Dr.
Devendra Kothari
Population
and Development Analyst
Forum
for population Action
With
India confronting a host of crises concurrent with poverty, governance, corruption, social
and religious conflicts, why should anyone be concerned about population? The simple answer is that virtually
all major problems that confront India today relate in some critical way to the
galloping population. It leads to a massive diversion of national investable
resources to consumption which could otherwise be used for increasing
investment and productivity and for improving the quality as well as supply of
public services like education, health, sanitation, provision of safe drinking
water, etc. It impacts overall development. Without population
stabilization, India cannot solve its current problems.
India's demography is mind-boggling. India’s
population in 1947 was 33 crore and in
2018 it is 135 crore. In last seventy years it has quadrupled.
India
now contains about 17.8 per cent (i.e. every sixth person in the world is an
Indian) of humanity. China is the only country with a larger population ‑ in
the order of 7 crore more in 2018 as
compared to 30.2 crore in 1990. The
Indian population grew at an annual rate of 1.24 percent during 2010-15. On the
other hand, China registered a much lower annual growth rate of population
(0.61%) during the corresponding period.
The UN Population Division expects that in the year 2030 India's
population will surpass the population of China. At that time, India is
expected to have a population of more than 147.6 crore while China’s population
is forecast to be at its peak of 145.3 crore and will begin to drop
in subsequent years. Based on the analysis of recent data, the author came to
the conclusion that India will overtake
China in the next 3-5 years that is before 2023.
So will India’s population soon
start shrinking? Not really. Not anytime soon. Current estimates are that it
will keep growing till it peaks at about 175 crore around 2060. This continued
increase in population is thanks to something called demographic momentum. 31 per cent of the population of the country was in
the age group 0-14 years, as per the Census 2011. So
to expect a country with over a billion to abruptly halt is both impossible and
illogical.
The current population growth in India,
however, is mainly caused by unwanted fertility. Around five in ten live
births are unintended/unplanned or simply unwanted by the women who experience
them and these births trigger
continued high population growth. With a large number of people resulting
from unwanted pregnancies (Box 1), how can one think about using them for
nation building? The consequences of unwanted pregnancy are
being reflected in widespread malnutrition, poor health, low quality of
education, and increasing scarcity of basic resources like food, water and
space.
Box 1
Level
of unwanted childbearing
Around
2.6 crore children were born in India in 2017, and out of this about 1.3
crore births could be classified as unwanted. Further, based on the
National Family Health Surveys (1 to 4), it is estimated that in 2017 around
43.0 crore people out of 134 crore in
India were a result of unwanted pregnancies.
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While India’s
population continues to grow by 1.5-1.6 crore people annually, and while 1.3
crore women, especially in the lower economic strata including Muslims, seek to
postpone childbearing, space births, or stop having children; they are not
using a modern methods of contraception. This is also known as the ‘unmet need’ for
contraception. Often, women with unmet need for
family planning services travel far from
their homes to reach a health facility, only to return home “empty
handed” due to
shortages, stock outs, lack of desired contraception and/or non-availability of
doctors and paramedical staff or poor quality of services. When women are thus
turned away, they are unable to protect themselves from unwanted/unplanned
pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. And this type of
incomplete control over the reproductive process reduces the prospects for an
early decline in the rate of population growth.
Incidents
of unwanted pregnancies can be dramatically reduced, if not eliminated, within
a decade by providing reproductive services as per the needs of couples, as had been done in
Andhra Pradesh during the nineties. If Andhra, with little
outside help, can manage its population growth under relatively low literacy
and high poverty (Literacy Rate of Andhra Pradesh in 2011 was 67.7% compared to
67.1% in Rajasthan, as per 2011 Census), there is no reason why other states
especially Four Large North Indian States of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan
and Uttar Pradesh, with lesser problems and with increasingly generous support
from the Centre, should fail so spectacularly in managing unwanted
fertility.
India
must, therefore, ensure that every child is a wanted one. So revamp the family planning programme. With limited economic
progress, India’s large population can become a liability rather than an
advantage. A failure to stabilize India’s
