UPSC SOCIOLOGY MAINS SYLLABUS
Paper 2 – Section C – Social Changes in India
(vi) Population Dynamics:
- Population size, growth, composition and distribution.
- Components of population growth: birth, death, migration.
- Population policy and family planning.
- Emerging issues: ageing, sex ratios, child and infant mortality, reproductive health.
CONTEXT
India will surpass China as the country with the world’s largest population in 2023, according to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2022 report. At present, India hosts 16% of the world’s population with only 2.45% of the global surface area and 4% water resources. The idea the country should adopt something like China’s former “one-child policy” has been moving from the fringe to the political mainstream.
CHINA’S ONE-CHILD POLICY
The one-child policy was a Chinese government policy to control population growth. According to estimates, it prevented about 400 million births in the country.
It was introduced in 1979 and discontinued in 2015, and enforced through a mix of incentives and sanctions. The one-child policy has had three important consequences for China’s demographics: it reduced the fertility rate considerably, it skewed China’s gender ratio because people preferred to abort or abandon their female babies, and resulted in a labor shortage due to more seniors who rely on their children to take care of them.
INDIAN SCENARIO
India implemented the world’s first national family planning program in 1952. The government then implemented widespread forced sterilisation especially during “The Emergency” years of 1975-77.
National Population Policy, 2000 envisaged achieving a stable population for India. One of its immediate objectives is to address the unmet needs for contraception, health care infrastructure, and personnel and provide integrated service delivery for basic reproductive and child health care.
India’s total fertility rate (TFR) has declined from 2.2 in 2015-16 to 2.0 in 2019-21, indicating the significant progress of population control measures, revealed the report of the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5).
PROS OF ONE-CHILD POLICY
It can readily control the fertility rates and suppress the aggravated problem of overpopulation.
It can lower poverty and increase standard of living.
Low population means lower stress on resources.
CONS OF ONE-CHILD POLICY
Goes against ethos of democracy.
Gender imbalance due to cultural preference for boys.
Growing dependent population of elderly in the long run.
GENDER BIAS IN POPULATION POLICIES
The fact that women are at the receiving end of such policies in a patriarchal society is another story in itself. The burden of limiting family size falls on the woman, and most often female sterilisations are promoted rather than giving the couple the choice of contraception. Also, one-child policy leads to female infanticide or female abandonment due to preference for sons.
CONCLUSION
A mere focus on contraception and sterilization will not render the population control measures successful, and so will not the coercive and top-bottom approach help either. The focus must be on a basket of issues such as poverty alleviation, women empowerment, education & awareness, access to reproductive healthcare facilities, changing mindset and societal norms, etc. Also, adequate measures must be taken to take advantage of the demographic dividend of the country so that population is not a burden but a resource in the rapid economic development of the country.
