POPULATION

 The whole number of people or inhabitants in a country or region

 The total of individuals occupying an area or making up a whole

 Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be

a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world

POPULATION EXPLOSION

After the Republic of China, India is the most populous country in the world. Presently, India is
the second-largest populated country in the world that occupies 2.4% of the world’s land area
and represents 17.5% of the world’s population. This means that one out of six people on this
planet is an Indian.

It is estimated by the United Nations that India with 1.3 billion inhabitants would surpass
China’s population of 1.4 billion by 2024 to become the world’s most populous country.
Population Explosion is considered as a threat and burden on the Earth.

What is Population Explosion?

Population Explosion refers to the rapid increase in the number of people in an area. It is a
situation where the economy of the country cannot cope up with the rapid growth of the
population. Furthermore, in simpler words, it is a situation where the economy cannot provide
proper facilities to its people.

Evidently, the largest contributing countries to population explosion are the poorer nations and
are termed as developing countries. In India, the state of Uttar Pradesh is the most populated
state and Lakshadweep is the least populated. Hence we can say that population explosion is
inversely related to the development of that area.

Population Explosion has become the mother of evils in our country because too much
population is trapping people in a web of poverty and illiteracy that further escalates the
problem. Any time of the day, whether it is a metro station, airport, railway platforms, road,
highway bus stop, shopping mall, market, or even a social or religious gathering, there is always
a swelling crowd of people in India.

Factors responsible for population explosion:

1. Increased birth rate i.e. natality due to better infant healthcare.

 2. Decreased death rate i.e. mortality due to advanced medical technologies.
3. Increased supply and abundance of food due to agricultural developments and
advancements.
4. Overall increased life expectancy due to various improvements in medical science
and the increased difference between birth rate and death rate.
5. Continuous illegal migration of people from neighbouring countries like Nepal,
Bangladesh is leading to a rise in the population density in India.
6. Poverty is another main reason for this. Poor people believe that the more people in
the family, the more will be the number of persons to earn bread. Hence it
contributes to the increase in population
7. The superstitious people mainly from rural places think that having a male child
would give them prosperity and so there is a considerable pressure on the parents to
produce children till a male child is born. This leads to a population explosion.
8. Illiteracy is another cause of an increase in population. Low literacy rate leads to
traditional, superstitious, and ignorant people. For example, Kerala has a very high
literacy rate and it constitutes only 2.76% of India’s population as compared to
Uttar Pradesh having maximum illiteracy rate and forms 16.49% of the population.
Educated people are well aware of birth control methods.
9. The practice of early marriage is another important reason for the rapid increase in
population in India. The mean age of marriage for girls is about 18 years, which is
low, compared to the other countries of the world, which is about 23 to 25 years.
This results in a longer span for reproductive activity and the increase in the
number of children.

EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGES

1. Overcrowding: Population explosion leads to overcrowding in the classroom which may

yield a sense of negativity amongst many learners inside the classroom.
2. Lack of attention: When there is overpopulation, the classroom will have more strength in
the number of students and when there are more students, teachers may not be able to pay full
attention to all learners and their performance.
3. Distraction: Too much population in the classroom can lead learners to feel distracted and
cause them to divert their attention from what is being taught.
4. Confusion: Overpopulation leads to the presence of more students in the classroom and this
can make the learners feel confused especially when their queries are left unanswered.
5. Lack of Quality Instruction: When teachers are in a classroom that has many students, they
have to spend most of their teaching session managing the students for a well-behaved
classroom rather than focusing on the quality of their instructions.
Thus we find that population has its impact on the various aspects of education. Some people are
of the view that a big population affects education adversely. Due to big population, when people
undergo economic hardships, the issue of education becomes secondary.

Population Composition
Rural-Urban Composition
 Composition of population by their respective places of residence is an important
indicator of social and economic characteristics. It is very significant in country like India
as 68.8 per cent of its total population lives in village (2011).
 India has 640,867 villages according to the Census 2011 out of which 597,608 (93.2 per
cent) are inhabited villages.
 States like Bihar and Sikkim have very high percentage of rural population.
 Goa and Maharashtra have only little over half of their total population residing in
villages.
 The Union Territories have smaller proportion of rural population, except Dadra and
Nagar Haveli (53.38 per cent).
 Variation of size of villages: It is less than 200 persons in the hill states of north-eastern
India, Western Rajasthan and Rann of Kuchchh and as high as 17 thousand persons in
the states of Kerala and in parts of Maharashtra.
 The proportion of urban population (31.16 per cent) in India is quite low but it is
showing a much faster rate of growth over the decades.
 The growth rate of urban population has accelerated due to enhanced economic
development and improvement in health and hygienic conditions.
 It is noticed that in almost all the states and UTs, there has been a considerable increase
of urban population.
 The rural-urban migration is conspicuous in the case of urban areas along the main road
links and railroads in the North Indian Plains, the industrial areas around Kolkata,
Mumbai, Bengaluru – Mysuru, Madurai – Coimbatore, Ahmedabad – Surat, Delhi –
Kanpur and Ludhiana – Jalandhar.
 Low Degree of Urbanisation: In the agriculturally stagnant parts of the middle and
lower Ganga Plains, Telengana, non-irrigated Western Rajasthan, remote hilly, tribal
areas of northeast, along the flood prone areas of Peninsular India and along eastern part
of Madhya Pradesh.

Linguistic Composition
 According to some statistics,there are approximately 121 languages spoken in the
country .
 In the context of modern India, there are about 22 scheduled languages and a number of
non-scheduled languages.
 Among the Scheduled Languages:
 The speakers of Hindi have the highest percentage.
  The smallest language groups are Sanskrit, Bodo and Manipuri speakers (2011).

Religious Composition
Religious Communities of India, 2011
 Hindus are distributed as a major group in many states (ranging from 70-90 per cent
and above) except the districts of states along Indo-Bangladesh border, Indo-Pak border,
Jammu & Kashmir, Hill States of North-East and in scattered areas of Deccan Plateau
and Ganga Plain.
 Muslims, the largest religious minority, are concentrated in Jammu & Kashmir, certain
districts of West Bengal and Kerala, many districts of Uttar Pradesh, in and around Delhi
and in Lakshadweep.
 They form majority in Kashmir valley and Lakshadweep.
 Christian population is distributed mostly in rural areas of the country.
 The main concentration is observed along the Western coast around Goa, Kerala
and also in the hill states of Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Chotanagpur area
and Hills of Manipur.
 Sikhs are mostly concentrated in relatively small area of the country, particularly in the
states of Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi.
 Jains and Buddhists, the smallest religious groups in India have their concentration
only in selected areas of the country.
 Jains have major concentration in the urban areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat, and
Maharashtra.
 The Buddhists are concentrated mostly in Maharashtra.
 The other areas of Buddhist majority are Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh,
Ladakh in Jammu & Kashmir, Tripura, and Lahul and Spiti in Himachal
Pradesh.
 The other religions of India include Zoroastrians, tribal and other indigenous faiths and
beliefs.

That is why education in a poor country is not well organized and its nature is also very poor.
Then the percentage of literate persons is also very low. Thus from each and every angle the
nature of population influences the kind of education.

POPULATION SIZE
 The current population of India is 1,414,199,747 as of Wednesday, January 11, 2023, based on
Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data.
 India 2020 population is estimated at 1,380,004,385 people at mid year according to UN data.
 India population is equivalent to 17.7% of the total world population.
 India ranks number 2 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.
 The population density in India is 464 per Km2 (1,202 people per mi2).
 The total land area is 2,973,190 Km2 (1,147,955 sq. miles)
 35.0 % of the population is urban (483,098,640 people in 2020)
 The median age in India is 28.4 years.
 According to National Family Health Survey, 2020-21 (NFHS-5) India’s Sex ratio in 2022 is
1020 females per 1000 males. In the rural area, the Sex ratio is 1037, and in the urban areas, it’s
985 females to 1000 males.
 There are 717,100,970 or 717.10 million males and 662,903,415 or 662.90 million females in
India. The percentage of the female population is 48.04 percent compared to 51.96 percent male
population.
The most populus state in India is Uttar Pradesh with an estimated population of 23.32 crore
while Sikkim is the least populated with 6.83 lakh approximately.

Distribution of Population
India has a highly uneven pattern of population distribution:
 Uttar Pradesh has the highest population followed by Maharashtra, Bihar, and West
Bengal.
 The share of population is very small in the states like Jammu & Kashmir
(1.04%), Arunachal Pradesh (0.11%) and Uttarakhand (0.84%) in spite of these states
having fairly large geographical area.
 Close relationship between population and physical, socioeconomic, and historical
factors.
 The North Indian Plains, deltas and Coastal Plains have higher proportion of
population than the interior districts of southern and central Indian States,
Himalayas, some of the north eastern and the western states.

Indian states with highest population

Uttar Pradesh is the most populated state in India. The top 5 populated states are Uttar Pradesh,
Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal, and Madhya Pradesh. In 2011 Maharashtra is at 2nd Spot, but
Bihar with a higher growth rate (approx 20%) is very close to Maharashtra by 2023-24 it will be
at the second spot.
Almost half of the country’s population lives in these five highest populous states & the Ten
most populated states of India contribute 74% of India’s population. Bihar has the highest
population growth rate during this decade followed by Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Consequences of population growth
1 )Pressure on food, clothing & housing : A country with fast growing population has to face a
serious problem of scarcity of necessary food, minimum clothing & proper housing facilities,
which are basic needs of human life. Thus, it affects the life style and results slum areas,
starvation .

2) Unemployment: The overpopulation aggravates the unemployment & disguised

unemployment problem. The vacancy rate is negligible as compared to wants of employment,
which ultimately results into low income groups and large families depending upon single
earning person (earner).
 3) Standard of living: The overpopulation creates or give rise to large families with low income
reducing the standard of persons living therein. The slum areas, starvation and frequently
epidemics are the results affecting health and standard of persons within such nation.

4) Decrease of forest area: The basic made of the growing population is of residence and
shelter. To construct houses and place of shelter, man is greatly cutting and reducing forest to
make a place to live.

5) Environmental pollution: Over populated passion creates a large affect on the environment
by exhausting a large proportion of waste. On the other hand reducing forest which results the
growth of pollution.

6) Education: The low income of large family does not afford to provide education to their
children. Which results into creating a problem of illiteracy and again none awareness among the
class.

7) Energy crisis: Population explosion accompanied with rapid industrialization and

urbanization has led to greater demand for already deficient energy (fuel wood, fossil fuel and
electricity).

8) Hygienic condition: More people in a small area breed unhygienic condition which has ill
effects on human health.

9) Eco-degradation: Overpopulation leads to eco-degradation by increasing air, water, soil and

noise pollution, unhygienic condition, deforestation leading to flood and soil erosion. So rapid
human population growth is creating increased pressure on the infrastructure, economy,
environment, availability of primary health care and nutrition.

REMEDIAL MEASURES OF POPULATION EXPLOSION

Here are five effective population control measures that the world needs to implement at the
earliest –

1. Women empowerment - In many societies, women are considered a medium of producing

heirs and are therefore married off at an early age. Empowering young girls and women in
matters concerning them, such as marriage and childbirth, is a major step in curbing
population growth. Women should be able to voice their opinions and make decisions on their
own, especially when it comes to rearing and bearing children. All countries should take
necessary steps, such as provide access to education and employment, to encourage women
empowerment and eliminate gender discrimination.
2. Education for all - Education forms the backbone of the economy and an individual.
Educated men and women acknowledge the hardships of having a large family and understand
the consequences of the growing population. They prefer delayed marriage and adopt small
family norms. Particularly, educated women tend to be more health-conscious and avoid
conceiving frequently, thus contributing to a reduced birth rate. Without access to education,
women empowerment and the awareness campaigns will prove to be pointless and
insufficient.
3. Eliminating the barriers to contraception - Ensuring that everyone has access to cheap and
effective contraception tools can help avoid cases of multiple pregnancies and unwanted
childbirth. Hospitals and healthcare facilities must be equipped with birth control measures
and medical procedures since many people may not have the means or awareness to use
contraceptives. The proper use of birth control pills and condoms must be encouraged and
advertised along with ensuring easy and cheap access to these. Not only do contraceptives
prove useful in controlling the population, but it also prevents the risk of spreading and
contracting STDs.
4. Government incentives - Government incentives are an efficient policy measure in fighting
issues arising from population growth. Providing the working class with financial,
educational, or even medical incentives can go a long way in controlling the birth rates.
Certain government policies offer a certain amount to families with two children or
discounted/free education to a single child.

5. Promote family planning - The family planning method implies family by choice, and not by
chance. It allows people to plan and determine the desired number of kids and the timing and
spacing of their births.

Apart from these, improving employment opportunities, and advancements in medical

facilities, particularly in reproductive healthcare, can also help reduce the rate of population
and solve the problem of population explosion in the country and beyond.