Environmental Balance & Growth
By Dr S.S Chhina
(Senior Fellow, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi)
India surpassed China in the race of population on March 3, 2023, and is still growing at the rate of 0.68 per cent annually. If not checked it would become a nation of 1.66 billion by 2050 and have a cascading effect on both environment and development.
While the United Nations report on population puts India as a nation of 1.42 billion against 1.41 billion of China, the country is bearing three times more burden than its neighbour. Note that density of population in China is just 148.58 per sq.km as against 431.11 of India. Even in the past, four decades ago, India was over-burdened because of the lack of resources, whereas China has plenty. Geographical area of India is just 2.4 per cent of the world, whereas the population constitutes about 17.7 per cent. Even the water resources are only 4 per cent of the world.
Since 1980, the era of Sanjay Gandhi, India could not adopt a policy to address this big rise in population. There were proposals such as the two-child norm, but these were not pursued. Looking at the burden on the resources, the country needs to adopt a prudent and effective policy to control population, otherwise it would continue to create havoc instead of it becoming a blessing.
The perpetual rise in the import of food articles including pulses, and oil seeds and wasting trillions of foreign exchange on the one hand, and depleting average size of holdings even below to one acre on the other would, further thrive its constraints to import and the real development for prosperity stands discarded. Looking at the availability of water as a necessity of life, the scenario is most discouraging and would emerge as a major problem in the future.
In 1950, the per capita availability of water was 5300 cubic feet, whereas in most of the countries it was below 2000 cubic feet. But with the rapid rise in population, it became only 2300 cubic feet in 1991, which is still not satisfactory. But in 2020 it depleted to 1500 cubic feet, and still declining. According to experts, the countries which are having per capita water availability below 1700 cubic feet are under lot of stress. Today, not only in cities but even in villages the water shortage is reaching alarming levels.
Prior to 1970, though 70 per cent of the population was engaged in agriculture, the country was compelled to import food, thus not only spending huge amount of foreign exchange but putting burden on the purse strings. The green revolution ushered in the late 60s, was based on more and more use of chemicals, albeit staggering results were obtained on the yield front and dozens of chemicals had to be resorted to every year because of the application of the law of diminishing marginal returns in agriculture.
The chemicals started penetrating air, water, and soil and subsequently food. The toxins of these chemicals remained as residues in food and are causing ailments. The application of chemicals has become a constraint only because of the huge needs of food that is the result of over burden of population on land.
The burden of population had created an imbalance in the natural environment. The application of chemicals or fertilizers require adequate irrigation water to yield best results so the areas where the ground water was available easily, tubewells were installed to pump out the water. In Punjab and Haryana 60 per cent of irrigation is dependent on ground water. In 1960, in Punjab there were only 5000 tubewells, whereas at present this number has risen to 1.4 million, pumping out water day and night.
The water level has depleted to over 150 feet in most of the areas. Water has become undrinkable in some area because of the penetration of chemicals along with depleting water table. So many birds have extinguished along with very useful micro-organism in earth, which were helpful to raise the level of fertility. The rain circle has been disrupted, and now untimely and unseasonal rains are frequent, causing damage to the crops.
While India adopted planning for development in 1950, top priority was given to agriculture instead of industry, although the country was much backward in industrialisation. This was largely because of the scarcity of food for an over-burdened population. India thus remained much behind in industrialisation, and industrial goods had to be imported, which caused the slow growth of industry impacting employment. Today the number of unemployed is about 80 million.
The priority to generate employment, industrial goods and services, social security and moreover the need to shift population from farming to non-farming professions was discarded due to the constraint of feeding the billions and farming took centre stage. The country also remained far behind on the front of providing social security as the main factor for consideration was food, given the huge and over-populated country. Other social evils, particularly child labour, raised its ugly head as unemployment or under employment forced families to get maximum earning hands.
Population is a natural resource of the country, but if it is not productive, it becomes a burden. Even the unemployed in large number require to satisfy their daily needs, where the country had to depend either on foreign imports or had to discard those needs. Unemployment, over-crowding, shortage of houses, child labour, among other social evils in the society etc. are the off shoots of this huge size of population.HHh
There are two popular theories on population. The first, the Malthusian theory of population, that states that if the population would not be controlled by artificial means, then the natural checks such as famine, epidemic, floods etc. would check this rise. Similarly, the optimum theory of population states that the size of population is optimum for the country, where the per capita output is maximum. According to both these theories, the size of population in India is much higher than the optimum and must be addressed at priority. — INFA