The Population Growth Rate In India Essay

, Research Paper

The Population Growth Rate in India

For many years concern has been voiced over the seemingly unchecked rate

of population growth in India, but the most recent indications are that some

success is being achieved in slowing the rate of population growth. The

progress which has been achieved to date is still only of a modest nature and

should not serve as premature cause for complacency. Moreover, a slowing of the

rate of population growth is not incompatible with a dangerous population

increase in a country like India which has so huge a population base to begin

with. Nevertheless, the most recent signs do offer some occasion for adopting a

certain degree of cautious optimism in regard to the problem.

One important factor which is responsible for viewing the future with

more optimism than may previously have been the case has been the increase in

the size of the middle class, a tendency which has been promoted by the current

tendency to ease restrictions on entrepreneurship and private investment. It is

a well-known fact that as persons become more prosperous and better educated

they begin to undertake measures designed to eliminate the size of their

families. (The obvious exception would be families like the Kennedys who

adhere to religious strictures against artificial birth control, but the major

Indian religions have traditionally lacked such strictures.) Ironically, the

state of Kerala which had long had a Communist-led government had for many years

represented a population planning model because of its implementation of

programs fostering education and the emancipation of women. The success of such

programs has indicated that even the poorer classes can be induced to think in

terms of population control and family planning through education, but increased

affluence correspondingly increases the pressure for the limitation of family

size, for parents who enjoy good life want to pass it on to their children under

circumstances where there will be enough to go around. In contrast, under

conditions of severe impoverishment there is not only likely to be lack of

knowledge of family planning or access to modes of birth control, but children

themselves are likely to be viewed as an asset. Or, perhaps one might more

accurately say with regard to India, sons are viewed as an asset. We will have

more to say later about the relationship between gender and population growth,

but here we may make the obvious point that if a family seeks sons it may also

have to bring into the world some “unwanted” daughters, thereby furthering the

trend towards large families. Under conditions of severe impoverishment,

attended as it has traditionally been by high childhood mortality rates, “it has

estimated for India that in order to have a 95 per cent probability of raising a

son to adulthood, the couple had to have at least six children.”

In general, direct efforts on the part of government to promote family

planning have had only limited success in India. In large part this has been

due to the factors which have traditionally operated in Indian culture and

society to promote large families, of which more will be said later. Here,

however, it might be noted that the most common family planning modes have

proven difficult to implement under Indian conditions. Where government efforts

are concerned, “for mass consumption only three methods are…advocated:

sterilization (vasectomy for fathers and tubectomy for mothers), IUDs and

condoms.” Sterilization has traditionally met with strong resistance among

uneducated sectors of the population who associate it with loss of virility or

feminimity, and, often being irrevocable, it has been a source of understandable

concern in a society where couples who may already have several children risk

losing some or all of them as a result of such factors as epidemics earthquakes

or floods. Resistance to sterilization has traditionally been strongest among

men, Chandrasekhar suggesting that the prevalence of tubectomies as opposed to

vasactomies serving serving indication that “women are becoming increasingly

aware of the problem and want to solve it without waiting for their husbands to

decide on vasectomy.”

In regard to IUD, which has been promoted since its introduction in

India in 1963, the method has not proven popular because of the relative

frequency of excessive bleeding and, though more infrequent, involuntary

expulsion. Taking note of the fact that in traditional Indian society

gynecology, obstetrics and other fields requiring intimate contact and

conversation with women are invariably reserved to female doctors only,

Chandrasekhar observes that “the real problem is the lack of sufficient numbers

of dedicated women physicians who are willing to work in rural areas and spend

some time in pre-insertion and post-insertion fo

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