Model answer & approach
- Elucidate the role of demographic and social factors for population growth in India. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
India's population, now about 1.46 billion, is still growing though its fertility has already fallen below replacement. The explanation lies in the timing of the demographic transition and in the social conditions that govern fertility behaviour.
Body
1. The demographic factors: mortality fell early and fast with antibiotics, immunisation and famine control, while fertility fell late, and the gap between a birth rate near nineteen and a death rate near seven is the growth. The total fertility rate reached 2.0 in NFHS-5, below the replacement level of 2.1, yet growth continues because of population momentum: a quarter of Indians are under fifteen, so the number of women entering childbearing keeps rising. Rising life expectancy and rural-to-urban migration redistribute rather than add.
2. The social factors: age at marriage remains the strongest brake, and roughly one in five women is still married before eighteen. Female schooling and literacy correlate with low fertility more closely than income does; women's autonomy and work participation, son preference which prolongs childbearing until a boy is born, joint-family and community norms, and reliance on female sterilisation rather than spacing methods all operate through it.
3. The regional evidence: Kerala and Tamil Nadu reached replacement fertility decades ago on the strength of female literacy and health care, while Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remain well above it — a divergence that now has political consequences for delimitation.
4. How they join: mortality decline was technological and quick; fertility decline is social and slow.
Conclusion
Growth will continue to a peak near mid-century and then reverse, driven by momentum rather than by high fertility. The policy question has shifted from limiting numbers to ageing, skills and the widening north-south gap.
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