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Does India need a population policy?

Context: United Nations published data to show that India would surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023. At the same time India’s total fertility rate has dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.

What elements need to be included?

• From a family planning approach to a family welfare approach.
• We should be focusing on empowering men and women in being able to make informed choices about their fertility, health and well-being.
• Focus should be on Health, Skill, Education and Employment. We should focus not on fertility rate but on creating a situation in which slow changes in family size take place in the context of a growing economy.

• Elderly
  • Estimates show that 12% of India’s total population by 2025 is going to be the elderly. Every fifth Indian by 2050 will be over the age of 65. So, planning for this segment merits equal consideration.

• Females
  • Fertility decline has tremendous gender implications, it means that women have a lower burden on them.
  • Ageing is also a gender issue as two-thirds of the elderly are women, because women tend to live longer than men do.
  • India has done a good job of ensuring educational opportunities to girls. Next, we need to improve employment opportunities for young women and increase the female employment rate.

• Youth

• According to the 2019 Economic Survey ,India Demographic Dividend Will peak around 2041, when the share of the working age population is expected to hit 59%.
• We have the capacity to tap into the potential of our youth population. There Is a brief window of opportunity, which is only there for the next few decades. We need to invest in adolescent well-being right away, if we want to reap the benefits.
• Otherwise,our demographic dividend could turn into a demographic disaster.

Need for Complete Overhaul?

• Making sharp changes in public policy to manage the population can end up having unexpected consequences.
  • For e.g., China’s one-child policy led to a sharp reduction in the population growth rate. But with the rising population of the elderly. China is now trying to relax these policies and encourage people to have two or even three children but the men and women are not ready to comply.
• India since independence has adopted moderation and non-coercion in the matter of family planning.
• We cannot allow the huge advances we have made in accelerating education, delaying child marriage, addressing sexual and reproductive health needs and building agency be wasted by introducing a policy which promote increased reproduction.

Way Forward

• Economic policy should be geared towards the skilling and education of our large adolescent population with a special focus on gender.
• Special attention must be given to addressing ways in which the pandemic may have affected the lives of our adolescent and youth. If the country does not address the rights and well-being of adolescents immediately, it will set us back by many years.

India has a very good population policy, which was designed in 2000. And States also have their population policies. We just need to tweak these and add ageing, Family welfare and capacity building in our population policy focus.