The Hindu Business Line : Population grows North

The latest evidence of the disparity in socio-economic indicators among States comes from the latest Census of India's Sample Registration System (SRS) Bulletin that provides data for 2004. The southern States have done better, as always, than the so-called BIMARU States on the critical issue of population growth. At 0.96 per cent and 0.91 per cent Tamil Nadu and Kerala, for instance, have recorded population growth well below the national average of 1.6 per cent. In sharp contrast for the northern States such as Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh the rate was 2.2 per cent with Madhya Pradesh a shade better at 2.06 per cent. The SRS data for the previous years suggest a dynamism in population reduction in the South that is missing in the North. For instance, the rate of growth in Andhra Pradesh fell from 1.35 per cent in 1999 to 1.2 per cent in 2004; in Tamil Nadu the current rate represents a decline from the 1.13 per cent in 1999. Conversely, the rate accelerated in Bihar to its present level from 2.14 per cent whereas in Rajasthan it remained more or less the same till 2004.

The biannual data reflect a failure of policy specifically designed to curb population growth. After the National Population Policy was framed by a committee under Dr M. S. Swaminathan, the approach to family planning became more de-centralised in the mid-1990s. Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh were the first to evolve their own population policies followed by Haryana and Orissa. The core of these policies was the principle that government officials at local levels had to be incentivised to restrict the family size and thus become `role models'. The SRS data vividly reflect the failure of those policies based on demographic concerns alone. That Andhra Pradesh alone, from among those pioneers, managed to lower its population growth suggests that in the absence of other measures, incentives to control family size will not succeed.

For the BIMARU States the role model may not be Maharashtra, with its legacy of industrial activity, or even Kerala, with its remarkable social development, so much as Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The last two, especially AP, created the grounds for an economic resurgence over just the last decade and half — an active bureaucracy committed to growth, a clear idea of the investment most appropriate to the State, an improved infrastructure and a leadership with vision to plan it all. No surprise that the southern States are not just low on population but also high on growth. That is what the BIMAU States need to learn; not just to attract investments but to create their own core competence for growth and the means to realise it. The pressures of high population will ease off on their own.