A POPULATION OUT OF CONTROL INDIA A POPULATION OUT OF CONTROL

India was one of the first countries in the world to try to do something about reducing its population growth rate. In 1950 the total population was approximately 360 million. India’s birth rate was 41 per 1000 and its population growth rate was 3 per cent per year. In 1952 India set up a population control programme which aimed to reduce the birth rate by setting up clinics which provided free contraceptives and family planning services.

Parents were encouraged to use contraceptives in order to limit the size of their families. Contraceptives were to be made available to the whole population – even those living in the most isolated areas of the country.

Progress was slow during the 1950s and early 1960s, despite the government increasing its family planning education services and promoting the wider use of contraceptives. In 1967 the birth rate was still around 40 per 1000 and the total population had reached approximately 520 million. The fertility rate remained high at 5.7 – i.e. the number of children per woman of child-bearing age.

The Minister of Family Planning introduced several new measures in order to achieve a much lower birth rate, including: advertising the importance of birth control in newspapers and on radio and television. legalising abortion. rewarding men who had a vasectomy.

Women accounted for 95 per cent of all sterilisations at this time. Male sterilisation became a more favoured method of contraception because it was both permanent and cheap. Men were encouraged to volunteer for vasectomies.

In 1971, a district official in Kerala organised a family planning ‘fair’. During the month the fair was on for, 60,000 vasectomies were performed. After his 10 minute operation, each man received gifts including money, a week’s food, a lottery ticket, an umbrella, and a bright sari for his wife. Between 1967 and 1973, 13 million men were sterilised.

However, by the mid-1970s these policies were not having the desired effect and India’s population continued to grow at an alarming rate. There was widespread resistance to the government’s population control programme. Small families were simply not part of Indian culture.

In 1976 a desperate Indian government turned to compulsory measures. Government employees were required to limit the size of their families to three children. Enforced sterilisation resulted in 22 million people – mostly males – being sterilised by 1977. “Vasectomy flying squads” stopped groups of men at random and, regardless of their age, sterilised them. Widespread opposition led to this policy being discontinued.

In 1984 Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi put the country on a “war footing” to reduce the population growth rate and achieve a two child per family target by the year 2000. The push for two-child families resulted in cases of infanticide. By 1993 the fertility rate had fallen to 3.4, but the birth rate remained high at just under 30 per 1000 and the population had climbed to almost 870 million. A survey of birth control methods in the same year revealed that sterilisation – 76 per cent – was the main method of contraception that people used. (67 per cent female, 9 per cent male)

“The ideal family – two parents, two children” An Indian family planning poster. The red triangle is India’s family planning symbol.

From the beginning, India’s population control policies had always been guided by the perception that a growing population is a major obstacle to raising living standards. In the 1990s there was increasing recognition of the fact that policies based on setting targets for contraceptive use or sterilisation had failed to have any significant effect on India’s population growth rate.

In 1994 a “New Population Plan” (NPP) was formulated. Its aim was to reduce India’s fertility rate to 2.1 by 2004. In addition to ensuring universal access to contraceptives and promoting a more intensive programme of family planning education, the NPP focused on: primary health care access for mothers and their new-born children. improving female literacy. New laws affecting the age of marriage and the registration of marriages and births were also passed.

Women were the main “target” of the new population control policy. Child Survival and Motherhood programmes were set up. The minimum age of marriage was set at 18. All marriages and births had to be registered.

A range of incentives were included in the NPP to encourage people to have smaller families: People would be more successful in applying for jobs, or government loans, if they could produce a certificate of sterilisation. Low interest loans would be made to authorities in urban and rural areas which had been able to reproductive health or increased their population’s awareness of, and access to, contraceptives. Freezing the population-proportional quota for each state in the Lok Sabha. If a state reduced its population growth rate, it did not “lose” seats in the Federal Parliament.

In 2002 India’s population officially reached one billion. India’s population growth rate is continuing to make it difficult for the country to become more developed.

At current rates of growth India’s population is expected to reach 1 At current rates of growth India’s population is expected to reach 1.8 billion within the next forty years. Population growth falls to replacement level if the NPP was to achieve its objective.

A cartogram showing the countries of the world according to their size of population.

Age Structure of India’s Population 1997 and 2020 The impact of India’s recent population control policies on the age structure of the population. Age Structure of India’s Population 1997 and 2020