficient in food.

But self-sufficiency has not ensured availability of food to all. Human beings can survive on much less quantity of food than what is optimum.

They can live at least for limited periods of time, at the Malthusian level of bare subsistence i.e. on a food supply just sufficient to sustain life in India; one in every three person lives under what is by itself a bare-bones poverty line of $ 100 a year. Thus, owing to weak buying power, a very huge number of Indians are eating much less than they should be.

The projections indicate that by the year 2000, the majority of the population would have a very limited purchasing power and at the given rate of inflation, food may become a scarce commodity for the common man.

Health conditions around the world have improved more over the past 40 years than in all of previous human history. However the conditions are still bad in the developing countries and they have an adverse impact on family planning (FP).

Complications of pregnancy and childbirth claim the lives of about 400,000 women each year in developing countries where maternal mortality ratios are up to 30 times higher than in the high-income nations.

According to the World Development Report, while India spends $ 18 billion on health against $ 13 billion in China with a much larger population, health in China is better than in India. While the IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) is 29 per thousand in China, it is as high as 90 per thousand in India.

Even the under-five mortality rate is as high as 142 per thousand in India while in China it is just 42 per thousand. In countries with a high IMR couples do not tend to accept contraceptive or sterilization methods, as there is no guarantee for their children surviving.

However, an interesting fact to be noted is that, globally, the health standards have gone up. Even a child born in a developing country who could expect to live up to the age of 40 in 1950, has an average life-span of 63 years. But the improved health deli very system has led to a new problem-that of managing population or a substantial part of the population being old people.

This is one of the three health challenges before the world now, the other two being AIDs and drug resistant strains of disease. It has been estimated that the world will he inhabited by 1.2 billion people above 60 years of age by 2020 AD. And 71% of these are likely to be in the developing world.

The older elderly (80 years of age and above) will increase twice as fast as the younger elderly (between 60-8( years. This has happened in Thailand and in Kerala India). In Kerala, the number of people who will be 70 years old in 2020 AD. Is expected to rise to 5.8 per cent from the present 3.2 per cent.

Indeed, Kerala has the largest number of old age homes in the country. At the national level the figure will jump from 3.3% in 1980 to 5.3% in 200() AD; and 13.3% in 2025 A.D.

The basic point that needs to be made is that we are in a disaster situation a far as population is concerned and, therefore, have to make urgent and con­certed efforts to bring down the increasing rate of population. The first thing that is needed is a breakthrough in contraceptive technology.

If we can put up our own satellites, if we can develop missies that can carry various elements with them, why have our scientists not been able to affect a break-through in contra­ceptive technology? Western pharmaceutical companies seem to have lost inter­est in contraceptive technology.

This is an area where we must have a major break-through. What we really need is either an anti-pregnancy vaccine, on which Professor Pran Talwar has been working for the last 20 years or a pill which is available like a pill of aspirin.

We are still dependent very largely on operative techniques, on vasec­tomies and tubectomies which are very effective. But they do impinge physically and psychologically upon the most sensitive elements of the human anatomy.

If we can get a break-through in non-invasive techniques, it could make a vital difference.

The welfare of children, maternal and child health care are absolutely essential for ensuring lower fertility. It may appear to be a contradiction in terms, but the lower child mortality rate, the lower is the growth rate. Where the mor­tality rate is high, the family tends to have many more children because they are not sure how many are going to survive.

Wherever children are well looked after and the mortality rate of the child falls, the fertility rate also falls. Therefore, the integrated child health care programme is extremely important.

This involves immunization to pregnant and nursing mothers; nutritional inputs to infants; and a whole gamut of medical and child care facilities up to the age of five.

Thirdly, we have to develop some kind of old age insurance or pension. It is all very fine for intellectuals sitting comfortably in cities to say that everybody should have only two children, whether it includes a boy or not.

But when we talk of the villages and of poor people, when the girls get married and go away who is actually going to look after those people when they are old?

This may not be a fashionable question to ask, but is a valid question, not something which can be dismissed as an outmoded form of thinking.

The only way one can deal with it is to develop gradually some kind of an old-age pension for people who, after 60 to 65 years, cannot work, so that they are convinced that there is some sort of a ‘safety net’ even if they do not” have a male issue.

The fourth point is that population control is not something than can be done merely by government or by adopting policies in Parliament. What is required is a mass movement, a National Movement for Population Control. This must involve the Central government.

State governments, local bodies, corporations, municipalities, Zila Parishad, and panchayats, because unless these bodies are deeply associated, the nation is not going to get the desired results.

It is no use simply talking in urban areas, because in any case small family norms are much more popular there. It is the rural population which must be involved.

We should involve not only the Chambers of Commerce and Industry but also the entire industrial sector, the working class sector and organised labour. Labour could be an extremely effective instrument for motivating the working class in view of the concentration of people who can be easily reached.

Some progressive and enlightened industrial houses have already started paying attention to population control.

We must also invoice non-governmental organizations, particularly women organizations. For example, the Family Planning Association, of India, which has not branches all over the country, could play a very meaningful role in this context.

Women are the key to the whole problem. Apart from these, youth organizations. Trade unions and co-operatives must be associated. We should also put population values into our educational system.

Indeed we should not leave anybody out, including religious leaders. One of the problems faced in the earlier experiment was that a feeling developed, rightly or wrongly, that some communities were deliberately opting out of the family planning process.

That feeling, unfortunately, had a very negative impact on others. Actually, the statistical figures did not prove that conclusively, but none­theless there was a feeling

So if we are really now going to have a second try at the population policy, we have to involve the religious leaders of all communities together.

Even in a Roman Catholic country like Italy, the growth rate has fallen despite the strong attitude taken by religious leaders of a certain community there therefore once you get to the people and explain to them that it is in their own interest that they should adopt the small family norm, and if we can go through the religious leaders, the message will be result oriented.

In the first few decades since Inde­pendence, the slow pace of economic growth ironically ensured a fast rate of population growth. However, in the eighties, there was it significant upswing in growth rates, poising the economy on the threshold of a higher rate of growth in the Eighth five year plan.

The acceleration of economic growth has also been accompanied by the launching or fruition of a whole series of programmes of direct poverty alleviation and social development.

A Minimum Needs Programme, Rural Employment Guarantee Programmes and family asset creation programmes for those below the poverty line have resulted in a sensible decrease in absolute and relative levels of poverty.

According to Dr. Vasant Gowarikar former scientific adviser to the Prime Minister the growth rate of India’s population will stabilize around the replace­ment level in just a decade’s time. His argument runs thus: – Between 1911 and 1931 there was hardly any population growth as the number of people being born and the number dying was nearly the same at 48 per thousand.

But in the thirties the death rate started going down while the birthrate remained the same. Later as a result of the Green revolution and improved socio-economic condition of landed farmers the birth rate for the first time in many years dropped by four per thousand in 1981 followed again by a 7.6 per thousand decline in 1991. Further decline is something we can definitely look forward to.

Meanwhile changing social mores, and outlook, like the lesser number of Persons entering matrimony, the more number ending up in divorce, and increas­ing homosexuality will lead to a significant fall in birth rates. Diseases like AIDS and natural calamities like drought.

Earthquakes. Tsunamis and famine will con­tinue to take a heavy toll of human life. Perhaps the world will not have to wait for 2035 AD the year that China’s population is expected to begin declining after attaining the 1.521 bill ion mark.

In fact, population control should be a subject of national consensus. The damange that has been -done to the national interest by making population control a subject of political controversy is absolutely impossible to compute.

Hundreds of billions of rupees have gone to create all the infrastructure that is necessary, but we have already reached such a huge figure that even if our population growth rate begins to fall, it will at least take 25 years before our population begins to stabilize. So the country must realise that it is facing a disaster situa­tion.

It is a difficult path, but there are no soft options. We are going through a multi-dimensional crisis in India today. It is an economic crisis, a social crisis, a political crisis, a spiritual crisis.

It seems that the great vision of those who led our freedom movement is disappearing, and we seem to be caught in a welter of negative thinking.

Many people have virtually given up hope. They may be right, but if we lose hope, then any chance of making it is also lost. We need not only a renewal of interest in population control but also a renewal of faith in ourselves, in our cultural heritage and in the capacity of democracy.

The whole world is moving towards democracy, and in our country we find democracy itself is under tremen­dous pressure.