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The three most important dangers of demographic proliferation with respect to city life are hazardous civic living, declining sex ratio and severity of sufferings from incidence of natural disaster like earthquake. The recent report of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific rightly warns that the hazards of living in populous cities and even bigger towns will overtake the lowest point tolerable limit in no distant future if the countries fail to drastically cut the momentum of population growth from now. India’s population will estimatedly reach the 1.5 billion mark in 2025 from 1.03 billion in 2001, if, of course, there is no decline in annual growth rate. According to the study as much as 50 per cent of the projected population of India will live in towns and cities by the time. Another menace that the growing numbers have generated in recent decades is the declining trend of sex ratio which, according to experts, is an indication of rampant female foeticide. What is still more perturbing is that the evil practice has assumed larger proportions among the educated urbanites and informed groups of people in cities with high literacy and better quality of living indicators. It may be noted here that in 1992, Amartya Sen has statistically estimated that as much as 37 million girls were “missing” in India and had pegged the figure for globally “missing” girls at 100 million due to sex-selected aberrations and foeticide. The worst affected States are Punjab with male-female sex ratio at 799, Delhi at 850, Gujarat at 906 and Maharashtra at 916 as per 2001-census. Unless this menace is stopped, the society will face a severe psycho-social crisis.
Apart from this, the density of population in cities is alarmingly rising and has already reached 25,000 people per sq km in big cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. Thus any natural disaster striking Indian citizens will cause unthinkable human sufferings and loss of life and property. While restrictions should be strictly imposed on proliferation of high-rise buildings, proper training needs to be given to people on disaster management technique. In view of the number of million-plus population cities jumping from 23 in 1991 to 35 in 2001 and estimatedly to 50 in 2011, proper planning to disperse population in developed urban areas is certainly essential, though control of demographic proliferation remains the upper-most need of the hour. Though India happened to be the world’s first country to adopt family planning as far back as in 1952, the goal of stability still remains a far cry and now is projected to achieve the same by 2060 when India will find an additional population growth of 380 per cent. What is important here to note is that the growth has been strikingly uneven and some States in the 50-year period (1951-2001) like Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra have recorded population growth of more than three times. The Government badly needs to adopt some fiscal and economic incentive and disincentive measures to quicken population control in line with China so that a zero growth rate could be achieved as early as possible. SOURCE: ASSAM TRIBUNE EDITORIAL 08.09.08
The three most important dangers of demographic proliferation with respect to city life are hazardous civic living, declining sex ratio and severity of sufferings from incidence of natural disaster like earthquake. The recent report of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific rightly warns that the hazards of living in populous cities and even bigger towns will overtake the lowest point tolerable limit in no distant future if the countries fail to drastically cut the momentum of population growth from now. India’s population will estimatedly reach the 1.5 billion mark in 2025 from 1.03 billion in 2001, if, of course, there is no decline in annual growth rate. According to the study as much as 50 per cent of the projected population of India will live in towns and cities by the time. Another menace that the growing numbers have generated in recent decades is the declining trend of sex ratio which, according to experts, is an indication of rampant female foeticide. What is still more perturbing is that the evil practice has assumed larger proportions among the educated urbanites and informed groups of people in cities with high literacy and better quality of living indicators. It may be noted here that in 1992, Amartya Sen has statistically estimated that as much as 37 million girls were “missing” in India and had pegged the figure for globally “missing” girls at 100 million due to sex-selected aberrations and foeticide. The worst affected States are Punjab with male-female sex ratio at 799, Delhi at 850, Gujarat at 906 and Maharashtra at 916 as per 2001-census. Unless this menace is stopped, the society will face a severe psycho-social crisis.
Apart from this, the density of population in cities is alarmingly rising and has already reached 25,000 people per sq km in big cities like Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. Thus any natural disaster striking Indian citizens will cause unthinkable human sufferings and loss of life and property. While restrictions should be strictly imposed on proliferation of high-rise buildings, proper training needs to be given to people on disaster management technique. In view of the number of million-plus population cities jumping from 23 in 1991 to 35 in 2001 and estimatedly to 50 in 2011, proper planning to disperse population in developed urban areas is certainly essential, though control of demographic proliferation remains the upper-most need of the hour. Though India happened to be the world’s first country to adopt family planning as far back as in 1952, the goal of stability still remains a far cry and now is projected to achieve the same by 2060 when India will find an additional population growth of 380 per cent. What is important here to note is that the growth has been strikingly uneven and some States in the 50-year period (1951-2001) like Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra have recorded population growth of more than three times. The Government badly needs to adopt some fiscal and economic incentive and disincentive measures to quicken population control in line with China so that a zero growth rate could be achieved as early as possible. SOURCE: ASSAM TRIBUNE EDITORIAL 08.09.08
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