WORLD POPULATION DAY-TODAY
IT REMINDS US OF OUR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY TO CARE FOR EACH OTHER AND OUR PLANET
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This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the earth’s seven-billionth inhabitant. This is an opportunity to celebrate our common humanity and our diversity. It is also a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for each other and our planet. It provides us an opportunity to analyze our successes and our failures. This year’s World Population Day has more significance for India, because the results of Census-2011 have just been released which provide a fertile ground for an assessment of our current demographic situation and future challenges.
The provisional population figures of the 2011 Census do suggest that India’s population growth is finally slowing down. Although the total population size exceeded most projections, the growth rate has slowed compared to the 1990s. This is largely due to further declines in fertility throughout the 2000s in the populous states in northern India. However, it will be a few more decades before the “momentum effect” arising from past high fertility runs its course. The more than expected increase in population size may also mean that India may overtake China as the most populous nation a few years earlier than predicted.
Although the population sex ratio has improved, the unexpected surprise was the deterioration in child sex ratios. The 2011 Indian census revealed about 7•1 million fewer girls than boys aged 0–6 years, a notable increase in the gap of 6•0 million fewer girls recorded in the 2001 census and the gap of 4•2 million fewer girls recorded in the 1991 census. The overall child sex ratio of girls per 1000 boys at ages 0–6 years fell by 1•9% (from 945 to 927) in the decade starting in 1991 and by 1•4% (from 927 to 914) in the decade starting in 2001. More girls than boys die at ages 1–59 months, but this is mostly off set by more boys than girls dying in the first month of life.
With the exception of three states in the south, all the major states fared worse in under seven sex ratios during 2001-11 than in the previous decade. The only state whose figures are so strange that there is every reason to doubt them is Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), where the census was undertaken after a gap in 1991, in 2001 and 2011. According to the provisional figures, the child sex ratio has plummeted from 941 to 859 – 82 points – along with this, J&K is the only state in the whole country to have registered a positive increase in its fertility during this period. Whatever the form that the ongoing conflict is taking, such figures are hard to make sense of and require further investigation.).
As special measures were taken to improve female undercount in the 2011 Census, the most plausible explanation for the gap in the number of girls in the 2011 census is widespread use of sex selective abortion and excess female mortality. There is evidence that sex-selective abortions are widely practiced, facilitated by easy availability of the technology of pre- natal sex-detection and access to medical termination of pregnancy, at least in some parts of the country.
Reducing maternal and child mortality are two of the eight goals for development adopted by 189 nations in the Millennium Declaration in 2000. Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) set the ambitious target to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015.
Under-5 mortality in the country has declined considerably during the last 20 years from 106 in 2098 to about 70 in 2008. Each year 1828 thousand under-5 deaths take place in the country accounting for about 23 percent of the total global under-5 deaths. However, if we look at the newborn death rate, it has declined very little in recent decades. New born deaths in the country account for 38 percent of all deaths among children age five and younger. Between one-quarter and one-half of newborn deaths occur in the first 24 hours after birth: three quarters occur in the first week of life. If India wants to achieve the MGD-4, it need to focus more on improving the reproductive and child health care especially newborn child health.
The latest surveys also reveal that the average family size has declined in all parts of the country more so in the south than in the Hindi belt. The Total Fertility Rate (average number of children a women has throughout her child bearing years) has come down to 2.7 but most of the women still face difficulty achieving the number of children they want and having births when they want them. As a result, a gap frequently exists between women’s desired and actual family size. Consequently, women resolve to unplanned pregnancies, mistimed pregnancies or unwanted births. As per National Family Health Survey-3, 21 percent of all pregnancies in India are unplanned. Ten percent are mistimed and 10 percent are unwanted. Some women who are unable to plan their pregnancies resort to abortions to avert unwanted/mistimed births, which can be risky if the procedure is not safe.
IT REMINDS US OF OUR SHARED RESPONSIBILITY TO CARE FOR EACH OTHER AND OUR PLANET
Smaller Default Larger
This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the earth’s seven-billionth inhabitant. This is an opportunity to celebrate our common humanity and our diversity. It is also a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for each other and our planet. It provides us an opportunity to analyze our successes and our failures. This year’s World Population Day has more significance for India, because the results of Census-2011 have just been released which provide a fertile ground for an assessment of our current demographic situation and future challenges.
The provisional population figures of the 2011 Census do suggest that India’s population growth is finally slowing down. Although the total population size exceeded most projections, the growth rate has slowed compared to the 1990s. This is largely due to further declines in fertility throughout the 2000s in the populous states in northern India. However, it will be a few more decades before the “momentum effect” arising from past high fertility runs its course. The more than expected increase in population size may also mean that India may overtake China as the most populous nation a few years earlier than predicted.
Regional variation in growth rates is along the expected lines. Despite the narrowing of the north-south gap in growth rates, the most populous states have the inbuilt demographic momentum to run further away from the rest in population size. This means the centre of population gravity is likely to move towards further north in the decades to come with the attendant social, economic and political implications.
Although the population sex ratio has improved, the unexpected surprise was the deterioration in child sex ratios. The 2011 Indian census revealed about 7•1 million fewer girls than boys aged 0–6 years, a notable increase in the gap of 6•0 million fewer girls recorded in the 2001 census and the gap of 4•2 million fewer girls recorded in the 1991 census. The overall child sex ratio of girls per 1000 boys at ages 0–6 years fell by 1•9% (from 945 to 927) in the decade starting in 1991 and by 1•4% (from 927 to 914) in the decade starting in 2001. More girls than boys die at ages 1–59 months, but this is mostly off set by more boys than girls dying in the first month of life.
With the exception of three states in the south, all the major states fared worse in under seven sex ratios during 2001-11 than in the previous decade. The only state whose figures are so strange that there is every reason to doubt them is Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), where the census was undertaken after a gap in 1991, in 2001 and 2011. According to the provisional figures, the child sex ratio has plummeted from 941 to 859 – 82 points – along with this, J&K is the only state in the whole country to have registered a positive increase in its fertility during this period. Whatever the form that the ongoing conflict is taking, such figures are hard to make sense of and require further investigation.).
As special measures were taken to improve female undercount in the 2011 Census, the most plausible explanation for the gap in the number of girls in the 2011 census is widespread use of sex selective abortion and excess female mortality. There is evidence that sex-selective abortions are widely practiced, facilitated by easy availability of the technology of pre- natal sex-detection and access to medical termination of pregnancy, at least in some parts of the country.
Reducing maternal and child mortality are two of the eight goals for development adopted by 189 nations in the Millennium Declaration in 2000. Millennium Development Goal 5 (MDG5) set the ambitious target to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015.
Similarly Millennium Development Goal 4 (MDG4) aims to reduce the under 5 mortality rate by two-thirds in that same period. India has achieved considerable progress in reducing its maternal mortality ratio during the last decade, thanks to the Reproductive and Child Health Programme and National Rural Health Mission, but still we have one of the highest maternal mortality ratios in the world.
With a maternal mortality ratio of 254, more than 68 thousand women in India still die each year due to causes associated with pregnancy and child birth. For every women who dies, about 20-30 suffer from devastating health problems such as infertility and damage to their reproductive organs. Majority of these deaths and morbidities occur in poor households due to inadequate medical care at the time of child birth.
This tragedy need not continue. One of the best ways to do this is to make sure that women receive antenatal care right from the first trimester and also receive skilled care at delivery. Skilled care, however, can only be effective if our poor health system addresses women’s health needs and the obstacles women face en route to emergency care.
Under-5 mortality in the country has declined considerably during the last 20 years from 106 in 2098 to about 70 in 2008. Each year 1828 thousand under-5 deaths take place in the country accounting for about 23 percent of the total global under-5 deaths. However, if we look at the newborn death rate, it has declined very little in recent decades. New born deaths in the country account for 38 percent of all deaths among children age five and younger. Between one-quarter and one-half of newborn deaths occur in the first 24 hours after birth: three quarters occur in the first week of life. If India wants to achieve the MGD-4, it need to focus more on improving the reproductive and child health care especially newborn child health.
The latest surveys also reveal that the average family size has declined in all parts of the country more so in the south than in the Hindi belt. The Total Fertility Rate (average number of children a women has throughout her child bearing years) has come down to 2.7 but most of the women still face difficulty achieving the number of children they want and having births when they want them. As a result, a gap frequently exists between women’s desired and actual family size. Consequently, women resolve to unplanned pregnancies, mistimed pregnancies or unwanted births. As per National Family Health Survey-3, 21 percent of all pregnancies in India are unplanned. Ten percent are mistimed and 10 percent are unwanted. Some women who are unable to plan their pregnancies resort to abortions to avert unwanted/mistimed births, which can be risky if the procedure is not safe.
Though providing better quality, easily available and safe family planning services as per the needs of the women can address the issue of unplanned pregnancies to some extent but more needs to be done to improve the women’s conditions. If our women are to achieve control over their reproductive destiny, sustained improvement will be necessary not just in their access to contraceptives services, but also in their personal, legal, economic and social condition. This is because women’s control on child bearing is closely related to other aspects of their lives, particularly their educational achievement, the age at which they marry, their role within the family, their likelihood of being subjected to domestic violence, and the degree to which they and their husbands are agree about family size and the desirability of contraceptive use. With further improvements in women’s economic and social conditions, in their ability to act upon their own decisions and in the provision of family planning services, many women in the country can be successful in achieving their reproductive goals.
