Date: 15/10/2022

Relevance: GS-1: Population and Associated Issues

Key Phrases: Economic Survey, family welfare approach, China’s one-child policy, population policy, demographic dividend, World Population Prospects 2022, the gender dimension of the population.

Why in News?

• Earlier this year, the United Nations published data to show that India would surpass China as the world’s most populous country by 2023.
• According to the 2018-19 Economic Survey, India’s demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the share of the working-age population is expected to hit 59%.

Need for family welfare approach:

• India needs to move from a family planning approach to a family welfare approach.
• India should focus on empowering men and women in being able to make informed choices about their fertility, health, and well-being.

Importance of Productivity:

• It is not about whether the population is large or small; it is about whether it is healthy, skilled, and productive.
• India needs to think about how to make our present population productive.
• Skills are important, but so is economic planning that ensures good jobs, agricultural productivity, etc.

Lessons from China:

• The lesson India can take from China is that making sharp changes in public policy to manage the population ended up having unexpected consequences there.
• China’s one-child policy led to a sharp reduction in the population growth rate. But now the Chinese have a rapidly rising population of the elderly.
• China also tried to relax these policies and is now encouraging people to have two or even three children but men and women are not ready to comply. And China’s fertility continues to decline.
• So, India should focus not on the fertility rate, but on creating a situation in which slow changes in the family size take place in the context of a growing economy.

Demographic dividend:

• As in the World Population Prospects 2022, India will have one of the largest workforces globally, i.e., in the next 25 years, one in five working-age group persons will be living in India.
• India has the capacity to tap into the potential of the youth population.
• There is a brief window of opportunity, which is only there for the next few decades.
• India needs to invest in adolescent well-being right away if it wants to reap the benefits. Otherwise, the demographic dividend could turn easily into a demographic disaster.
• Constraints:
  • India’s labour force is constrained by the absence of women from the workforce; only a fourth of women are employed.
  • The quality of educational attainments is not up to the mark, and the country’s workforce badly lacks the basic skills required for the modernised job market.
  • Having the largest population with one of the world’s lowest employment rates is another enormous hurdle in reaping the ‘demographic dividend’.

The gender dimension of the population:

• India certainly has the capacity to invest in its youth population. But it doesn’t recognize the gender dimension of some of these challenges.
• Fertility decline has tremendous gender implications. What it means is that women have a lower burden on them. But it also has a flip side.
• Ageing is also a gender issue as two-thirds of the elderly are women, because women tend to live longer than men do.
• Unless India recognizes the gender dimension, it will be very difficult for it to tap into these changes.
• What needs to be done?
  • India has done a good job of ensuring educational opportunities for girls.
  • India needs to improve employment opportunities for young women and increase the female employment rate.
  • Elderly women need economic and social support networks.

What could be the economic implications of the declining fertility rate?

• India’s total fertility rate has dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.
• The spiral of lower fertility leads to a window of time when the ratio of the working-age population is higher than that of the dependent age groups.
• This high proportion of people in the workforce boosts income and investment, given the higher level of saving due to lower dependence.
• Economic policy should be geared towards the skilling and education of our large adolescent population with a special focus on gender. Addressing the unmet needs of young people should become a priority.
• If the country does not address the rights and well-being of adolescents immediately, it will set it back by many years.

Do we need a population policy?

• India has a very good population policy, which was designed in 2000 and States also have their population policies.
• India just needs to tweak these and add ageing to our population policy focus.
• The policy should talk about the poor investments in family planning or about investments in population more broadly.
• India needs a policy that supports reproductive health for individuals.
• India also needs to start focusing on other challenges that go along with enhancing reproductive health, which is not just the provision of family planning services.
• Instead of the term population policy and population control, it may need to be called a policy that enhances the population as a resource for India’s development and changes the mindset to focus on ensuring that the population is happy, healthy, and productive.

Conclusion:

• Advance investments in the development of a robust social, financial and healthcare support system for old people are the need of the hour.
• The focus of action should be on extensive investment in human capital, on older adults living with dignity, and on healthy population ageing.
• India should be prepared with suitable infrastructure, conducive social welfare schemes and massive investment in quality education and health.
• The only form of family planning that must be advocated is the kind that was advocated by Margaret Sanger: “wherein couples have babies by choice and not by chance.”

Source: The Hindu

Mains Question:

Q. Given that India is about to surpass China as the world's most populous nation, does it require a new population policy? Discuss.