The total number of human heads is considered to be the population of a country. It is counted every ten years in India. Qualified, well developed, productive and healthy human head is the asset for the country.
This asset is really the greatest resource because resources are developed by human beings. Hence, a great effort is needed to convert our huge population into a huge resource for the nation.
Many of the facilities, infrastructures like transport and communication, power, education, health facilities, irrigation, mining, industries are developed by mankind. All of them are the product of human head and mind. They have made our life more comfortable in every respect. Therefore, to convert the number of people into a qualified productive human resource, government has to invest a lot.
Population policies in India: India is the first country in the world to adopt population programme in 1952 emphasising family planning. The aim of programme was to reduce birth rate.
National population policy 2000: The objective of economic and social development is to improve the quality of lives that people leads to enhance their well-being and to provide the opportunities and choices to become productive assets (resources) in the society.
The long term target of this policy is to achieve a stable population by 2045 with sustainable economic growth, social development and environmental protection. Stable population emphasises the balance between birth rate and death rate reading to zero population growth.
Women empowerment in India: It gives emphasis in empowering the women and bringing them in the mainstream of decision making at various levels in their life starting from home, locality, region, state or national level. The objectives is to facilitate the advancement, development and empowerment of women and to eliminate all forms of discrimination. It will also ensure their active participation in all spheres of life and activities.
Population Density, Distribution and Growth
India is the second most populous country of the world after China. The distribution of population is generally studied in terms of density. The density of population in India is not uniform. On the basis of density of population, India can be divided into three broad regions of high density, the areas of moderate density, and the areas of low density. The factors which affect density and distribution can be grouped into two categories. They are physical factors and socio-economic factors.
The growth rate of population is determined by the birth rate, death rate and migration of an area. Like density and distribution, the growth rate is also not uniform throughout the country.
Migration is an important factor for the growth rate of population. Migration can be divided into various types. It can be divided as permanent and temporary. On the basis of source of origin and destination of migrant population, it can be divided into rural to rural, rural to urban, urban to urban and urban to rural. These four types can be grouped under two categories i.e. inter-state migration and intrastate migration.
Population Composition
Population is divided into two parts-rural and urban on the basis of the size and occupation of settlements. The rural population consists of small sized settlements scattered over the countryside. Urban population is one that lives in large size settlements i.e. towns and cities.
Sex Ratio refers to the number of females per thousand males of an area.
Age-sex pyramid refers to the composition of population in terms of the age and sex of people. It gives an indication regarding the growth rate of population and the nature of population in terms of working and non-working sections.
India has also great deal of linguistic diversity like physical environment. The languages spoken and their dialects number is in hundreds. Out of these only 23 languages together accounted for 97% of total population of the country.
Indian society is divided into a large number of religious communities. But, broadly there are seven major religions. The majority of people follow one of these seven major religions. These are Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, Budhism, Sikhism and Zoroastrians.
The Constitution of India recognises a number of castes and tribal groups. These castes and tribes are called Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) respectively.
Literacy is generally defined as a person’s ability to read, write and able to understand as well as to do some simple calculation. Despite this liberal definition, the rate of literacy in India is not very high.
Human Development
The concept of Human Development Index (HDI) was propounded by Prof. Mehbub Al Haque and Prof. Amartya Sen in 1990. From 1990 onwards Human Development Report is published by UNDP annually which reflects the status of human development in almost all the countries across the world.
HDI is a composite index that measures the average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development. They are long and healthy life, knowledge and decent standards of living. They basic difference between economic development and human development is that economic development entirely focusses on the increase of income whereas the human development stresses in expanding and widening of all aspects of human life.
In HDI, economic condition is one of the essential elements. Apart from HDI, various types of indices are constructed and published by UNDP. Some of the important indices are Human Poverty Index, Gender Development Index, Gender Empowered Measurement index.