Population Explosion in India:
(i) Populating explosion is a rapid growth of population. It reveals an increase in population at an alarming rate. The growth rate of the population is basically the difference between birth rate and death rate. Population problem is an inevitable result of reproductive behaviour of people in a society. But this view has been rejected by the population experts. They hold that population explosion is a transitory phenomenon. It occurs due to rapid fall in death rate without a corresponding fall in birth rate.
Further rate of economic progress would, inter alia, depend on our power to control the population.
(ii) According to them, every country passes through three stages of population transition. In the first stage, both birth rate and death rate are high. So, the population remains more or less stable. In villages, prevalence of traditional norms and lack of education result in high birth rate. Lack of medical facilities result in a high death rate.
(iii) The second stage begins with industrialisation, which brings educational development and medical aid. As a result, there is a check on the death rate. Since society remains primarily agrarian and education remains limited to a few sections of the society only, attitude towards the size of the family does not change. So, the birth rate remains high. This gives rise to population explosion. Our country is in this state of transition.
(iv) In the third stage, the birth rate declines significantly due to education and adoption of birth control measures. This puts a check on population explosion.
(v) Population explosion is one of the major issues which our country is facing. At the rate of 31 new babies every minute, we are adding 45,000 persons daily to our population. In this way, every year we have nearly 16 millions more people to feed, educate, provide shelter and find jobs for them. The growth rate of the population is 2.0 per cent per annum.
(vi) After China, India is the most populous country of the world. As per 2001 census preliminary report, the total population of our country is 102.72 crores, 16.8% of the total world's population lives in our country, but land area is only 2.4% of the world. India's population has increased rapidly in the 20th century.
