Family Planning Population Policy In India Essay

, Research Paper

India’s population is in peril. Without the implementation of stringent, effective population management policies, the country’s population will rise above 2 billion within the next 20 years (www.fpaindia.com). In the absence of control programs, India’s ever growing population will lead to increased incidents of famine, disease, environmental stress and result in a severe shortage of housing facilities. However, if the Indian government quickly administers population regulations so that couples have, on average, 2 children by 2001-2006, India’s population will stabilize at approximately 1.7 billion (www.fpaindia.com). A drop in both the fertility and birth rates is essential. To achieve this goal, the 5 Year Planning Commission intends to follow the new population control program outlined by India’s central government. We intend to explore reasons why family planning is essential, issues concerning the expansion of health care, and also sterilization practices and alternatives, proving that our 5-year plan for population management most plausible and logical method to control a rapidly burgeoning population.

Family Planning – An Essential for India

A swiftly growing population does not always seem like a nuisance. An increase in the number of citizens in a country, may for example, signify the improvement in health care, sanitation and a drop in death rates. Developments such as these, naturally lead to an expansion in population. Many areas may easily handle this increase in some areas, but what happens when the population continues to grow at an accelerated pace. The outlook is bleak. Uncontrolled population growth will lead to difficulties regarding food, environmental stress, health and housing.

Food shortages are commonly a symptom of high population growth rates, and as such, India is steadily losing the capacity to feed itself. Despite improvements in agricultural productivity, India’s population continues to grow at a faster rate than the countrie’s agriculture can support. The maximum efforts toward increasing agricultural output are just enough to meet the needs of the existing population, not for the additional population added each year (Mathur, 1995, 127). As a result, more than half of India is malnourished, and thousands are suffering from starvation (Mathur, 1995, 100). The solution to this situation is to seek out ways to decrease population growth, and maintain high yield agricultural production.

The desperate need for food has significant impacts on the environment. The soil can only produce so many yields before it becomes depleted and unproductive. In India, the soils are being stripped of their nutrients too quickly, thus speeding up environmental degradation and lowering crop yields. Beyond agricultural difficulties, a large population threatens to reduce water supply and contributes heavily to water pollution. With the additional raw sewage, an increasingly important issue is created, concerning what to do with it. While the earth can cleanse itself of many of these pollutions, global population is polluting at a rate the earth can’t keep up with.

For the majority of the world’s population the level of nutrition continues to be inadequate (Brown, 1974, 66). This is due to the surplus of people. The threat of disease also becomes a considerable factor each year. In large populations, disease is spread much more rapidly, and can survive longer periods if there are more people to incubate them. Where family health care programs exist, there is evidence to show that they have made significant contribution to improving child and maternal health.

As the population is increasing, the average number of persons per dwelling is expanding. There are severe housing shortages, especially in the small villages surrounding the cities (Mathur, 1995, 160). The pace of construction is much slower than the needs of the people. Construction lags further and further behind as the population continues to grow. There has been a steady increase in homelessness as a result of this trend.

Construction and Expansion of Health Care Facilities

As outlined in the central government’s new population control program, there is to be construction and expansion of health care facilities in the Karnataka region. This is an excellent first step in population control. Greater accessibility to health care translates into healthier people and thus lower infant mortality and crude death rates. This may result in an initial increase in population, however, with fewer child deaths, parents may decide to have less children as they will be assured that their children will grow to adulthood. Prolific clinics also mean greater access to health education. A smaller patient to care provider ratio means more one on one attention and therefore more time to focus on educating clients on contraceptives etc. Blalpuram, the rural village we plan to use as our pilot site for the new program has a population of 1000. One or two clinics set up in this area will greatly improve health and education.

One identified problem of expanding health care clinics is the heavy financial cost involved in constructing and maintaining them. Most of the services offered at these clinics would be free of charge, thus no revenue is generated and the clinics become a large financial drain on the government. However, to alleviate