Population, when unchecked, goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio said Reverend Thomas Malthus, an English clergyman born in the 18th Century who believed that humans would always reproduce faster than Earth’s capacity to feed them.
The catchy phrase of ‘population explosion’ used in context of ever increasing human race, is now widely murmured in the elite circles and people realise that it refers to the dangerous point of population-growth to which we are moving fast.
Whether one goes to railway station, airport, road, bus stand, hospital, shopping mall, market, temple, or even at marriages, one can just see that all these places are overcrowded at any time of the day. This is a clear indication of overpopulation in our country. Its high time that we come out of denial and recognize that earth cannot support many billions of people anymore.
The United Nations Population Fund in its annual State of the World Population Report for 2009 said that “Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendants. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned births multiply with time…. No human is genuinely ‘carbon neutral,’ especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way…. Strong family planning programmes are in the interests of all countries for greenhouse-gas concerns as well as for broader welfare concerns.”
India, being a developing country, had to face several economic and political challenges since the time of its independence, of which one of the most important problems has been of population explosion.
As per government figures, India’s population hit 1 billion in May 2000, increasing the urgency for the country to moderate its population growth. Some of the reasons for this population explosion are poverty, better medical facilities, and immigration from the neighboring countries.
Over the years several solutions to decrease the rate of population increase have been tried by the government, of which some were successful & some unsuccessful. Although the rate of increase has decreased, but the rate has not reached the satisfactory level yet as a result, the population in India continues to increase at an alarming rate…..to be continued
