By Seema Khan
One of the most crying need and ignored issue today is the need to control the India population, which could be one of the root cause of many problems - social, environmental, civic, crime, unemployment and many other.
Our politicians never make it an election issue, and don’t seem to learn from the neighbouring country - China. A growing number of young people, instead of becoming an asset, have become a liability for the country, and a burden on the tax payers, specially the middle class.
India has not been able to increase its per capita income, and improve standard of living, because of uncontrolled growth in the population, which has been adversely affecting the growth of the country’s economy.
The incumbent governments keep on announcing various welfare schemes, which are partially implemented due to corruption among officials, combined with a lack of will power. To compound the problems, the government and the think tanks do not take long term planning into consideration, that is, unless the population is not stabilised, all welfare schemes and the growth of the country and economy will not have the required results. Both long term and short term planning are required with family planning as a priority .
Because of a growing population, India has not been able to keep pace with the growth in national income.
Other major, and related, issue is food problem. Rapid urbanisation, conversion of agriculture land for industrialisation, and residential colonies and growth in population has led to a decrease in food grain production resulting poor health and productivity. Importing food grains is costly and requires significant foreign currency.
Another big problem which the growing population has created is chaos caused by migration to urban areas, leading to increased slum areas, poverty, begging, prostitution, crime, overburdened water resources, increasing in road side stalls, vendors, rickshaws on the road etc. All this has created chaotic traffic on the roads of cities.
According to UN population fund (UNFPA), India accounts for one sixth of world’s population - 1.36 billion, increasing from 9412 million in 1994 - a grown rate of 1.2% per year between 2010 to 2019, as compared to China’s growth rate of 0.5% between 2010 and 2019.
It’s a high time the Indian government realises this issue as a serious one, and that it has crossed optimum limit, and has become a liability. But unfortunately our politicians see this as an increase in vote bank.
These numbers are counterproductive adding pressure on the environment, environmental pollution, water resources, deforestation, energy and depleting natural resources.
There is a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the uncontrolled growth in the population, and provides suggestions such as, a person with more than 2 children should not be given government jobs, right to vote should be taken away, ration and other government subsidies should not be provided, etc. Though some of the suggestion may sound inhuman and extreme, Supreme Court should consider other workable solutions.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the views of UMMnews.
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