One billion

INDIA IS NOW a country of one billion people. If current trends continue, India will in 2045 overtake China as the most populous country in the world only after which will the population stabilise. The world has moved a long way from considering large populations as a major cause of all socio-economic problems to one that sees population stabilisation as an important objective within a larger set of goals encompassing an improved quality of life and an expansion of opportunities for all citizens. The problem with India's population policies in the past has been that the interlinkages between women's empowerment, child survival, maternal mortality, public health and population growth were recognised only belatedly. As the country uses the occasion of crossing the one billion threshold to increase awareness of population issues, it is worth asking what went wrong in the past.

India was the first country in the world to adopt population stabilisation as an explicit national goal. But India also has the dubious reputation of having pushed through `forced sterilisation' during the Emergency, an act that rivals China's one-child policy in its assault on people's rights and also set back the national family planning programme from which the country is yet to recover. Over the decades the rate of growth of India's population has fallen as improvements have been made in infant and maternal mortality and the availability of reproductive health care services has expanded. But the progress has been too slow to warrant commendation and there have been wide regional variations. Moreover, there are worrying signs in recent years of even a retrogression in some important areas. The States of Kerala and more recently Tamil Nadu have shown what a combination of policies to improve the status of women (in health and education), provide relatively better public health services and expand reproductive health services can do to lower fertility rates. At the other end are the `BIMARU' States of north and east India where all socio-economic variables work against an improvement in people's well-being. The result is that the national fertility rates, female literacy, infant mortality and a host of other economic and health indicators that influence the growth and well-being of the population are far below goals that had been set for 2000. And as public health programmes suffer the effects of expenditure cutbacks by the Central and State Governments, there are indications of a deterioration in people's health. In 1998, for perhaps the first time since 1947, the national infant mortality rate showed an increase - instead of falling from its abnormally high levels.

The Government has now formulated the more rounded National Population Policy 2000 which has as its immediate target the attainment of the replacement fertility rate of 2.1 by 2010. The approach is inter-sectoral - covering health, education and social programmes - and requires the involvement of Government and non-government organisations from the local community upwards. An expansion of the availability of contraception facilities is an important instrument of the NPP 2000, but no less important is the recognition it accords to reducing infant mortality and raising the age at which women marry (possible only with the spread of education and an expansion of opportunities for women). Incentives to local bodies and individuals for better care of the girl child, promotion of schooling and a lowering of infant mortality and birth rates form an integral part of the policy - without the threat to use disincentives which in the past has never worked in any way. The country has learnt to its bitter cost that an exclusive use of administrative measures on `family planning' neither addresses the concerns of the people nor contributes to stabilisation of the population. Whether the new policy will succeed where others before it have failed depends now on the Government agencies at the Centre, State and local levels as also the numerous NGOs which are now active in the field.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Next     : Resuming flights to Nepal