This paper examines the challenges posed by India's rapidly expanding population, drawing on sources spanning from the 1960s through 2011. It traces India's historical attempts at population control — including mass sterilization campaigns in the 1970s — and evaluates their limited success. The paper discusses the declining female-to-male gender ratio, the strain of 26 million annual births on education and infrastructure, and the economic potential of India's large youth population. It also reviews India's National Population Policy and the government's ongoing efforts to reduce fertility rates, raise literacy, and leverage demographic momentum for sustained economic growth.
The paper effectively uses a literature review structure to synthesize multiple scholarly and governmental sources into a coherent argument. Rather than simply summarizing each source, it sequences them chronologically and thematically, allowing evidence to build toward a policy-oriented conclusion. This approach is well suited to research papers addressing complex, ongoing social issues.
The paper opens with UN global population data to frame India's situation internationally, then transitions into a literature review section that moves chronologically — from Chandrasekhar (1968) through Naur (1976) to Thukral (2008) and Ganapathy (2011). A separate section addresses India's official National Population Policy before a brief conclusion that synthesizes the key challenges India must address. The structure is straightforward and appropriate for the undergraduate level.
The United Nations (UN) reports that the world's population stood at about 6.5 billion in 2005 and was growing at approximately 1.2% each year. The UN projected that by 2050 there would be 9.1 billion people on the planet — a figure that is somewhat alarming as a stand-alone statistic, given that rapid growth is expected "in a group of 50 countries classified as the least developed" (UN, 2005, p. 1). Between 2000 and 2005, about 76 million persons were added to the world's population each year, and India was responsible for 22% of that growth (China added 11%). Indeed, India is expected to overtake China "as the most populous country in the world by 2030" (UN). India added about 16.5 million people per year during the 2000–2005 period, while China added only about 8.4 million people per year during the same window of time, according to the UN.
What are the problems India faces that are associated with its fast-growing population? This paper reviews those problems and issues through the available literature.
Writing in Acta Sociologica in 1976, Maja Naur explains that on August 15, 1974, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi announced to her people that "India had a serious overpopulation problem" (Naur, 1976, p. 140). Naur reports on how India was dealing with its explosive population growth during the 1970s. Over the previous two decades, India had maintained family planning programs and Family Planning Ministers. India spent over a million dollars on a marketing campaign for condoms. Additionally, when men agreed to be sterilized, they were given gifts such as transistor radios, saris, and money. If a sterilized man could persuade a male friend to also get a vasectomy, he was rewarded — depending on how many men he could bring to the clinics — with a bicycle, an umbrella, or a "clockwatch" (Naur, 1976, p. 141).
Obviously these incentives did not work as intended. Even though the Indian government organized festivals — where up to 223,000 men were given vasectomies — and provided financial rewards, ultimately leading to the sterilization of 11 million men in the 1970s, it did not result in a marked reduction in births, Naur explains (p. 142).
Eight years before Naur's article was published, Foreign Affairs reported that India's population was growing at a rate of 21 million births a year. Writer S. Chandrasekhar explained that the "major cause" behind the explosive birth rate at that time was that "major communicable diseases like cholera, malaria, and smallpox have been nearly brought under control." The positive consequence of this development was that life expectancy for Indians improved from 32 years in 1950 to 51 years in 1968 (Chandrasekhar, 1968, p. 1).
An article published in the International Conference on Mathematical Biology (Thukral et al., 2008) reports that due to India's "fast depleting resources," it is "mandatory" that India begin to bring its exploding population under control. A better standard of living for the estimated 1,155,347,700 individuals living in India (World Bank, 2009) can only be achieved if population growth is brought under control (Thukral et al., p. 137). This strategy will require "regulating the instantaneous specific growth rate through rigorous family planning measures" (Thukral et al., p. 138).
The authors also note that it is "disturbing" to realize that the gender ratio in India declined from 972 females per 1,000 males in 1990 to only 933 females per 1,000 males in 2001. A higher proportion of males corresponds to more potential births. What accounts for this decline? "The preference for the male child in India," Thukral explains (p. 140). The trend, the authors argue, must shift toward a more balanced ratio — with more women relative to men — "for a balanced social development" (p. 140).
Clearly India is on a fast track to overtake China in total population, and that is not necessarily a positive development unless India can meet the challenges it faces. It needs to build more universities, provide for the millions of poor people in rural areas who remain excluded from the growing economy, continue expanding that economy to become an even more potent global powerhouse, and maintain peace with its sometimes volatile neighbor, Pakistan. The demographic trajectory India is on demands sustained policy action on multiple fronts simultaneously.
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