There has been a national consensus on the need to curb population growth but little agreement until lately on how to go about it. The new national population policy, 2000, however may have a greater chance of acceptance as it incorporates some of the lessons learnt from recent successes in curbing population growth. Prima facie, the approach adopted in this policy seems superior to most of those tried out in the past.
While the earlier attempts merely emphasised physical targets and ignored the vital aspects of health and education, especially that of the girl child, which are vitally linked to birth rates, the latest policy seeks to squarely address these issues. Besides, it also makes the right kind of noises about investment in social infrastructure as an essential prerequisite for promoting small family norms.
Whatever the merits of past population policies, the net result was disappointing until the nineties. Going by the latest Planning Commission estimates, the population growth rate, that hovered in excess of 2 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s, has now dropped to 1.57 per cent. The Commission is optimistic about its further falling to 1.3 per cent in the next 10 years.
For the first time in the early 1990s, the crude birth rate declined by more than the crude death rate. This is encouraging but as the population has already crossed the billion mark, any further addition, however small, is bound to cause concern. The need to intensify efforts has become all the more acute because the children born earlier are now in the reproductive age-group. So every effort has to be made to hasten the process of bringing down the total fertility rate to replacement levels.
The impact of the previous population control efforts was essentially confined to specific states and specific socio-economic groups. As pointed out in the latest policy document, about 12 per cent of the country's population that has already achieved net replacement levels lives primarily in nine states. The other chunk of 33.5 per cent population that is about to reach this mark is confined to 11 states.
The areas and population groups that need greater attention can, thus, be clearly identified. Also easily identifiable are some of the glaring lacunae in the traditional family welfare programmes. Little attempt had been made to dispel the notion, especially among the poor and socially deprived, that an additional mouth brings two hands with it and a couple must produce several children to ensure survival of at least a couple of them. No population policy can work as long as such beliefs persist.
Success of the new policy will depend largely on the way it is implemented by the laggard states and the pace of socio-economic development (including in the field of health and education) that accompanies it. Measures like freezing the number of seats in the Lok Sabha at the current level are essentially facilitators, dispelling states' fears that population control will reduce their quota of MPs. There has to be an adequate political will to achieve the twin, veritably inseparable, objectives of reducing family size and improving the quality of life.
