By 2012 the world population is expected to reach 7 billion and India is slated to surpass China as the most populous nation in this world by 2030. One in every six person on this earth is Indian and they are spread everywhere, on every continent. There is no need really to mention that there is population explosion in India, the numbers are enough to suggest that (21% rate of population growth). To help you in understanding what this means, India adds the entire population of Sri Lanka or Australia every year to its population. The population density is greater than any other nation of the world.
Its useless to say that such a huge population in such high densities poses magnanimous challenges of governance, organisation and in providing basic human necessities to the people. The challenge is so very steep because the land area covered by our motherland is just 2.4% of the world but it is inhabited by 16% of the world population. The sheer massiveness of the numbers is a massive problem.
The most basic problem is feeding this enormous population, which we have fallen short of even after 60 years of our independence (the proposed Food Security Act is still to be implemented). The other problems are minuscule as compared to this very basic right of every human to have food and water. Housing, sanitation, education, roads, electricity, poverty are just some of the other problems that arise out of it.
This however is a pessimistic way of looking at the current situation. It's also a mere excuse we give for our failures to meet the basic needs of our population even after six and a half decades of our independence. Noted economics Mr. Amartya Sen provides a different view. In his paper he has shown that poverty is not because of the population but the population is increasing because of the poverty.
The poor see their children as a source of money, hence as a measure to fight poverty they increase the size of their family. That is why there is such a divide in the population across classes. Since the state has failed to help the poor in their poverty they are helping themselves by increasing their numbers. This creates a vicious cycle where more poor people are added on each year which makes the counter-poverty measures insufficient.
One thing we need to be optimistic about is that such a huge population means that India is the hub of manpower. One of the few nation where it is increasing. 40% of our population is below 15 years of age. This advantage of having a high number of youth in the population if used properly and propelled into the right direction could enable us to be the superpower we aspire to be.
If we follow the right policies, we could be supplying manpower to almost every other nation of this world. But for that we need to act today. The future thus looks brighter with the Right to Education in place and the Food Security bill also coming up. Agreed that the implementation is still shoddy but at least the direction is correct. We must now start preparing to lead the world because it would be us, the below 25's that will have to lead in our septuagenarian years.
"Guard your light and protect it. Move it forward into the world and be fully confident that if we connect light to light to light, and join the lights together of the millions young people in our country today, we will be enough to set our whole country aglow".
Comments
Post a Comment