{"id":5580,"date":"2017-07-22T11:34:20","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T06:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/?p=5580"},"modified":"2017-07-22T11:34:20","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T06:04:20","slug":"dna-article-lets-talk-about-population","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calamur.org\/gargi\/2017\/07\/22\/dna-article-lets-talk-about-population\/","title":{"rendered":"DNA Article : Let\u2019s talk about Population"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever think of population?
\nWhen i was a student in London, i was at a crossroad. Should i stay back (and i had been there almost 9 years, and it would have been easy), or should I get home. In that period, i would get these nightmares. I am at Churchgate Station, at 9 in the morning, and trying to cross the road, with a mass of people. That one nightmare, kept me in England for an extra year, till i figured, i will get back to India and not find a job in Nariman Point \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Even today, when you pass by an Andheri station at peak hour, or a Dadar, the sheer mass of bodies is scary (at least for me), and that is going to grown. We have stopped talking about population, but we need to start again.<\/p>\n

My DNA article<\/strong> <\/a>this week<\/p>\n

\"30330302886_cd18fa2ee2_k<\/p>\n

One of the scarier sites on the internet, is livepoppulation.com<\/a>. <\/strong>it is a live tracker of the change in population. As one looks at the counter, with horrific fascination, as it increases by one almost every second, one realises that this is a lot of children. Almost 58,000 more children every day, who will grow up to need food, water, shelter; school, hospitals, universities, and jobs. How are we going to provide for 1.6 crore additional people every year?<\/p>\n

In the 1970\u2019s \u00a0the concept of population growth was all around. When we went to the cinema, there would be Film\u2019s division\u2019s documentaries telling us about how India was overpopulated, and how there wouldn\u2019t be food to go around. We grew up hearing about , <\/em>the Government promoted contraceptive, \u2018hum do hamare do\u2019, and various family planning schemes.\u00a0 The few times one got to watch television, the message was the same, too many people, too little food, and if we keep growing at this pace, it will be a terrible future.<\/p>\n

Today, in the cities, most of us gawk when someone tells us they have three children. And, this cuts across socio economic classes. One seems to be the norm, two far less frequent. \u00a0The cost of bringing up a child is deterrent. In rural India, the situation is different. While it may no longer be a large battalion of children, it is common to see families with 4 or 5 children. This again cuts across socio economic clusters, and communities.\u00a0\u00a0 It is also seen that the more educated, and well developed states, have been showing a decline in population growth, while the Hindi belt in the north \u2013 with high levels of illiteracy, suppression of female literacy, have a higher reproductive rate.\u00a0 The average fertility rate (the number of children born to a woman) is 1.2 in Sikkim;\u00a0 1.6\u00a0 in Punjab, Kerala; 1.7 in Tamil Nadu, Goa; 2.3 in Madhya Pradesh, 2.7 in Uttar Pradesh, 3.4 in Bihar. \u00a0As it stands now, we are likely to overtake China in 2024.0<\/p>\n

The first census of independent India put the population at 361 million people. Life expectancy was 31 years. Infant mortality was high 50 deaths for every 1000 births. People had more children simply because only a few would survive. But, independent India managed to devote some resources to improving health parameters. Life expectancy grew, and infant mortality started dropping. In 1970 India\u2019s population crossed 553 million, and alarm bells began. People began talking about the population explosion, and what needs to be done to control population. Amongst the people who saw the booming population was a threat was Sanjay Gandhi. When Emergency was declared, he declared a personal war against population growth. And, part of this was enforced sterilisation. Having suspended democracy, and the constitution, Sanjay \u00a0Gandhi\u2019s directives were ruthlessly enforced by state governments.\u00a0 Government officials were given targets for sterilisation, and in most cases, these targets were met with sterilizing people without their consent. Undertrials, students, old men, no one was safe. Coercion was high<\/a>, Villages were refused water for irrigation, if they didn\u2019t meant sterilisation quotas; families were not given food rations, if sterilisation quotas were not met.\u00a0 It is estimated that 6.2 million Indians were forcibly sterilized<\/a> during the emergency.<\/p>\n

The biggest body blow that emergency delivered was not so much to Democracy which was restored, and continues to be part of our DNA; but population control. For some reason, we have stopped talking about reproduction. And, as we stand to touch 1.5 billion people in 2030 we need to bring population back front and centre of the policy agenda. \u00a0\u00a0Because if we don\u2019t, no matter what is done in terms of social welfare \u2013 it will never, ever, be enough.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Population Explosion : India Produces 1.6 crore babies every year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india"],"yoast_head":"\nDNA Article : Let\u2019s talk about Population - A PoV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As India's population approaches the 1.5 billion mark, we need to seriously have a chat about reproduction. 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