Population Stabilisation must for New India

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.

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