This year’s Independence Speech by the Prime Minister of India, Sri Narendra Modi, from Lal Qila of Delhi was particularly significant on the issues of ‘population explosion' and ‘small families' as signs of patriotic and ‘responsible’ nationalistic norms.This very ‘explosion’ of PM Modiji has ushered a new narrative and impending policy changes in tackling our huge population. Then arise so many pertinent questions: Whether has there been at all a population explosion in India? If it is, then what are the factors contributing to this vast population? And, what is the way out to ‘manage’ this humongous problem? Can India's ‘Demographic dividend' go haywire in the coming years?
Let us admit that we have a population explosion right in this Land of Bharat with only 2.4 % of the Earth’s landmass but as much as 18% of the world’s population. How far can this ‘population-mass’ be sustainable? All these remind us the grim consequences of Malthusian prophesy on human civilization. India's decadal Censuses, Sample Registration System, National Family Health Survey and different socio-economic studies have been revealing and pointing to the fact that Indian population structure has to be analysed from different parameters like religious communities, State as well as district-wise differences, rural-urban differences, income-wise differences and even ethnic community-wise differences.
No doubt, the population growth rate has been declining in India and India's fertility rate has dropped to 2.2, nearing the replacement rate of 2.1 meaning an average of 2.1 babies per woman to keep the present numbers intact. According to UN projections, India's population will peak at 165 crores in 2060 and begin to dip after that. Some demographic projections expect the decline to begin decades earlier but not before 2045. So India must grow at least for coming 25-35 years. Then the question: Can we arrest our population growth before the projected timeline? Because, having a huge ‘population base' we are adding a substantial proportion to the total population despite declining rate of population growth.
It is no denying that the fertility rates have been significantly influenced by different socio-economic factors like affluence, education, levels of education, technological innovations regarding birth-control techniques and methods since the sixties of the last century, urbanisation, and over all standard of living of the populace. With these we also consider the factors of different community mindset and issues of women’s education, economic empowerment and legal protections to all women. It is a fact that fertility rate of a community declines with the growing rates of women empowerment with higher levels of education, economic conditions and legal protection of women folk. In that context we may analyse the growth rates of different religious communities in India.
We all know that the overall growth of a population depends on the total effects of birth rates, death rates and rates of migration – immigrations and emigrations, which may be legal or illegal. With the gradual improvement in medical sciences and overall living standard, death rates have come down dramatically for all communities in India. But the fact is that the overall birth rates did not come down uniformly for all communities. Again, the overall migrations of different communities have also not been uniform. The overall majority of Hindus, despite huge immigrations after the tragic Partition of India, came down continuously and consistently from 84.1% in 1951 (85% in 1947) to 79.8 % in 2011 due to substantial decrease in fertility rates in Hindu communities. But, the proportions of Muslims have increased from 9.93% in 1951 to 14.23% in 2011. So the overall increase of Muslims, both in absolute and relative terms, have been due to higher birth rates, given others factors being more or less the same for all communities.
No doubt, Muslims in India have a much higher total fertility rate (TFR) compared to that of other religious communities. The family planning measures have been less adopted by the Muslim communities across all states of India and this phenomenon can not only be explained by the socio-economic conditions. The factors of religious sanctions and mindset did matter in family planning along with vulnerability of Muslim women in marital life with respect to divorces and maintenance issues.
This increase of Muslim population, particularly in border state of West Bengal, has been phenomenal in that it has increased from 19.85% in 1951 to 27.01% in 2011 with high decadal growth rates of 36.48% in 1951 and 21.80% in 2011. Whereas, the proportion of Hindus has decreased from 78.45% to 70.54% in the same period with continuous decadal decrement from 32.63% to 10.80%. Actually the fertility rate of Hindu Bengali women has been recorded as 1.4, whereas that rate has been 4.2 for Muslim Bengali women in 2011 Cunsus.
Had the rates of increment/decrement of birth rates, death rates and migration rates of all communities been the same for post-Independence period, the relative proportions of all communities would have been the same during the period of 1951-2011. But the fact is pointing to the other meanings of varied proportions of different communities. While the fertility rates have dropped much for all religious communities except Muslim community for the past decades, the sharpest fall of fertility rates among Muslims has been observed only in the last ten years period of 2005-06 to 2015-16. But still the fertility rates for Muslims have been much higher than other communities including Hindus.
Now the question: How can we control this population explosion? Here the Government of India and other State governments have to take appropriate population policies considering democratic rights of individuals as well as communities. All governments must encourage the principles of ‘small families’ among all communities, particularly in the States where the fertility rates have been still high above the replacement rates of 2.1 compared to other States with less than replacement rates of fertility. The government must provide both financial as well as non-financial kinds of benefits to small families. In respect of ‘carrot and stick' policy, carrot policy of inducement works far better than stick policy of punishment in our country, given the mindset of Indians and constitutionality of policy measures.
With this, the legal measures and empowerment of all women, particularly of Muslim women with the recent Triple Talaq Act, through quality education, health measures and economic opportunities would probably arrest the population explosion of India much before 2050.
@ Sujit Roy
10.09.2019
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