Author- Manoj Kumar
Modern India is a country of billion plus people. Since Independence the population of India has almost trebled now and is set to cross the population of China in the coming decades. Even after so much of emphasis on the family planning, the growth in our population is still one of the sharpest in the world. India is a democracy and because of this, no stringent laws could be framed in order to check this rapid growth in population as China did where one couple can have only one child with only some relaxations like in case the first child is handicap or extremely feeble to survive. Due to the various political compulsions, no political party, national or regional dared to raise this issue, barring the one done at the time of emergency slapped by Iron lady Indira Gandhi when she was the prime minister of India. She paid the price of this by losing the general elections for the first time in the hands of the opposition.
Needless to say, almost eighty percent of problems related to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, sky-rocketing price rise, regionalism, religious fundamentalism and corruption are as a result of the population explosion we see here in India. Resources are scarce and ever galloping population is absorbing them very rapidly leaving nothing for the future generations. Price rise is at such an extreme that people are not even able to get two ends meal. They are forced to remain empty or with half- filled stomach due to non-affordability of the food items. There are several people in the remote and under- developed areas in several districts of our country where people starve off every year due to uncertain behavior of the weathers and the dependency of the poor farmers on it for their cultivation and harvesting. Whatever growth Indian economy shows falls short in front of such a large populace be it rationing system for public distribution, be it employment guarantee schemes, be it senior citizen pension scheme be it housing schemes for the poor and unprivileged, be it electricity generation, or be it illiteracy eradication schemes!
More than one fourth of the population in Metropolitan Cities like Mumbai and Delhi sleeps on the roadside at nights. They don’t have even roof to take shelter to which they can say as their homes. Not only in villages, even in many small towns and big cities, there is a big crisis of the drinking water. For those who can afford, the packaged drinking water is available in plenty but for the poor availability of drinking water is a big problem, they are forced to drink the contaminated water of the ponds and rivers which carry serious health hazards for them. Health facilities are one of the poorest in India, though India boasts of having the most advance and modern medical facilities available with her. But those can be afforded hardly by some 5 % of the total population of India. Rest all are at the mercy of the government hospitals and health centers. These hospitals are over-burdened with the number of patients coming to them every day and thus the proper administration or care of the patients is an impossible task for them looking at the limited resources they have. The maternity and infant death is one of the highest in India due to this. Even after so much of development, because of poverty the rural people prefer to have the delivery of their babies at their home by untrained ladies leading to serious risks of infections and diseases.
Corruption is a major breed of this population growth. We all say that the system has been rusted till its root. Babus in the government do not work without taking bribe. They can’t move the files from one table to another without getting their palms greased. It’s true but under what compulsions do they do so, do we think on this? They have their large families and in order to feed them and give them the facilities those required to live as human beings, their paltry sum of per month salary fall way short of what they actually require. The education of their children, marriage of their daughters which demand lakhs of rupees not just for the traditional dowry system prevailing, but also in order to arrange these marriages to show off in front of the relatives and the neighbors. Perhaps all of us, the whole society are responsible for this curse.
Another facet of the population growth! Young boys are an easy prey of the anti-social elements who exploit them by using them as their agents to create panic and terror in exchange of few thousand of currency notes which these poor chaps in their childhood had always missed even for the simple things like to buy toys, balloons, sweets or ice-creams or to ride on a Jhula in a Mela. When their mother was sick, they could not buy her medicine and she kept on suffering with her pain or might even had succumbed. This has become one of the biggest threats for our country as hundreds of innocents are being killed this way and those actual culprits remain untraced and the agents employed by them become the victims. The law and order and the judicial systems have virtually become so corrupt that the general public has got no faith on these institutions.
This menace of population explosion is responsible for all the evils in our country… We desperately need an iron lady like Indira for firmer decisions to tackle all this.
Needless to say, almost eighty percent of problems related to poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, sky-rocketing price rise, regionalism, religious fundamentalism and corruption are as a result of the population explosion we see here in India. Resources are scarce and ever galloping population is absorbing them very rapidly leaving nothing for the future generations. Price rise is at such an extreme that people are not even able to get two ends meal. They are forced to remain empty or with half- filled stomach due to non-affordability of the food items. There are several people in the remote and under- developed areas in several districts of our country where people starve off every year due to uncertain behavior of the weathers and the dependency of the poor farmers on it for their cultivation and harvesting. Whatever growth Indian economy shows falls short in front of such a large populace be it rationing system for public distribution, be it employment guarantee schemes, be it senior citizen pension scheme be it housing schemes for the poor and unprivileged, be it electricity generation, or be it illiteracy eradication schemes!
More than one fourth of the population in Metropolitan Cities like Mumbai and Delhi sleeps on the roadside at nights. They don’t have even roof to take shelter to which they can say as their homes. Not only in villages, even in many small towns and big cities, there is a big crisis of the drinking water. For those who can afford, the packaged drinking water is available in plenty but for the poor availability of drinking water is a big problem, they are forced to drink the contaminated water of the ponds and rivers which carry serious health hazards for them. Health facilities are one of the poorest in India, though India boasts of having the most advance and modern medical facilities available with her. But those can be afforded hardly by some 5 % of the total population of India. Rest all are at the mercy of the government hospitals and health centers. These hospitals are over-burdened with the number of patients coming to them every day and thus the proper administration or care of the patients is an impossible task for them looking at the limited resources they have. The maternity and infant death is one of the highest in India due to this. Even after so much of development, because of poverty the rural people prefer to have the delivery of their babies at their home by untrained ladies leading to serious risks of infections and diseases.
Corruption is a major breed of this population growth. We all say that the system has been rusted till its root. Babus in the government do not work without taking bribe. They can’t move the files from one table to another without getting their palms greased. It’s true but under what compulsions do they do so, do we think on this? They have their large families and in order to feed them and give them the facilities those required to live as human beings, their paltry sum of per month salary fall way short of what they actually require. The education of their children, marriage of their daughters which demand lakhs of rupees not just for the traditional dowry system prevailing, but also in order to arrange these marriages to show off in front of the relatives and the neighbors. Perhaps all of us, the whole society are responsible for this curse.
Another facet of the population growth! Young boys are an easy prey of the anti-social elements who exploit them by using them as their agents to create panic and terror in exchange of few thousand of currency notes which these poor chaps in their childhood had always missed even for the simple things like to buy toys, balloons, sweets or ice-creams or to ride on a Jhula in a Mela. When their mother was sick, they could not buy her medicine and she kept on suffering with her pain or might even had succumbed. This has become one of the biggest threats for our country as hundreds of innocents are being killed this way and those actual culprits remain untraced and the agents employed by them become the victims. The law and order and the judicial systems have virtually become so corrupt that the general public has got no faith on these institutions.
This menace of population explosion is responsible for all the evils in our country… We desperately need an iron lady like Indira for firmer decisions to tackle all this.
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मित्रों यदि मेरा यह पोस्ट आपके दिल को जरा भी छू कर गुजरा हो तो मुझे विश्वास है कि आप मेरे इस प्रयास को लाइक दे कर मुझे और भी अच्छा लिखने की प्रेरणा, स्नेह और आशीर्वाद देंगे। आप अगर मुझे मेरे फेसबुक प्रोफाइल पर फॉलो करते हैं तो आपको मेरे शेयर किये सारे पोस्ट्स आपके नोटिफिकेशन्स में मिलते रहेंगे।
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