We, the billion8230;

It's official. The country becomes a billion today. At 12.56 pm, to be exact. This means that India becomes the second nation in the world...

It8217;s official. The country becomes a billion today. At 12.56 pm, to be exact. This means that India becomes the second nation in the world to join that exclusive billion plus club China of course having got there first. This also means that every sixth person in the world is an Indian. But the implications of the billion plus scenario go beyond such demographic trivia.

Population impacts life in a very significant way. It determines the way We, the People, live, breathe and having our being. It impinges on State policy and planning and on the performance of its economy. It fashions the country8217;s urban habitats and shapes its rural environs. It determines the ambient air quality of cities and the water resources of its hinterland. It decides the health of its women and whether its children can get a decent schooling. Population is then one of the crucial determinants of the quality of life of Indians everywhere.

This, of course, has long been recognised as a fact of life. Long before other developing nations had even applied their minds to the problem of burgeoning numbers, the Indian political establishment had come up with a full-fledged family planning programme. As early as 1952, in fact. It is quite another matter, of course, that this programme was administered in such a blindly bureaucratic fashion that it succeeded in rendering 8220;family planning8221; a particularly ugly word in the vocabulary of subaltern discourse. Some attempt to correct this was attempted, particularly after the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development ICPD. The international consensus achieved at ICPD had it that addressing population issues in an isolated fashion, divorced from social and economic realities, would be self-defeating in the extreme. Family planning administrators in India then adopted the new mantra of a target-free approach.

At the moment, the strategy of the ministry of family welfare to the issue has four basic components to it: reducing infant and child mortality; addressing maternal mortality; meeting the unmet needs of family planning and related services and, finally, emphasising the quality of care given to clients. While all this sounds good on paper, the challenge will really lie in the government8217;s ability to actually reach such a package to the people in a sustained and sustainable fashion. Birth rates have of course fallen markedly over the last few decades.

From 40 per 1,000 in the 1960s, it came down to 28 per 1,000 in 1995-96 but this hasn8217;t made a difference to the population growth levels because of declining death rates. At the present rate of growth, it is expected to touch 1.5 billion some time around the years 2056 and 2061 before it reaches replacement levels. There are aspects like the average age of marriage for girls which remains at 19.4 as well as the levels of female economic activity that are crucial factors in determining population growth. With the billionth baby it their arms, the country8217;s planners and administrators should now perhaps focus their attention on how they can give the women of this country a better deal.