Indian population jumps over 17%

This is due to the fact that nearly 25% of the population are adolescent in their reproductive years. As many as 45% marriages in the country are in 13 to 18 age group with family planning not getting desired attention to this group of over 250 million, which was never addressed by the government. Experts say it has been a huge missing link so far. Both maternal and neonatal mortality are higher among the young compared to woman.

We are exposing children to tremendous risk of disease and pregnancy that’s unwanted which will result in big morbidity and mortality to our young children’s. Hence I would really emphasize that it is important that we move through an education and information system for this age group in school and outside the school. Studies also show that across all groups, programs have not been able to address the need for family planning. This unmet need is also contributing to population growth. The government is rolling out new initiatives. 

We know that when we achieve what we would be able to reduce or meet needs of family planning in India and also consequently reduce the number of woman who die giving birth or during pregnancy. It also affects quality of life of families and of children born to these families; hence it is a major step forward.Experts say investing in adolescent is the fastest method of achieving population stabilisation. The Government is now repositioning family planning to address the needs of the young people.

In about 11 years India is expected to overtake China as the most populous country in the world. At the other extreme Europe will have fewer people as birth rate here are falling rapidly. So the billion dollar question perhaps is whether this is demographic dividend or potential time bomb? The UN makes the point that this is time to act, there has to be investment policy, there has to be change to make sure that the next 10 or 13 years doesn’t show the next billion coming up. 

We see the expectations from the new government on the point of aspiration, the point of India’s huge growing young people who want better education, who wants jobs. How do we address that with numbers like this? So if the young people are given the education and the right skills to meet the demands of the developing nations. Then this could be easily turned into an opportunity whereas if the skills are lacking and the employability is lacking than this very opportunity becomes a threat. So it depends on not only numbers but also the quality of the numbers and that would be major thing on how we handle the health situation, how we handle the education system and how we handle the creation of infrastructure. 

One thing this government should be happy about is that, India’s population spike has slowed down in the last 10 years and has grown at 5% slower rate than the previous decade. The other good news is the literacy rate has grown and significantly more women have learnt to read and write in last 10 years than man. And the literacy gap between urban rural areas has narrowed.