India's Increasing Population: A Big Problem

The fast growing population of India may be called the root cause of all the problems which it has been facing for a few decades. It has made the Indian life critical. The government is doing its best to solve this problem but nothing has been achieved so far in this direction. The problem is still these in the same magnitude.

India is the second most densely populated country in the world after China. Our population is continuing to grow at a fast rate. This kind of growth has a direct effect on the development of the country. It prevents the benefits of economic development from reaching all the people. The reasons behind this is that the development fails to keep pace with the demands of a large population. In such a situation it becomes difficult to provide education, decent jobs and a reasonable standard of living to everyone.

At the time when India git independence, its population was only thirty- four crores. It becomes 54.8 crores in 1971. According to the census of 1981 the population was 68.4 crores which reached to 84.4 crores in 1991. It is still growing at the rate of about one crore eighty lakhs per year. India crossed the billion mark at the turn of the century. This presents a horrible situation, because the explosion of population has either generated or complicated the problems of poverty, illness, unemployment and many others.

The availability of improved medical facilities now, with many hospitals and health care centres all over the country have resulted in the lower death rate. But we have not been able to control the birth rate.