Spotlight
New Delhi, 1 February 2024
Environmental Balance &
Growth
POPULATION MAIN CONSTRAINT
By Dr S.S Chhina
(Senior Fellow, Institute of
Social Sciences, New Delhi)
India surpassed China in the
race of population on March 3, 2023, and is still growing at the rate of 0.68
per cent annually. If not checked it would become a nation of 1.66 billion by
2050 and have a cascading effect on both environment and development.
While the United Nations report
on population puts India as a nation of 1.42 billion against 1.41 billion of
China, the country is bearing three times more burden than its neighbour. Note
that density of population in China is just 148.58 per sq.km as against 431.11
of India. Even in the past, four decades ago, India was over-burdened because
of the lack of resources, whereas China has plenty. Geographical area of India
is just 2.4 per cent of the world, whereas the population constitutes about
17.7 per cent. Even the water resources are only 4 per cent of the world.
Since 1980, the era of Sanjay
Gandhi, India could not adopt a policy to address this big rise in population.
There were proposals such as the two-child norm, but these were not pursued.
Looking at the burden on the resources, the country needs to adopt a prudent
and effective policy to control population, otherwise it would continue to
create havoc instead of it becoming a blessing.
The perpetual rise in the
import of food articles including pulses, and oil seeds and wasting trillions
of foreign exchange on the one hand, and depleting average size of holdings
even below to one acre on the other would, further thrive its constraints to
import and the real development for prosperity stands discarded. Looking at the
availability of water as a necessity of life, the scenario is most discouraging
and would emerge as a major problem in the future.
In 1950, the per capita
availability of water was 5300 cubic feet, whereas in most of the countries it
was below 2000 cubic feet. But with the rapid rise in population, it became
only 2300 cubic feet in 1991, which is still not satisfactory. But in 2020 it
depleted to 1500 cubic feet, and still declining. According to experts, the
countries which are having per capita water availability below 1700 cubic feet
are under lot of stress. Today, not only in cities but even in villages the
water shortage is reaching alarming levels.
Prior to 1970, though 70 per
cent of the population was engaged in agriculture, the country was compelled to
import food, thus not only spending huge amount of foreign exchange but putting
burden on the purse strings. The green revolution ushered in the late 60s, was
based on more and more use of chemicals, albeit staggering results were
obtained on the yield front and dozens of chemicals had to be resorted to every
year because of the application of the law of diminishing marginal returns in
agriculture.
The chemicals started
penetrating air, water, and soil and subsequently food. The toxins of these
chemicals remained as residues in food and are causing ailments. The
application of chemicals has become a constraint only because of the huge needs
of food that is the result of over burden of population on land.
The burden of population had
created an imbalance in the natural environment. The application of chemicals
or fertilizers require adequate irrigation water to yield best results so the
areas where the ground water was available easily, tubewells were installed to
pump out the water. In Punjab and Haryana 60 per cent of irrigation is
dependent on ground water. In 1960, in Punjab there were only 5000 tubewells,
whereas at present this number has risen to 1.4 million, pumping out water day
and night.
The water level has depleted to
over 150 feet in most of the areas. Water has become undrinkable in some area
because of the penetration of chemicals along with depleting water table. So
many birds have extinguished along with very useful micro-organism in earth,
which were helpful to raise the level of fertility. The rain circle has been
disrupted, and now untimely and unseasonal rains are frequent, causing damage
to the crops.
While India adopted planning
for development in 1950, top priority was given to agriculture instead of
industry, although the country was much backward in industrialisation. This was
largely because of the scarcity of food for an over-burdened population. India
thus remained much behind in industrialisation, and industrial goods had to be
imported, which caused the slow growth of industry impacting employment. Today the number of unemployed is about 80
million.
The priority to generate
employment, industrial goods and services, social security and moreover the
need to shift population from farming to non-farming professions was discarded
due to the constraint of feeding the billions and farming took centre stage.
The country also remained far behind on the front of providing social security
as the main factor for consideration was food, given the huge and
over-populated country. Other social evils, particularly child labour, raised
its ugly head as unemployment or under employment forced families to get
maximum earning hands.
Population is a natural
resource of the country, but if it is not productive, it becomes a burden. Even
the unemployed in large number require to satisfy their daily needs, where the
country had to depend either on foreign imports or had to discard those needs.
Unemployment, over-crowding, shortage of houses, child labour, among other
social evils in the society etc. are the off shoots of this huge size of
population.
There are two popular theories
on population. The first, the Malthusian theory of population, that states that
if the population would not be controlled by artificial means, then the natural
checks such as famine, epidemic, floods etc. would check this rise. Similarly,
the optimum theory of population states that the size of population is optimum
for the country, where the per capita output is maximum. According to both
these theories, the size of population in India is much higher than the optimum
and must be addressed at priority.---INFA
(Copyright, India News &
Feature Alliance)
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