Population explosion | 24 Aug, 2020

Union Minister Giriraj Singh last Friday flagged a very important issue which holds tremendous significance with particular relation to Assam and the north-eastern region. Minister Singh has said that population explosion has emerged as the biggest obstacle in development, underlining the need for bringing about a strict law to control population in the larger interest of development of the country and her people. Pointing out that India, which hardly had 33 crore population at the time of Independence, is today home to about 20 per cent of the global population. In comparison to this, India's geographical area is less than two per cent of the world's land area, while her water resource is less than four per cent of that of the world. It is a matter of pride that in 1952, India was the first country in the world to launch a national programme emphasizing upon family planning to the extent necessary for reducing birth rate. But then, while one section of the population did readily accept family planning as a national necessity, one particular section or community refused to accept it, and has largely remained adamant on the issue. Assam is the most glaring example or case-study of this dangerous disparity, which, coupled with large-scale infiltration from the erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh, has led to a perilous demographic imbalance. Official statistics, and more particularly the successive Census reports have time and again proved that Assam has witnessed rapid increase in the number of Muslims of migrant origin having roots in erstwhile East Bengal of the pre-Partition era, as well as erstwhile East Pakistan and present-day Bangladesh. The Supreme Court had, way back in 2005, termed this situation as a silent demographic invasion. On the development front, this increasing population burden has dangerously eaten into valuable and scarce resources which would have otherwise put Assam on the top of list of States in the context of the different development indicators.