Economists and demographers both in India and in the West believe that the country must overcome population explosion in a relatively shorter period; if it fails, the Malthusian checks will conic into operation i.e., incidence of famines, epidemics and other lethal diseases will increase and as a result death rate will rise.
Thus, whatever the country has gained as a result of development efforts in the past will be nullified. Some other experts do not visualise such a calamity because (hey think that imports of food grains in any ease will save people from starvation.
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1. Presence of Natural Checks:
According to Mallhus, high birth and death rates arc symptoms of overpopulation. In his opinion, if a country is overpopulated, early deaths due to starvation, disease or some other natural calamities are inevitable. Amartya Sen has asserted in one of his studies that since independence, India, due to its democratic social set-up has been able to avert famines.
2. Inadequate Increase in Food Production:
As compared to the growth of population, food production had increased at a lower rate during the pre-independence period. As against 1.93 per cent increase in population, the production of food grains increased at an average rate of 2.53 per cent per annum as per 2001 Government of India figures.
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For four consecutive years from 2005 06 to 2008-09, food grains production registered a rising trend and touched a record level of 234.47 million tonnes in 2008-09. The production of food grains declined to 218.11 million tonnes during 2009-10, due to the long spells of drought in various parts of the country in 2009.
The productivity of almost all the crops suffered considerably, which led to the decline in their production. As per the second advance estimates released by Ministry of Agriculture on February 9, 2011 production of food grains during 2010-11 is estimated at 232.07 million tonnes.
3. Growing Unemployment:
Efforts have been made by the government under various plans to create new employment opportunities so as to absorb the continuously increasing working population in gainful economic activities. The 64th round (2007-08) of NSSO survey on employment-unemployment indicates creation of 4 million work opportunities between 2004- 05 and 2007-08.
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The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-12) aims at generating 58 million work opportunities in twenty-one high growth sectors so that the unemployment rate falls to 4.83 per cent by the end of the plan. I he backlog of unemployment at the beginning at the First Plan was estimated at 3.3 million.
This is estimated to have increased to about 35 million as at the beginning of the Twelfth Five Year Plan on April 1, 2012. The unemployment rate is pegged at 9.4 per cent.
4. Low Standard of Living:
The standard of living of the masses in India is appallingly low. On Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis CJNP per capita was $ 2.764 in 2007 (as per World Development Report 2009) which was even lower than that in many low income economies.
According to Human Development Report 2011 among the human development index for 187 countries, India’s rank is 134th. Not only the consumption of energy and crude steel (which is perhaps a good index of development) is low in the country as compared to developed countries, but the majority of the population also subsists on inadequate diet.