Population Explosion

There has been an alarming increase in the population of India since the partition of the country. The massive increase in population can jeopardise the safety and security of the country and this increase is setting at naught all our plans and schemes. The existing population in India is not commensurate with its resources and overpopulation is surely an open invitation to poverty in a country where industry and agriculture are still backward.  The need of the hour is that population should be regulated strictly in conformity with the available resources.

The increase in population can be attributed to the fall in death rate and the rise in life expectancy. Infant mortality has gone down due to the availability of better medical facilities. The rapidly increasing population has given birth to the twin problems of unemployment and food.

Various factors are responsible for the growing population.  Poverty and ignorance leads to more and more children in the lower strata of the society. Moreover, in some rural areas, a man with many sons and grandsons is considered to be lucky. A birth of a girl in an Indian family is said to be liability while the birth of a son is an occasion to be celebrated. Couples having only daughters may go on producing children year after year until they get a son who alone can bring them salvation or moksha by performing their last sites

Early marriages among Indians Makes the couples stay together  at the most fertile period of their lives and this results into a team of children. The ignorant masses believe that every new child brings his own luck with him and the manual workers look upon the arrival of a male child as an addition to their earning capacity.

It is necessary to tackle the problem of over population in the interest of the economic prosperity of all Indians. Family planning, whose object is to control the size of a family and to prevent the births of too many children, can play a useful role in this regard. Nothing should be left to chanc eand people should be made to realise that the need of planning of a family is to have a better standard of living. Government hospitals and primary health centres should make a commendable contribution of family planning. Contraceptives- vasectomy, tubectomy, the use of loop in women, pills and condoms- should be encouraged.   

As a family planning alone cannot achieve spectacular results, obstacles in the way of family planning should be removed. The masses should be educated to have a pragmatic approach to life, as a part of the family planning programme. The age for marriage should be raised by law. Couples having more than two children should be taxed. Young men and woman should be given incentives for remaining bachelors and spinsters for  a considerable time and rewarded for producing less children.