When Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath chose the occasion of World Population Day on July 11 to announce a new state population policy, there normally should have been no quarrel about it. After all, the state is India’s most populous, harbouring nearly 200 million people (as per Census 2011) or 17 per cent of India’s population. If it were to become a nation, Uttar Pradesh would have the fifth largest population in the world.
So instead of welcoming a policy to control the state’s burgeoning population, why was there such a storm over Yogi’s announcement? Sure, some of the birth control measures are coercive. While pushing for a two-child policy per couple, the state plans to introduce both incentives and disincentives to ensure its implementation. In terms of incentives, government servants adopting the two-child norms would get two additional increments during their service apart from being eligible for maternity or paternity leave for 12 months with full salar
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-Sidharth Nath Singh
Any change in the population policy of the country’s most populous state is bound to be a big deal, but it is not a surprising one. With 240 million people, Uttar Pradesh has 16% of India’s total population and is home to every sixth Indian. If it was a separate country, it would be the fifth largest in the world by population, just behind China, India, US and Indonesia, and bigger than Pakistan and Brazil.
We, as a country, have already been warned of a ‘population explosion’ and it is deemed that the continuous increase in the state’s population will result in a dystopian future as population growth tends to outpace and stifle economic growth. Therefore, an essential part of the solution to this predicament is to have a small family.
July 21, 2021
Vaccine rollout efforts in India
Stuti Johri, 26, gets her first dose of Covishield at a private hospital in Mumbai after anxiously refreshing the CoWin app and “lucking out” in April 2021. She got her second dose seven weeks later at Kasturba Gandhi Government Hospital in Mumbai through the priority vaccination campaign for students going abroad. Johri is pursuing an MBA degree in London.
Photo by Devina Buckshee
Dispatches from India
Seema and Sanjeev Buckshee, parents of Devina Buckshee, get vaccinated with their first dose of Covishield (the name under which the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was manufactured in India) at a private hospital in Mumbai in March 2021 as slots for those above age 45 opened up. At the time this photo was taken, vaccines were in stock and the entire process was smooth at this Mumbai location.
Civil Society Groups Write to President Opposing Population Control Bill thecitizen.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thecitizen.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.