NEW DELHI, Dec 4: Within days after the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat flagged India’s declining population warning the country of possible “gradual extinction,” another branch of the Sangh Parivar on Wednesday warned of the economic repercussions of slowing population growth.
Swadeshi Jagran Manch co-convenor Ashwani Mahajan said the challenge facing India’s economy presently was to maintain its population so that development efforts did not face any hurdles. “We must understand that if we fail to rise to the occasion, it may cause dangerous imbalance in the population in the form of raising the dependency burden, slowing down our growth,” he said in a statement.
Mr Mahajan expressed deep concern over the fast declining Total Fertility Rate (TFR), which refers to the number of babies an average woman between the ages of 15 years and 49 years bears over her lifetime. His concerns echo the RSS chief’s warning that society will perish if population growth rate goes below 2.1%.
“In the year 1950, our fertility rate was 6.18 children per woman,” he said, citing a report published in The Lancet showing that India’s TFR had fallen to 1.91 in 2021 and projecting a possible TFR of just 1.29 by 2050. “India needs to take this concern seriously, as ‘appropriately’ warned by the RSS chief,” Mr Mahajan said, calling for a study on the likely impacts of declining TFR and the costs to society.
He noted that falling fertility rates were a global trend, including in developed countries such as South Korea, Japan, and Germany whose very existence was being threatened. The SJM leader added that India must learn from these countries and take remedial measures to reverse the declining trend.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, however, has stressed on several occasions that India needs plans to manage the future challenges posed by population growth.
With the changing times, economists have started realising that a rising population was no longer a burden, Mr Mahajan claimed. With advancing health services, the death rate — especially the infant mortality rate — has come down drastically, improving the chances of today’s children to survive longer, thus adding to the demographic dividend and contributing to the development of the nation.
“However, our efforts towards improving chances of survival of our children will not suffice if the fertility rate falls to less than the replacement rate. Even the population policy of India of the year 2000 had clearly stated this,” he said. In its National Council meeting held in Lucknow in June this year, the SJM has passed a resolution on the matter, he added.
(Manas Dasgupta)
