Rapid population growth is detrimental to economic growth as well as the over all socio-economic development of the people.

Exponential growth of human population coupled with modern means to attain high standard of living has resulted in widespread contamination of the environment in different states of India. Unplanned residential areas, mismanagement of domestic solid waste, foul smell, pollution etc. are some of the outcomes of the so-called ‘population boom’.

Rapid population growth is not good for the mankind. It is detrimental to economic growth as well as the over all socio-economic development of the people. It can balloon the burden of poverty, malnutrition and unhygienic environment leading to imbalanced growth of ecology.   This can be better understood from a real-life example of Greater Guwahati. Manipuri Basti, along the Guwahati-Shillong road, is an overcrowded area.

Here the population boom is taking its toll on the niggling problem of obnoxious smell and polluted environs. One can find a good number of urban slums, which are adjacent to this locality. This part of the city is currently generating a huge volume of domestic solid wastee and garbage items.

The impact of population pressure has badly hit the bio-diversity and ecology of North-East India. As a consequence of growing population, the pressure  on land is increasing day by day. There has been a sharp decline in the land-man ratio The per capita availability of cultivatahle land, which was 0.89 hectare in 1950, has sharply come down to 0.31 per hectare m 1995. Also, the size of cropped land has decreased which has adversely affected the priority sector.

Conventional method of cultivatiori, like shifting cultivation or jhumming — widely practised in different hilly slopes of NE slates has disturbed the verdant environment of the region at large. Some jhumia’s, devote a jhum area to a single crop such as rice, cotton, sesame, millet etc. Others mix crops which come to maturity at different times during the year. It is observed that building houses on the hilltops, illegal earth cutting for commercial use and rapid deforestation are crippling the ecological balance of North East Region. One can witness rapid deforestation and large-scale smuggling of forest wealth by smugglers even with the help of forest and security staff.  Unchecked earth cutting in  Khanaapara-Beltola area of the Meghalaya hills, on the outskirts of Guwahati, is another pointer to the wanton exploitation of the ecology. During rainy season red soil comes down blocking the drains causing an artificial flood in Guwahati city.

The swollen rivers of the North- Eastern states render millions of people shelterless and damage standing crops every year. Incessant rains leads to a sharp rise in the level of river Brahmaputra inundating its catchment areas. The world’s largest river island Majuli, in eastern Assam, is in danger of being completely wiped out now.

The entire NE Region is in a seismic zone and receives earthquake shocks of moderate to severe intensity from time to time. The situation has been further aggravated due to landslides caused by high rainfall. Some man-made actions in the form of shifting cultivation and non-scientific commercial exploitation of forests etc. have also accelerated the process of soil erosion in the catchment. The silt brought in the process gets deposited as the river descends into the plains due to sudden reduction in the slope, and with the consequent reduction in the flow velocity and its sediment-carrying capacity. Due to heavy deposition of silt, the river has frequently changed its course.

The NE region constitutes about 3.77 per cent of India’s total population as per the Census of India 2001. The various issues that these states are experiencing include relatively low economic growth rate, higher growth rate of population, and higher influx of internal and external migration.

On the demographic front, the Census of India 2001 reveals that the literary level in NE states is higher than the national average. The decadal growth rate in many of these states is also higher than the national average.

The rapid population growth has a variety of consequences. Population grows fastest in the world’s poorest countries. High fertility rates have historically been strongly correlated with poverty and high childhood mortality rates. Falling fertility rates are generally associated with improved standards of living, increased life expectancy and lowered infant mortality. Overpopulation and poverty have long been associated with increased death and disease. Poverty is a condition of chronic deprivation and need at the family level. Poverty is a major concern of the mankind, because poverty everywhere reduces human beings to a low level of existence. Poor people lack access to enough land and income to meet basic needs. Lack of basic needs results in physical weakness and poor health. Poor health decreases the ability of the poor to work and put them deeper into poverty.  Now, a pertinent question arises here, how unhealthy population growth poses threats to the environment? The effects of a growing population on the environment could be a good deal more serious than the food problems that have received so much attention in the literature inspired by Thomas Robert Malthus, a famous economist and demographer. If the environment is damaged by population pressure, this obviously affects the kind of life we lead, and the possibilities of a ‘diminution in happiness’ can be quite considerable. In dealing with this problem, we have to distinguish  once again between the long and short run. The short-run picture tends to be dominated by the fact that the consumption of food, fuel, and other goods by people in third world countries ia often relatively low, consequendy the impact of population growth in these countries is not, in relative terms, so damaging to the global environment. But the problems of the local environment can, of course, be serious in any developing economies.

|  Headlines  |  Editorial   | From Other Publications  |
|  Travel Column   |   News Briefs  |
| OT Main Page | Nena  Home Page  |