The population
of India grew exponentially since independence. The major reason for
the growth is due to the fact that the death rate went down owing to
better availability of medical services and nutrition but the birth
rate didn't go down proportionately. The average life expectancy
increased from 32 to 69 today. At the time of independence after
partition India's population was 300 million. But today the
population of the nation has jumped up to 1.22 billion plus. In the
last decade alone India added a new Brazil to its population. Every
year India has been adding number of people equivalent to the
population of Australia.
This
population explosion in India has had tremendous effect on the
development of the nation. The truth is development of the nation has
stalled because of this exponential population growth over the past 6
decades. There are more poor people in India than there were at the
time of Independence because of the high population growth. The
hospitals , schools , collages and other services became inadequate
after a certain period of time because of this high growth in
population since they won't be able to accommodate increased number
of people.
Normally a
home has one or at the most two breadwinners but when the number of
mouths that have to be fed increases there is hardly any money left
for other activities . Neither good education nor good medical
services can be provided. India was one of the first countries in the
world to have population control programme . However this programme
was unsuccessful owing to lack of political will and ignorance of the
masses. It is because of ignorance that Indians have suffered for the
past 67 years since independence.
The rate of
population grown is now coming down however it has not come down
enough. The city of Kolkata has actually seen a fall in the numbers
of children between 0-6 years . However most of India that lives in
villages still are not looking into birth control and family planning
many of them are simply ignorant about it.
The fallout
of this population growth has been very bad on agriculture. The
population density of India has now become high , its now higher than
Japan. The amount of arable land per farmer has reduced owing to
population growth.
The solution
of this problem lies in judicious use of technology to increase farm
productivity and spreading awareness among the masses regarding
population control. The population growth has one positive side
though India has the highest numbers of youngsters in the world they
must be considered an asset and proper training and education must be
provided to them so that they are able to work towards the
development of the nation.
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