“The growing population problem calls for a definite population policy and its effective implementation.”Discuss.

At present India is the second most populous country in the world, sustaining 16.7% of the world’s population on 2.4% of the world’s surface area. The population of India in 1951 was 35 crore, but by 2011, it had increased to 121 crore. The increase in population results in lower resource availability; affects capital formation, food shortages, consumer prices, labor problems, and social and political unrest. Further money shortages affect the ability to meet day to day needs and expenditures rise, which leads to poverty and low standard living condition. All these generates the need to have an effective National Population Policy for control of population.
Methods to be adopted
Firstly, the basic prerequisite of meaningfully controlling population include poverty alleviation, improving the standards of living and the spread of education. Secondly, on national scale the policy has to be published and with the help of campaigns, it must be able to generate mass support in favour of population control. Thirdly, we have insufficient infrastructure owing to the lack of trained staff, lack of adequate aptitude among the staff and limited use or misuse of the equipment for population control resulted in failure of the policy. Lastly, should change the old methods of use of coercion for sterilisation of male and female. Campaigners say India’s failure to make modern, temporary birth control methods available to its women is itself coercive, negating claims of sterilisation as a voluntary choice. There is need for temporary contraceptive methods are identified as abstinence, coitus interrupts, and a safe period of abstinence.

Topics: GS-I: Population and Associated Issues