India was the first in the world to initiate family planning

With its population crossing seven billion people, the world just got more crowded – as did India. Babatunde Osotimehin , director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), spoke with Monobina Gupta about the challenges a growing population presents – and the advantages it can offer:

How should policymakers and communities meet the complex and multiple challenges posed by the demographic explosion?

I’m not sure the current situation of population growth, either in India or the world, should be called ‘population explosion’. Indeed, in India, the total fertility rate has been halved over the past 40 years, from more than five before 1975 to just 2.54 today – close to the minimum of 2.1 needed to replace the generationsa¦in fact, there is no consensus on ‘overpopulation’. Many have tried to come up with the number of people that the earth can sustain in the long run – but their estimates vary widely.

However, India is slated to soon overtake China as the world’s most populous nation. What are broad policy strategies that will help India manage?

Certain measures could help, like completing universal access to reproductive health, including voluntary family planning, for all men and women, achieving gender equality at all levels of society, with better opportunities for women to be involved in decision-making, and creating conditions for an orderly urban transition. This is important considering that despite having several mega cities, India is still a predominantly rural country.

Many developing countries including India face serious dilemmas over how to coordinate growth with sustainable development. What are your suggestions?

Both developing and deve-loped countries alike are concerned that promoting more sustainable development and ‘green economies’ may hurt their economic growth, employment creation and poverty reduction efforts.

But promoting the transition to the green economy is like promoting structural changes in economies. This has happened many times before, such as when economies shifted from a specialisation in agriculture to services. If economies shift from carbon and resource-intensive technologies to low-carbon and resource-efficient technologies, it is a structural change. To seize the associated economic opportunities, countries should actively promote the development of a green economy and become leaders in green technologies. India is known for its excellent scientists and as a trailblazer in new technologies – it could contribute to the global production of green goods, invest in human capital and take advantage of the demographic dividend.

There’s no alternative to the transition to a green economy – which does not need to be associated with negative net effects for economies at large.

That’s important for the future – what kind of progress has India made in the past, in key areas like reproductive healthcare and gender equity?

India played a pioneering role in reproductive health issues, having been the first in the world to initiate family planning programmes in the early 1950s. Its strong commitment, political will and the active involvement of a vibrant civil society helped advance India’s work in family planning, maternal health, HIV and gender.

The current government has promoted strategic interventions strengthening institutional measures to promote and protect the rights of women and girls and advance gender equity, enshrined in the Indian Constitution. With the support of UNFPA, India is also addressing the issue of sex selection, which has been a cause of concern for sometime now. Its efforts are commendable. However, more progress remains to be made in reproductive healthcare, including family planning. The government is working with partners including UNFPA to that end.

Times of India