Population, Economy Traditional | Indian Economy for UPSC CSE PDF Download

Population 

• The National Population Policy 2000 provides a policy framework for advancing goals and prioritizing strategies during the next decade to meet the reproductive and child health needs of the people of India.
• This new policy states that the objective of economic and social development is to improve the quality of lives people lead to enhance their well being and to provide them with opportunities and choices to become productive assets in society.
• The immediate objective of this new policy is to address the unmet needs of contraception, health infrastructure, health personnel and to provide integrated service delivery for basic reproductive and child health care.
• The medium term objective is to bring the total fertility rates to replacement level by 2010. 
• The long term objective is to achieve a stable population by 2045.
• In pursuance of these objectives, 14 National Socio Demographic Goals are formulated to be achieved by 2010.
• The important goals of this category are —
  • Making School education compulsory and to reduce dropouts.
  • Reduce infant mortality rate to 30 per 1000 live births.
  • Reduce maternal mortality rate to below 100 per 100000 live births.
  • Promote delayed marriage of girls.
  • Achieve 80% institutional deliveries.
  • Prevent and Control Communicable diseases.
  • Promote vigorously the small family norm to achieve replacement levels of TFR.
  • The policy speaks about the formation of a National Commission on Population under the Chairmanship of Prime Minister to monitor and implement population policy and to guide planning implementations.

National Commission on Population

• The National Commission on Population was constituted on May 11, 2000 under the Chairmanship of the Prime Minister to provide overall guidance for population stabilisation by promoting synergy between demographic, educational, environmental and developmental programmes.
• On May 19, 2005 the National Commission on Population was reconstituted. This commission has now been transferred from Planning Commission to Ministry of Health. 
• The Prime Minister will remain the chairman of NCP while Deputy-Chairman of Planning Commission and Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare will work as Deputy Chairman of NCP. The membership of NCP has also been reduced from 131 to 44.
• The National Commission on Population has undertaken various initiatives for implementing the National Population Policy such as review of the implementation of National Family Welfare Programme especially in the high fertility States, identification of high fertility districts and preparation of District Action Plans, selection of Social Economic and Demographic Indicators for monitoring purpose, promotion of policy-oriented relevant research for population stabilisation and promotion of public private partnership in meeting the unmet needs of family planning services.

Population Data 2011

• According to Primary Census Abstract-Data Highlights of Census 2011, India’s total population as on March 1, 2011 is 1,210,854,977 or 1.21 billion, an increase of 181.96 million persons in absolute number of population during 2001-11.
• During this decade, population of India grew by 17.7% as against 21.5% in the previous decade There was an increase of 90.97 million males and increase of 90.99 million females. 
• The growth rate of females was 18.3 per cent which is higher than males — 17.1 percent.
• As per Census 2011, 833.5 million persons (68.85%) live in rural areas and 377.1 million persons (31.15%) lives in urban areas.
• Thus, more than 2/3rd of total population of India lives in rural areas.
• Density of population as per current Census is 382 persons per sq. km against 325 persons per sq.km in 2001.
• Child   population in the age group 0-6 years in 2011 Census is 164.5 million as against 163.8 million showing an increase of 0.4% in the last decade. 

• Sex ratio in Census 2011 is 943 females per 1000 males as against 933 in 2001 Census.
• Population of Scheduled Castes in this Census is 201.4 million as against 166.6 million in 2001 registering an increase of 20.8% whereas Scheduled Tribes population increased to 104.3 million in 2011 from 84.3 million in 2001.
• As per Census 2011, number of literates is 763.5  million   as against 560.7 million in 2001.
• Number of total workers in the country in 2011 is 4817 million. Out of this 72.36 % are in rural areas and the remaining 27.64 % in urban areas. 68.89 per cent workers are male while 31.11 per cent workers are female.
• Among the 36.24 million main workers 26.44 per cent are cultivators, 23.77 per cent are agricultural labourers, 3.4 per cent are household industries workers and 46.38 per cent are other workers.
• There are 11.920 million marginal workers in 2011. Out of these 19.15 per cent are cultivators, 48.75 per cent are agricultural labourers, 5.03 per cent household industries workers and 27.06 per cent are other workers.
• According to the latest census data on the population of religious groups, set to be released shortly, the growth rate of the Muslim population has slowed from 29 to 24% between 1991 and 2001. 
• However, it is still higher than the national average of 18% for the decade.
• Here are some key findings of the 2011 census data on the Muslim population in India:
  • Nationally, percentage of Muslims in total population went up from 13.4% in 2001 to 14.2% in 2011.
  • Assam recorded highest increase in share of Muslims, from 30.9% of the state's population to 34.2%.
  • Manipur was the only state to show a fall in Muslim population.
  • Other states that showed high increase in share of population are Uttarakhand (2 percentage points), Kerala (1.9), West Bengal (1.8), Goa (1.6) and J&K (1.3).
  • Lowest rise in Meghalaya, Odisha and Arunachal Pradesh.
  • J&K (68.3%), Assam (34.2) and Bengal (27%) have largest share of Muslims.