High-powered committee to study population control, announces Finance Minister Sitharaman
NEW DELHI: Expressing concern that rising population growth and demographic changes are posing challenges to the goal of Viksit Bharat, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced the formation of a high-powered committee, which will be mandated to “comprehensively” look into these challenges and give recommendations.
In her interim budget speech, Sitharaman said that a high-powered committee will be formed to extensively consider the challenges of fast population growth and demographic changes.
The committee will be mandated to make recommendations for addressing these challenges comprehensively about the goal of Viksit Bharat, she added.
India overtook China as the world's most populous country in 2023. The UN said that China's population peaked at 1.426 billion in 2022 and started falling. Projections indicate that the size of the Chinese population could drop below 1 billion before the end of the century. By contrast, India's population is expected to continue growing for several decades, it said.
Welcoming the announcement, Poonam Mutreja, the Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India (PFI), told The New Indian Express, “We hope this committee will be driven by the rich demographic data India has and recognise that though India has surpassed China as the world most populous country, we have done well in stabilising population growth.”
“The need of the hour is to address the challenges and opportunities presented by the ongoing demographic changes in India. We must plan for investing in the 360 million young population and the increasingly aging population's needs,” she said.
However, Rajya Sabha CPI (M) MP John Brittas told The New Indian Express that he is “suspicious” about the announcement and will wait for the government to make its stand very clear about its intentions and whether there is any intention to bring in any population control measures that target and tarnish the Muslim population.
He said the true picture is that whenever the government provides education and health facilities, the population stabilises.
He said he is not accusing the government, but seeing its past deeds he is suspicious that it could be another anti-Muslim agenda.
He further said that in the southern states, the population has stabilised because of education.
He cited a campaign that was launched by BJP MPs from time to time and who introduced private member bills in both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on population control bills.
In 2019, BJP MP Sanjeev Balyan, who later became Union Minister, said the government was working on formulating the population control bill. Tabling a private member bill in Lok Sabha, he said that the root cause of a majority of the problems in India is its “uncontrolled growth of population.”
In 2022, another BJP MP, Rakesh Sinha, introduced his Population Regulation Bill in the Rajya Sabha. He later withdrew the bill after Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya’s intervention.
Sinha had sought to enforce a two-child rule with penal provisions for violations.
The BJP MP, while withdrawing his bill, said that the government efforts are being undertaken in “an constitutional manner and we do not want to repeat the emergency," referring to the compulsory sterilisation programme that Sanjay Gandhi launched to limit population growth in 1976.
Sinha, however, cited Hindu and Muslim population data to push for his bill.
He said that between 1901 and 2011, the Hindu population had reduced by 13.8 per cent, while the Muslim population increased by 9.8 per cent. This is a fact.. one can't run away from facts.
Mandaviya had at that time said that instead of “jabran” (force), the government has successfully used awareness and health campaigns to achieve population control.
The health minister quoted the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) and census data to stress that the population growth rate has been consistently decreasing in the country.