Population Stabilization In India

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Since the evolution of mankind, people have lived under conditions of high mortality due to disease, famine, floods and war and to keep up the survival of species we have seen high fertility rates. Despite the prevalence of such high fertility rates, it’s astonishing to know that it took all the time from man’s evolution till the mid of the 19th century to reach a world population of nearly 1.5 billion. But the more surprising fact is that just in a matter of next 100 years, i.e., during the 20th century, the global population quadrupled to a whopping 6 billion. Improvement in health services and health related technology ameliorated the health status of individuals across borders resulting in a sharp decline in mortality and a remarkable…show more content…
In other words, this means that there will be an addition of around 181 million people to the total population in one decade. It was mainly from the second half of the 20th century that India started experiencing a rapid burst of population growth and the growth rate remained at the peak of more than 2% per year between 1961-1991 census periods. This swift growth in population is perhaps the consequence of the deplorable failure of family planning programme adopted by the country in the early 1950s. As highlighted in the study “Population Stabilization- Which Strategies Have Helped?” done by Chandra (Chapter 2), the family planning programmes were miserably ineffective despite being in place for many decades. The approach to disseminate awareness about family planning through mass communication though covered an extensive population but it failed to emphasize on mother and child health which could have motivated people to consider the implications of having a large family. Forced sterilizations also saw a large withdrawal of masses resulting in a back fire to the already existing family planning…show more content…
Population growth has seen a tremendous downfall from the previously prevalent high rates. Now, India is entering into the final phase of the demographic transition, nearing the replacement level of fertility, with only 0.2 points shortfall. During the 20th century there was a striking population growth all over the world, where the population rose at a higher rate. Especially in India, the population had increased around 336 million by 1950. It may be because there was considerable delay between the occurrences of sustained fall in the deaths rate and start of major decline in birth rate. India’s population had picked up during the late 1970s at about 2.3% and currently it is growing at a rate of 1.6% per year, a level that is still higher than China’s

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