Size and Growth of India’s Population

India is the second most populous country in the world, after China. According to the Census of India 2011, the total population stood at 121 crores (1.21 billion). However, this large size is a relatively recent phenomenon — the growth rate of India’s population has not always been high.

Growth Before Independence

Between 1901 and 1951, the average annual growth rate did not exceed 1.33 percent — a modest rate by any standard. In fact, the decade from 1911 to 1921 recorded a negative growth rate of –0.03 percent. This unusual decline was caused by the influenza epidemic of 1918–19, which killed about 12.5 million people — roughly 5 percent of India’s total population at the time. This epidemic, known globally as the ‘Spanish Flu’, was a pandemic (an epidemic affecting a very wide geographical area). It is estimated to have killed at least 40 million people worldwide.

Growth After Independence

The growth rate increased substantially after independence from British rule. It rose to 2.2 percent during the period 1961–1981. Since then, although the annual growth rate has decreased, it remains one of the highest in the developing world.

The table below shows the population of India and its growth during the 20th century:

The Demographic Transition: Divergence of Birth and Death Rates

The impact of the demographic transition phase is clearly visible when we compare the movement of crude birth and death rates over time.

• Before 1931: Both death rates and birth rates were high.
• After 1931: Death rates fell sharply, but the birth rate fell only slightly. This divergence is the key feature of the transition.

Reasons for the Decline in the Death Rate

The principal reason for the decline in the death rate after 1921 was increased control over famines and epidemic diseases. The latter cause was perhaps the most important.

Control of Epidemic Diseases:

• The major epidemic diseases in the past included fevers of various sorts, plague, smallpox, and cholera.
• The single biggest epidemic was the influenza pandemic of 1918–19, which killed as many as 170 lakh people (about 5 percent of India’s population at that time).
• Improvements in medical cures, mass vaccination programmes, and efforts to improve sanitation helped control epidemics.
• However, diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, diarrhoea, and dysentery continue to kill people even today, though in much smaller numbers than in the past.
• Surat witnessed a small epidemic of plague in September 1994, and dengue and chikungunya epidemics have been reported in various parts of the country since then.

Control of Famines:

• Famines were a major and recurring source of increased mortality.
• They were caused by high levels of continuing poverty and malnutrition in an agroclimatic environment vulnerable to variations in rainfall.
• Lack of adequate transportation and communication, as well as inadequate state efforts, were also responsible.
• As scholars like Amartya Sen have shown, famines were not necessarily due to a fall in foodgrain production; they were also caused by a ‘failure of entitlements’ — the inability of people to buy or otherwise obtain food.
• Substantial improvements in agricultural productivity (especially through the expansion of irrigation), improved means of communication, and more vigorous relief and preventive measures by the state have all helped drastically reduce deaths from famine.
• Nevertheless, starvation deaths are still reported from some backward regions. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act is the latest state initiative to tackle hunger and starvation in rural areas.

Why the Birth Rate Has Not Fallen Sharply

Unlike the death rate, the birth rate has not registered a sharp fall. This is because the birth rate is a sociocultural phenomenon that is relatively slow to change.

• Increased levels of prosperity exert a strong downward pull on the birth rate.
• Once infant mortality rates decline, and there is an overall increase in levels of education and awareness, family size begins to fall.

Regional Variations in Fertility

There are very wide variations in fertility rates across the states of India.

• Low Fertility States: Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal have managed to bring their Total Fertility Rates (TFR) down to 1.7 each (as of 2016). Kerala’s TFR is also below the replacement level. This means the average woman in these states produces only 1.7 children — below the ‘replacement level’ — implying that the population in these states is going to decline in the future. …