The Burning Problem of the Nation

Population Explosion

Dr. D. Mukhopadhyay
Human capital gets the second important position after land in the factors of production matrix theorized in classical Economics. Karl Marx advocates that man is the creator of wealth of the society which may imply that man is the pivotal force behind socio-economic development of any economy. It may not sound much if it is opined that population played the role of the principal contributory factor for bringing about accelerated economic development in the high order of economically developed countries such as United States of America, European Countries, Canada, Australia in particular and Western Counties in general. It acts as a boon as long as the size of population of a country is kept controlled within a range that is compatible with level of natural resources available in the concerned country. On the contrary, it hinders economic growth and development and consequently, it contributes to perspective of low standard of living, malnutrition, unemployment problems and most of the national income is spent on food grains procurement leaving hardly anything out of the national budget for fostering socio-economic development and growth. It needs hardly any mention that India is the second largest populous country after China in the world. She is attributed with about 17% of world population against only about 3% of the world’s geographical territory or landmass. As on date, India’s population is more than 1.35 billion against 1.40 billion that of China. The researchers are of the views that population size of India is scheduled to overtake that of China in the mid 2020 and it is likely to reach the population size of 1.65 billion in 2060. Let us have a look at the demographic profile in pre-independence and post Independence era of India. There was a population size of undivided India about 38 crores and the same increased to the level of 65 crores approximately in 1975 and it becomes more than double i.e. 1.35 billion on date against the population statistics in 1975. Now it has reached to the alarming stage and India shall be one of the less economically developed countries in the world if it is not controlled or checked and appropriate measures are not adopted immediately. It may not be out of place to mention that perhaps Narendra Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to take into cognizance that population explosion as it is today shall definitely act as the main negative force to retard the socio-economic development if India continues to have uncontrolled population growth as it stands today. China has emerged as one of the eye-catching economic super powers simply by adopting stringent measure of one-child policy to curb population explosion in order to elevate and tackle social, economic and environmental problems which were by and large associated with the accelerated demographic growth in China. It is also mentionable that the population control measure adopted by the Chinese Government is now being relaxed since emergence of skewed gender ratio.
Let us have a look on the current population density in some of the countries for helping us to understand India’s growth rate of population. India’s geographical landmass consists of more or less 3.287 million square kilometers and Population density is 382 per square kilometer whereas the same is in China – 152, England-259, Germany-227, Pakistan-251, Canada-4, Russia-9, France-118, Italy-201, Sri Lanka-325, Nepal-201, Myanmar-95 and in Bangladesh it 1,120 per Square Kilometer. It is definitely a serious national issue and it is to emergently adopt an effective population policy without loss of time anymore. With rapidly growing population, India has been suffering a lot and infrastructure pressure is one of the burning causes of poor standard of living. Deficient Infrastructure covers almost everything such as poor housing facility, lack of health care and sanitary provisions, illiteracy and low and low educational standard since research is hardly given any priority over other issues. One of the overlooked issues is conversion of agricultural and forest lands into modern housing complexes i.e. construction of housing complex and habitable buildings shall consequently contribute to food shortage and malnutrition as it shall cause irreparable damage to natural vegetation, flora, fauna and of course environment in totality. The researchers are of the views that demand for food will become double the quantity in 2050 against the demand for food as is on date and as a consequence India will suffer from the malady of ecologically non-sustainable economic growth. Moreover, there shall be tremendous shortage of water in India very soon and the same issue has also received the attention of the Prime Minister of India in his address to the nation on 15th August, 2019. At the same time, there has been an accelerated growth in India’s urban population size since educated mass migrate to the cities in search of their fortunes and this is of course another challenge before any Government who is primarily duty bound and responsible to provide basic amenities and services. About one -fifth of the population manage their living without assistance of electricity though it is already included in the list of priorities by the Government.
Let us spend some time to explore the causes of accelerating increase in population. Firstly, population is increasing leaps and bounds owing to high birth rate and considerable decrease in death rate. The practice of early marriage is one of the main causes responsible for rapid growth in population since the couple in this case get wider reproductive time span. India is a tropical country due to which she is attributed with early puberty and there also exists institutional polygamy system which contributes to voluminous population growth. Moreover, due to insufficient knowledge in family planning, birth rate is also high in India. More or less, fertility during child -bearing age of women is also a contributory factor for rapid increase in population.
The relationship between population growth and economic development has been found to be inverse in the country like ours since more people need to consume more of available resources and leaving thereby a little for capital formation, consequently it hinders economic development of a country and this theory is aptly applicable to India. Economic growth is measured by the changes in the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) which comprises of population and economic components expressible in terms of population times per capita GDP. According to Thomas Piketty, when expressed as percent changes, economic growth is equal to population growth plus growth in per capita GDP. GDP is a very popular measure of economic output and is used as an indicator of trends in the growth of National Income. Many researchers are of the views that population growth up to a certain level may help in bringing about economic development but in most of the cases it does not fetch favorable results since resources required for capacity development of the people in those countries like India are definitely short in supply. India is one of the low income generating countries in the world and it tells upon the state of general well being of people of India since low income pattern negatively impacts on savings , capital formation and consequently it eclipses economic growth. It is also worth mentioning that population explosion in India, as the Economists feel , is going to eclipse availability of agricultural land, supply of drinking water and other resources for day to day consumption.
However, many of us may argue that epoch making advancement of technology may be helpful to curb the population explosion problem but it may sound naive that technological innovations shall not be able to solve the problems of resource scarcities without making negative impact on the environment. Moreover, Rural India shall be suffering from low and slow rate of economic growth. High growth rate in population increase in rural India needs more attention of the policy makers since major problems of rural India includes low per capita income as compared to urban people, high illiteracy rate, increased fragmentation of land holdings , more disguise unemployment etc. India aspiring to be in the bracket of high income group society in the world by 2047 and the same is not impossible if Government of India adopts population explosion control measures immediately through framing National Population Policy which needs to embark upon creating mass awareness of the catastrophic problem that is likely to take the country to the stage of considerably less and less sustainable economic development. Tackling population explosion in judicious manner needs the considered attention and treatment by the national decision makers as the non-compromising importance is given to the issues concerning sovereignty , integrity and national security of the country. It is an accepted narrative that India is a overpopulated country who has to take care of 17% of the world population with hardly 3% of the world-landmass. Most of the people shall suffer from poverty, malnutrition, ill-health, low gross enrolment ratio in world class education system, devoid of demographic dividend yield, high unemployment rate, inadequate sanitation and low social security and many more incidental and allied issues shall be coming as the hurdles in way of socio-economic development of the country. Under the given scenario, a suitable central legislation with regard to population control and long term national population policy for India irrespective of caste, creed religion, orthodox narratives, social superstitions and any other factors that give rise to population explosion needs to be enacted by the Indian Parliament and strict implementation thereof in the line of China is the need of the hour for overall well being of the Indian society. Perhaps the maxim ” Small is Beautiful” should be the slogan for the cause of India’s family planning and population policy today for reaching the socio-economic development , being in the bracket of high-income group as well as emerging as one of the economic super powers in the world in 2047.
( The author is Professor of Management & Dean-Faculty of Management, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University (SMVDU), Katra, Jammu & Kashmir)

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