September 30th, 2007 
Deepak WILL POPULATION BE A BOON OR A BANE FOR INDIA?
According to the 2001 Census, India’s population was 102.9 crores. Viewed in a global context, India constitutes 16.9 per cent of world population and 2.4 per cent of the global land area. Currently, India’s population is estimated to be around 111.2 crores.
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The population of India grew by 21.6 per cent in the first decade following Independence; the rate rose to 24.8 per cent during the next decade. The growth began declining from the third decade onwards and in between 1991 and 2001; it declined to 21.5 per cent. Despite population growth in India declining steadily over the last two decades, the population size is increasing because of the high proportion of young people in the reproductive age group. The population size will continue to grow for some more time because of the “population momentum“ factor. The high population growth rate in some parts of the country is due to the large size of the population in the reproductive age group, higher fertility due to lack of contraception, and high wanted fertility due to the high infant mortality rate (IMR).
According to the report of the Registrar General of India, Technical Group on Population Projections:
(A)The population of India is expected to increase from 1,029 million to 1,400 million during the period 2001-2026-an increase of 36 per cent in 25 years at the rate of 1.2 per cent annually.
(B)The Crude Birth Rate will decline from 24.1 in 2004 to 16.0 during 2021-25 because of the decreasing level of total fertility.
(C)The IMR, reported to be 58 in 2004, is expected to decline to 40 by the end of the period 2021-25.
(D) With declining fertility and increase in life expectancy, the number of older people is expected to more than double, from 71 million in 2001 to 173 million in 2026.
(E)The urban population, which was 28 per cent in 2001, is expected to increase to 38 per cent by 2026.
(F)The total fertility rate (TFR) is expected to decline from three in 2003 to two during 2021-25. The assumption is that the TFR would decline steadily and touch the floor value of 1.8 in some states.
With this, the weighted TFR is projected to reach the replacement level of 2.1 by 2021-25.
Population stabilisation is not merely about numbers, it has to be looked at in the context of wider socio-economic development. It does not matter if, in the process, we don’t stabilise by 2045 (as indicated in the National Population Policy (NPP), 2000-it could be achieved by 2050 or 2060. But what is of greater concern is how we approach the issue of population stabilisation. It should be a gender-balanced and rights-based approach rather than a top-down authoritarian approach.
The “two-child norm” can cause immense harm to women’s health in the existing social situation, where the preference for a son is high and the woman’s status is still very low.
One of the important risks includes increase in sex-selective abortion and consequent reduction in the number of girl children.
It is being increasingly recognised that social investments help in attaining the goal of slower population growth. Improving access to and equity in quality health care, education and opportunities for women is a matter of human rights. It also empowers women and results in smaller, but healthier families.
Family planning and other population stabilisation programmes should form an integral part of the comprehensive primary health care programmes and need to be based on “community needs assessment”.
Micro planning with community needs assessment can help identify and address the local problems through more acceptable strategies.
Women’s health can be better taken care of with such a decentralised approach. The twin issues of gender and equity should be over-arching while implementing the NPP.
In the planning stage itself, certain minimum and practical indicators of quality of care should be incorporated and monitored. The emphasis on complete registration of births, marriages, pregnancies and deaths can inform the planners of the current and the future status of the population and help them review policies at various stages.
India is emerging as a regional-or even global power in not too distant future. The demographic advantage to be derived from the age structure of the population is traced to the fact that India is (and perhaps will remain for some time) one of the youngest countries in the world. The population of India could be its biggest asset, if appropriate policies are formulated and implemented with people’s participation. We can reap the demographic dividend as we stabilise our population over the next 50 years.
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