Population in India — Economics STD 11 Commerce / Arts — Question

Population explosion is one of the big obstacles to development, thus attempts have to be made to control it. Measures to control population explosion can be classified into the following three groups:

• Economic Measures
• Social Measures
• Population Policy of India.

(i) Economic Measures:

• Expansion of industrial sector to shift the disguisedly unemployed people in rural areas to industries.
• Creation of employment opportunities in rural areas by starting labor-intensive industries.
• Equitable distribution of national income and removal of poverty, as the size of family, is linked with poverty.

(ii) Social Measures: Population problem is also a social problem and related to illiteracy, superstitions, orthodoxy, pitiable condition of women, etc.
The following social measures must be undertaken.

• (a) Education: Improvement in education changes the attitude of people towards family, marriage, and the number of children. Mostly educated people delay their marriage and prefer to have small families.
• (b) Improvement in the conditions of women: Discrimination against women in social and economic life should be removed by the government.
• (c) Raising the age of marriage: The marriage age of boys and girls should be raised and offenders should be punished by law.

(iii) Population Policy of India:

• Family Planning Programme: Family planning refers to planned parenthood. It means limiting the size of the family by choice and not by chance. The family planning programme was introduced by the Government of India in 1952.
• Family Welfare Programme: This programme tries to integrate various families. This programme deals with maternal, child health, and nutrition issues of the society.
• National Population Policy, 2000: It was introduced to control population and to improve the quality of population, through various measures like free education, reducing infant mortality and maternal mortality rate, etc.