IEarlier this year, the United Nations published data to show that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous country till 2023. According to 2018-19 Economic SurveyIndia’s demographic dividend will peak around 2041, when the share of the working age population is expected to reach 59%. In this context, does India need a population policy? Poonam Muttreja And sonalde desai Discuss question in conversation powered by Sriparna Chakraborty, Edited excerpt:
The world population is expected to peak and then decline by the end of the century. Is this good or bad?
Poonam Mutreja: We need to move from family planning point of view to family welfare approach. We must focus on enabling men and women to make informed choices about their fertility, health and well-being. As fertility declines and lifespan increases globally, the world is aging at a significant pace. Can increasing automation counter the negative effects of an aging population or will an aging population inevitably lead to a slowdown in economic growth? We need to see all this. We are where we are, so let’s plan for the well-being of our population instead of hiding behind the excuse that we don’t have good schooling or health because there are too many. That mindset is counterproductive.
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Sonalde Desai: It is not about whether the population is large or small; It is about whether it is healthy, efficient and productive. Let me focus on the productive part of it. Thomas Malthus said that as population increases, productivity will not keep pace with this increase, and we will see famines, high death rates, wars, etc. Fortunately, he was proved wrong. We need to take lessons from this and think about how to make our present population productive. Skills are important, but so is economic planning that ensures good jobs, agricultural productivity, etc.
You mentioned China. The lesson we can take from China is that rapid changes in public policy to manage population have yielded unexpected results there. China’s one-child policy has led to a drastic reduction in the population growth rate. But now the Chinese have a rapidly growing population of elderly people. China has also tried to relax these policies and is now encouraging people to have two or three children but men and women are not ready to follow it. And China’s fertility continues to decline. Therefore, we should focus not on the fertility rate, but on creating a situation in which there is a slow change in family size in the context of a growing economy.
Can increased automation effectively counteract the negative economic effects of an aging population?
Sonalde Desai: Automation makes a big difference in the productivity of individuals, sometimes leading to loss of employment. But in any case, it is indeed an important contribution of the modern world. However, it does not replace human nature and human touch. For example, I have heard that Chinese families are now groaning under the burden of caring for elderly parents. Automation doesn’t help you take your mom to the doctor or provide the emotional warmth and security provided to each other by family members. So in that sense old age is going to be a problem for us. We need to figure out how to address aging in the context of changing families and the nature of state support in India and create conditions in which the elderly population can lead healthy and happy lives.
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Does India have the institutional capacity to tap into its vast youth population? Or will an aging population become a liability in the absence of adequate institutional or state capacity?
Poonam Mutreja: First of all let me talk about the elderly population and China. If China had not invested in literacy and good health systems, it would not have been able to reduce its fertility rate. In any case, I think we have a lot to learn from China about what not to do. And especially in the case of the elderly, where estimates suggest that 12% of India’s total population is going to be elderly by 2025. By 2050, every fifth Indian will be over 65 years of age. So planning for this section is equally worth considering.
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Speaking of youth, we have the potential to tap the potential of our youth population. There is a brief window of opportunity, which is only for the next few decades. If we want to reap the benefits, we need to invest in adolescent welfare immediately. Otherwise, our demographic dividend could easily turn into a demographic disaster.
Sonalde Desai: India certainly has the potential to invest in its young population. But we do not recognize the gender dimension of some of these challenges. The decline in fertility has a tremendous gender effect. This means that women have less burden on them. But there is another aspect to it as well. Aging is also a gender issue as two-thirds of the elderly are women, as women tend to live longer than men. Until we recognize the dimension of gender, it will be very difficult for us to understand these changes. So, what do we need to do? India has done a good job of ensuring education opportunities to girls. Next, we need to improve employment opportunities for young women and increase the female employment rate. Elderly women need an economic and social support network.
India’s total fertility rate has fallen below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. What could be the economic implications of this declining fertility rate?
Poonam Mutreja: Like I said, numbers will only matter if you look at them correctly. Sonal said that economic policy should be geared towards the skills and education of our large adolescent population with a special focus on gender. As we see ahead, meeting the unmet needs of the youth should be a priority. We cannot let the enormous progress we have made in accelerating education, delaying child marriage, addressing sexual and reproductive health needs, and manufacturing agency go to waste. Particular attention should be paid to the ways in which the pandemic has affected the lives of our adolescents and young people. If the country does not pay attention to the rights and welfare of adolescents immediately, it will set us many years behind.
Comment | reap the demographic dividend
Sonalde Desai: I think it is not just the economic implications that we need to think about, but the political economy implications as well. India’s fertility fell below 2.1 births in some states 10 years ago. In four other states, it is declining. Therefore, not only is the fertility declining, but the proportion of the population living in different states is also changing. The future of India lies in the youth living in UP, Bihar, MP if we do not support these states in ensuring that their youth are well educated, ready to enter the labor market and have adequate skills , then they will become an economic liability. ,
Do we need a population policy?
Poonam Mutreja: India has a very good population policy, which was designed in 2000. And states also have their own population policies. We just need to improve these and focus on our population policy. But otherwise, the National Population Policy is the right policy. We keep talking about population as the biggest problem in India, but no one talks about poor investment in family planning or investment in population more broadly.
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Sonalde Desai: We need a policy that supports reproductive health for individuals. We need to start addressing other challenges in enhancing reproductive health as well, which is not just the provision of family planning services. I also think we need to change our discourse around population policy. Although we use the term population policy, population control is still a part of our dialogue. We probably need to call this a policy that enlarges population as a resource for India’s development, and shifts the mindset to focus on ensuring that the population is a happy, healthy, productive one. Maybe it’s time to think about getting rid of some of the old notions around population control that still persist… you know, people with large families not allowed to run elections or get maternity leave being given, and so on.
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Poonam Mutreja: Our arguments and discussions have not progressed beyond the norm of two children. The two-child norm primarily indicates a coercive approach to a community. And there are a lot of myths and misconceptions about population issues that lead to this discourse, which Sonal and I have taken care of by doing everything we suggest through this conversation. We need to move away from focusing on the two-child norm.
Poonam Muttrej is Executive Director, Population Foundation of India; Sonalde Desai is Professor at the National Council of Applied Economic Research