National

Population Explosion: Why are politicians communalising it?

by TestHostEntry

Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed one of the most important issues of the country, in his Independence Day speech.

He has made it clear that his govt considers “population explosion” to be in the way of India’s further development. Narendra Modi praised the virtue of small families and urged the centre and the state to come with measures to tackle this “uncontrolled growth”. And indeed if not controlled, in another 7 years, India is going to overtake China to become the most populous country in the world.

However, this isn’t the first time in the history of our country’s post-independence period when a govt has tried to control the population. A family planning scheme was launched back in 1951 making India the first-ever country to launch a state-sponsored program for population control.

World data on our population

Certain projections made by the United Nations rather shows that our country’s population growth has almost stabilised and it is not too far from the time that India’s population will start declining in comparison to regions like Africa, China or if we consider the entire world.
World Bank data had also shown India’s growth rate decreasing from 1.73% in 2001 to 1.04% in 2018.
The Economy Survey of 2018-19 the population growth rate in 12 states was less than even 1%, and even states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana which are regarded as high fertility states – have also shown a significant decline in their growth rates over time.
India is doing its best to control its population explosion but the data has also predicted that if it is not controlled, or done in a correct manner, it is expected to overtake China by 2020. And by 2060 it can be 1.65 billion.

Politics and Population

BJP’s ally in Maharashtra Shiv Sena in its mouthpiece Saamna had said that a section of the Muslim community does not understand the importance of curbing population.
The party also alleged in the article that “fundamentalist Muslims are not concerned about population explosion and are not ready to come out of the mindset of we 2, our 25 children or hum do humare pacchis”.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi also took a dig at the prime minister for raising concern over ‘population explosion’ by saying that the latter was clueless about how to utilise the country’s youth to an advantage. In his tweet where he tagged Modi, the Hyderabad MP also said, “The PM of India is clueless about what how to utilise this advantage, so he’s coming up with discarded & intrusive ideas of governance that shirk his own responsibility.”
Earlier it was BJP leader Giriraj Singh who had once aimed a dart at Muslims saying “religious obstacles” was one reason why the country had failed to check the “population explosion.
In his first tenure, PM Modi spoke about India’s 1.6 billion people and how he is ensuring the availability of skilled human resource capacity in the country. But now, 5 years he himself is showing concern and announcing that his new priority will be to control the growing issue. This conveys something about the intensity of the situation.
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