India started its planned economic development in 1951 after getting independence in 1947 having in our hands the experience, a wide literature of well proved strategies and variegated plans pertaining to, used by and created or formulated by the well developed western economies, apart from its available natural resources. We (the Indians) were over enthusiastic and over ambitious on account of having the ready and well proved weapons sought from the western world for combating the problem of development. Therefore, instead of starting from the very beginning and covering the whole path, we, being enticed and allured by the surprisingly fascinating fruits of industrialization, started our efforts but having longed for being developed and grabbing fruits thereof in a haste. Thus we lost sequences in our development path. We ignored agriculture, the spine of our economy. Thereby our agricultural development lagged far behind the level required for feeding our industrialization up to the mark. Agriculture based small industries became shattered and the villages became ruined. This raised a huge bulk of unemployed people in the widely spread rural sector. The unemployed persons started migrating to the urban areas in search of job.
The urban development and industrialization there had not sufficient level to absorb the whole migrating mass to provide them proper urban life facilities. As a result thereof a fast mushroom growth of slums came about which eventually turned into big slum spots in cities and urban towns within a no longer period of 20 or 25 years. This hampered urban growth and urban life. On the other hand, in rural areas there emerged acute shortage of energetic workforce, service centers, infrastructure, intellectuals etc.This hampered the rural development whereby agricultural development and rural life remained slang lower. That is why, even having traveled a long path of planned economic development, the state of affairs in rural India still remains almost the same as it was before planning. There is a big gulf between urban and rural people regarding wealth, wage, education and income. Moreover, the rural-urban migration, due to the pitiable state of affairs in rural areas, resulted into an unchecked and unsystematic urban extension.
Thus, instead of overall development, an unbalanced and unfair development of our economy became resulted therein. Consequently, a wide spread general unemployment prevailed in both the rural and the urban areas (as per ECONOMIC APPRAISAL 2006-07, the estimated number of unemployed persons rose from 7.98 million in 1983 to 9.02 million in 1993-94, to 10.51 million in 1999-2000 and to 13.10 million in 2004-05. These figures make amply clear that the average increase per year in the number of unemployed persons is going higher and higher without revealing any effect even of the economic reforms initiated in 1991. The average increase per year in the number of unemployed persons was 1.04 lac persons during the ten years' period from 1983 to 1993-94. It became 2.48 lac during the next six years' period and rose to 5.18 lac during the five years' period from 1999-2000 to 2004-05.).
In addition to this a considerable number of politically, socially and economically sound and effective elites emerged in cities and urban towns. These elites interfered in the formulation and execution of development plans, on one hand, and in the fixation of priorities, on the other. Thereby our development plans became urban oriented and concentrating on rich minority. Thus the poor majority and the rural economy became ignored. The unemployment situation in both the rural and the urban sectors became almost uncontrollable. The government became politically weak and therefore its priority became to please the rich minority so that it may run. To mitigate resentment and dissatisfaction among the general mass the government had to play pseudo role to remedy some times the rural and some times the urban mass alternately through various unsuccessful employment and poverty alleviation programmes. However, the condition of rural people became more embarrassing than that of urban since the rural people were already subsisting in privation.
However, the root cause of this stinging situation lies in our galloping along the development path instead of traveling along the true locus by creeping, walking and running as and when needed. All the same, the rapid population growth has added a lot to make the unemployment situation a mammoth. On account of extended medical facilities, uplift of living standard due to increased national income, control over epidemics, check on famines, alleviation of starvation, extension of maternity services etc. during the development process in plan period, the death rate considerably went down (from 27.4 per thousand per year during 1941-50 to 9.0 per thousand per year in 1998) but the birth rate remained slang high (it was 39.9 per thousand per year during 1941-50 and came down only to 27.0 per thousand per year in 1998).Therefore population growth attained an increasingly high rate that was however tried unsuccessfully to be lowered through family planning programme. Therefore, whatever the number of employment-opportunities emerged on account of the development process, it was gulped by a rather high increase in population.
Thus our mistake in the development process and the high rate of population growth are the two factors responsible for the rampant unemployment and poverty in Indian mass. To solve this massive problem we have to rectify the mistake in our development move, on one hand, and to mitigate the high growth rate of population, on the other. As far as the rectification of mistake in the development move is concerned, the time of making the mistake good by starting a fresh has gone far back. Therefore we should better take a drastic turn to re-fix our priorities, reformulate our strategies, reselect our programmes and reconstruct our plans so as to make our development move rural oriented, congenial to the micro-level needs of the people, akin to the overall development and compatible to the extenuation of economic disparities. This will bring about fast agricultural development, uplift of village life and revival of village industries, artistry & handicraft to check the massive rural-urban migration. As regards to the check on high population growth the prevailing family planning programme has been proved insufficient and incomplete. To form a complete and adequately effective family planning programme we should go in full details of why a child is born.
The factors making a child take birth can be grouped under three heads as (1) biological factor, (2) socio-cultural and religious factors and (3) economic factors.
1-Biological Factor :-
Sex is a prominent biological need of any creature in this world. Man is not an exception. Therefore sexual gratification is but naturally tended to and thereby man and woman indulge in sexual intercourse. The coitus makes the female counterpart conceive even if there is no intention for conception. As a result thereof the child is born as a by-product of sexual gratification. The best way of checking such an unintentional child birth as a result of sexual intercourse is either the use of contraceptives or the termination of pregnancy. The latter is painful, some times unethical, expensive and risky too. Therefore use of contraceptives is more preferable. Though being easier, more acceptable and safer way of preventing undesired pregnancy, the effectiveness of contraceptives in controlling birth rate depends but upon the knowledge of the people about contraceptives, availability of contraceptives, quality of contraceptives and the purpose of coitus whether it is purely for gratification or conception also is intended there. Contraceptives are very much effective to check unwanted pregnancy. There is a wide range of contraceptives in vogue.
The condom as mechanical contraceptive among males and the pills as oral contraceptive among females have been proved most acceptable, commonly used and comfortable due to the fact that other contraceptives have limitations and side effects their own. During 2003-04 condoms were used by 17.83 million males and pills were used by 8.75 million females. Surgical operations were undergone by 4.88 million males/females and IUCD implantation was conducted to 6.08 million females. These figures manifest why condom has become synonymous to contraceptive for a common man and woman, respectively. All the same, the barrier contraceptives and IUCS have the main drawback that their application needs a specified time period before starting intercourse. Therefore, in an unplanned and rather instant sex, that is generally performed in the families where separate accommodation is not available for husband-wife coition, there is no room for the use of barrier and IUCS contraceptives. That is why in slums or poor families where only one bedroom accommodation is available for the whole family, the barrier contraceptives or IUCS are not properly responding in birth control. Therefore, other types of contraceptives should be made prevail in slums and poor localities. The unintended child-birth on account of purely the biological factor can well be checked by making contraceptives so affluently prevail that in every case of coitus for mere gratification the use of a suitable contraceptive is made sure.
2- Socio-cultural & Religious Factors :-
Man is a social being and, therefore, social customs, cultural traditions and religious faiths play dominant role in his life especially in poor and backward communities. Social factors inducing a person to have more sons are - (i) Social security and (ii) Religious faiths. Sons are believed to be the reliable means of social security of the family for two reasons - (a) they care their old, physically wasted and worn out parents and (b) They provide safety to the family in case of conflicts or demise of some of them. The tendency of producing more sons due to the (a) factor can be limited to great extent by old-age-house system and the (b) factor can be made idle through social security services like life insurance, dependent minors allowance, unemployment allowance etc. As regards to the religious faiths, there are two main beliefs. One speaks of higher spiritual gain or place in heaven after death for a person having more sons and the second relates the production of more children to religious service and the duty of woman, that is to increase progeny, for which she is believed to be sent by God. These two beliefs contribute a lot in increasing the number of child-births especially among backward people. However education or literacy is advocated to be instrumental in the extinction of such beliefs from people's mind. But poverty alleviation is the most powerful instrument to change thinking of the people. Economically sound man generally dares to break religious orthodoxy for enjoying the materialistic life since economic means or res entice him towards the fascinating mirth of luxury. This temptation makes him come out of religious harness and prefer the real worldly life to the imaginary unworldly life in Elysium of heaven. Apart from economic uplift certain schemes or programmes launched by government may be proved rather fruitful in instilling the importance of small family in the people's mind. Some examples are as under.
(1) Fair-price-shop facility, if given on the basis of family units in a way that even a divided family would be considered as a single family unit during survival of the pre-division head of the family, will certainly attract people towards small family size provided the facility covers almost all consumable items for a member family unit and that too at a very low price in comparison to the market price.
(2) Various schemes of bounties, subsidies or economic helps for poor if launched on the per undivided family unit basis instead of per capita or per divided family unit, will comparatively benefit more to small families whereby big families will be discouraged.
(3) Among the poverty stricken people who mainly contribute to high birth rate, some are found fully adopting family planning. Such persons having only one or two children and being sterilized, may be taken out and established as poor elites by providing them reservation and priority in various activities like employment, education, bank loans, candidature in local body elections etc. These elites will become models for their community and will lead the community. Then other persons of the community will take them as their role models and will follow them. These elites can thus better instill the advantage of small family through demonstration effect among the people.
3-Economic Factors :-
Economic factors are very much effective factors like biological factors. A pressing economic need is similar to an acute lust in immensity. A person in acute economic privation leaves off even the deeply instilled social, cultural or some times biological allurements too for economic gains; similarly as in the state of aggravated sexual excitement he can forsake all social, cultural or economic gains for sexual gratification. Economic support in old age and poverty are the two main economic factors making people tend to produce more children. In old age when a person becomes generally sick, pulled, worn out and non-earning, he becomes dependent on his heirs for food, clothing medical treatment and other expenses. More the sons or heirs he has, lesser will be the share of burden of supporting him. This gives him an impression that old age life is more secured with more children to support. That is why he is tempted to produce more children. The effect of this factor in population growth can be easily subsided by old-age-house system and old age pension scheme. As regards to poverty, it generates three causes of more child-birth as given below.
(1) The currently prevailing media based means of entertainment are out of reach of poor man, on one hand, and these fascinating means have snatched the old, socio-cultural, cheap and some times free entertainment sources like folk dramas, ballad, mummery, street magicians, community chorus, community games, rural fairs, community festivals etc. from the poor, on the other hand. Therefore a poverty stricken person has to search the way of entertainment in sex and that too being circumstantially unprotected whereby child-birth goes on taking place one after one successively. The population increase on account of this factor can be checked by so designing the modern media based means of entertainment that these become easily available to poor people.
(2) In poor families a child becomes earning hand at the age of seven or eight years. As per the family's subsistence level of living the expenditure on the child's looking after is considerably lower than the wage he earns. Therefore the surplus of his earning over his consumption adds to the family income and thus contributes to the uplift of family's standard of living. Moreover the feelings and sentiments regarding education or future welfare of the child droop before the agony of unsatisfied basic needs due to privation. Therefore, a child in a poverty stricken family is proved an asset rather than liability in its stead. This makes a poor man to produce more children. The population increase due to this tendency can be controlled by making the child-labour totally banned and by making the child-education compulsory and free.
(3) There are some types of family occupations where a number of faithful workmen are required. The required manpower, if taken from own family, is proved most suitable and profitable there. If a person is owner of a series of units of small scale or cottage industries, small business units etc. the hired managing persons are generally proved costlier, unfaithful and un-devoted. If a family member is deployed at each such unit the safety and profitability is increased. Similar is the position in a single cottage industry unit where margin of profit is low and hired labour makes the profit uncertain. If family man power instead of hired one is used there the profits become almost preserved on account of devotedness, faithfulness and per need flexible working hours of the working force. Moreover, the wage rate of a family labour is generally lower than that of a hired labour since the cost of living of a member of own family is lower than that of of the family of the hired man. In these circumstances the requirement of labour is intended to meet out by producing more children in the family which contributes to the population increase. This type of population increase is though difficult to be fully checked but, all the same, it can be mitigated to a marked extent by making such occupations joint ventures of more than one family. In addition thereto, for family occupations in the form of small scale or cottage industries, subsidy schemes and market protection schemes may help in increasing the profit margin and preserving the profits whereby the tendency of replacing hired labour by family labour will become lowered.
The whole length of the discussion hereinabove concludes that to alleviate poverty and to solve the unemployment problem of India the development plans and the family planning programme both should be reformed on the linen suggested hereinabove whereby the extra employment opportunities will be generated fast on one hand and population growth will be checked, side by side, in such a way that growth of employment opportunities would considerably exceed the population growth.
