POPULATION OF INDIA

POPULATION OF India
Man is the creator of all the wealth, said Karl Marx, and without man, all other resources remain ideal. Thus, man is the central focus points of all development efforts. Man produces wealth and wealth is produced for the use of mankind. Hence, population of a country is a crucial factor in the development of its economy. The literal meaning of population is the whole number of people or inhabitants in a country or region. Among the countries, India ranks second in population and seventh in land area. It has 15% of the population and 2.3% of the area of the world. Indias national income which is barely two percent of the total global income clearly shows the tremendous strain of population.
According to the 2011 census, the total population of India was around 1210 million (121.0 crore) as against 1028 million (102.8 crore) persons in 2001. From this, it is clear that Indias population is increasing at a vast rate. Is population a boon or a curse? Indias population explosion is a curse and is damaging to the development of the country and its society. Population of India is a big problem of Indian economic growth. India, on verge of becoming a developed country, I still, a developing one. The reason behind is-Overpopulation.
The main factors affecting the population change are the birth rate, death rate and migration. The population growth potential in India is high on two counts: first the base population is large and second, a reduction of death rate without a corresponding decline in the birth rate is highly improbable. Mortality has become primarily a function of the application of medical science and can be spectacularly reduced by measures of sanitary reform, better transportation and distribution facilities. Reducing the birth rate is a much more complex matter involving radical social adjustment which has hitherto been resistant to change. Unfortunately, the death rate is declining, and there are reasonable chances that it will continue to decline owing to continuing improvements in the sanitary and health conditions of the masses. This implies that if birth rate does not fall, the gap between birth and death rates will continue to widen and India will be faced with the danger of a rapidly increasing multitude, or what is often called the population explosion. Thus rapidly increasing population of India is a result of prevailing high birth rates and a large decline in the death rate.
Population change = (Births + Immigration) (Deaths + Emigration)
The resources do not increase as the population increases. India currently faces a vicious cycle of population explosion and poverty. One of the most Important reasons for this population increases in India is poverty. Due to poverty, the infant mortality rate among such families like food and medical resources. Thus, they produce more children assuming that not all of them would be able to survive. The end result is a mounting increase in the population size of India. The practice of early marriage is another factor for continues increase in birth rate. A large majority of girls in India are married during the most fertile period 15 and18 years of age. This gives a wider reproductive period and continues to high birth rate. Widespread improvident maternity (child bearing by mothers who have already borne three or more children) and lack of conscious family planning have also kept birth rate in India very high.
Death rate in India has declined over the past few decades due to a number of factors such as the control of epidemics, due to widespread increase in medical and health facilities. Many dreaded diseases of the past like malaria and TB have been brought under control while smallpox, etc. have been completely eradicated. Therefore, it is clear that India is passing through a period of population explosion due to her continuing high birth rate and a sharp fall in the death rate.
Due to increased population, the educational facilities are very scarce. A lot of families prefer having a son rather than a daughter. As a result, a lot of families have more children than they actually want or can afford, resulting in increased poverty, lack of resources, and most importantly, an increased population. Hence, illiteracy and lack of awareness creates a thought that having more children, will give a secure future to the parents and the society, but, what is the use if the children themselves do not get the desired facilities? What is the use, if they will be the burden for the society? The answer lies within. They can serve the country only if they get the desired facilities like food, shelter and most importantly-Education. With the spread of education and family consciousness, it is expected that more and more people will take recourse to birth control measures thus reducing the birth rate in future.
India, being a developing country, has a limited number of jobs available. With the increasing population, unemployment rates are bound to rise even further. Resources are always limited. And in a developing and highly populous country like India, resources are even scarcer. Population explosion results in the shortage of even the most basic resources like food. If India will not control its population very soon we will have problem of feeding this huge population very soon. Either we need to learn to manage human resources quickly or we need to decrease our population growth rate ASAP. We as Indian citizen need to understand our responsibilities. India is free democratic country this does not mean that citizens do not have some responsibility.
The population increase has lead to air and water pollution, unemployment, poverty, lack of educational resources, and even malnourished women and children. The technological development of India has lead not only to medical advancements, but also to an increase in the number of factories, that has lead to air and water pollution. According to an article by the World Bank Organization, Delhi, the capital of India is one of the worlds most polluted cities. As the population increased grows, more and more forests are cleared.
Rapid population growth is an obstacle to Indias economic development. India today is grossly populated. And since the country is short of capital and technology to fully exploit its resources, it means that most of the Indians live in poverty, face unemployment and suffer from ill health. No wonder that in spite of half a century of development, over a fourth of Indias population lives below poverty line. It is now universally agreed that an effective control of population growth is necessary if our development effort is to yield any result. How Indias population hinders the development of an economic growth. The following ways are: Increasing population has eaten up much of the additional income that has been generated in the economy during the five-year plans; fast growing population has resulted in a serious shortage of food; increasing burden of unproductive population; population growth hampers the growth of capital formation; it lowers the labour efficiency. It shows that Indias population is overpopulated.
Rapid population growth has thus hampered economic growth in India and this prevented any substantial reduction in poverty of the masses. But poverty itself is also the cause of rapid population growth. The problem of Indias population affects almost every aspect of economic life and has a profound significance for the future of the country. The government of India has been organizing several programs for limiting the increase in population and has been spending millions of dollars on controlling the birth rate. Some of the programs have been successful; still to reach the sustainable rate. Among such measures are included spread of education that enables people to think and take rational decision regarding family size; expansion in employment facility for women that makes them economically more independent and capable of making effective rational choices regarding the number of children they would like to have without compromising their economic status; reduction in infant mortality rate; expanding education for the female children and providing them equal access to their all socio-economic needs as are provided to the male children thus removing the gender bias; raising the age of marriage; and propagation of family planning and small family norms.
Today India is 2nd largest country in terms of population. Now a days increasing population of India is a big problem. Increasing population in India without any limit is one of the problems behind the lacking development in the country. In India, unchecked growth of the population is more of a hindrance to the development of the economy. The major factors affecting the population increase of India are the rapidly increase birth rate and decreasing death rates. Birth rates will fall only when people themselves realise the evils of large family and volunteer for family planning. Family planning means having babies by choice not by chance. The success of family planning greatly depends on women and their status. Thus, it is imperative for the women to be educated so that they can decide on the number of children they want and be aware of the available birth control measures.
A proper population policy should aim at two things- rapid economic development of the country and check on the further growth of our numbers. The government of India has adopted several measures to control the birth rate through the family planning measures. Family planning is the best method of achieving the second desideration. Thus family planning implies conscious effort at limiting the size of the family.
To conclude the chronic and widespread misery of the Indian people is due to the existence of too many people for the available means of subsistence and situation gets worse instead of better. A rapidly increasing population aggravates the poverty, worsens the unemployment, reduces the per capita income proportion of unproductive people, hampers capital formation and makes the people inefficient. The population of India has been explored and discovered to be acute and speedily growing more serious. Therefore, an all efforts have to be made to reduce the birth rate through comprehensive programme of family planning so that sufficient resources are released for the economic development of the country.

Bibliography:
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2851&context=lcp
http://libinfo.uark.edu/aas/issues/1951v4/v4a18.pdf
http://www.populationofindia.info/
http://blog.oureducation.in/increasing-population-of-india-is-problem/
http://www1bpt.bridgeport.edu/~darmri/population_explosion.html

From:
Rupal Agarwal