Population control cannot be at the expense of demographic imbalance: Yogi
Differences in growth rates of different religious groups (religious demographic imbalance) may cause chaos and anarchy in the country
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Lucknow, Jul 12: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday said the population control program must go ahead successfully but a situation of “population imbalance” should not be allowed to happen because differences in growth rates of different religious groups “may cause chaos and anarchy” in the country.
“When we talk about the family planning/population stabilization (a stage when the size of the population remains unchanged, also called the stage of zero population growth), we have to keep in mind that the population control program must go ahead successfully, but at the same time, a situation of population imbalance should not be allowed to happen,” the chief minister said at the commencement of a program marking the launch of the population stabilization fortnight in Lucknow.
“Differences in growth rates of different religious groups (religious demographic imbalance) may cause chaos and anarchy in the country,” he said. “It should not happen that the percentage of population growth of any one class is more while we work on population control with awareness on the mool nivasi (native residents). People should be made conscious to control the population through efforts of stabilization,” he added. All religions, classes, and sectors should be added equally to the efforts of population stabilization, the chief minister said. He also said programs pertaining to awareness of population stabilization have been running for the past five decades. The population is an achievement of society, but this will remain an achievement only when the society remains healthy and disease-free, he added. “If we have skilled manpower, it is an achievement for the society, but where there are diseases, shortage of resources, and disorder, population explosion becomes a challenge on its own,” he said. The chief minister said that it took lakhs of years for the human population to reach the 100-crore mark but only 183-185 years to go from 100 to 500 crore. “If the growth rate remains this way, by the end of this year, the world population is expected to be 800 crores,” he said. “India has a population of 135-140 crore and Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state with over 24 crore people, which is going to cross the 25-crore mark soon,” he added.
He presented ‘shagun kits’ to newly-weds and launched family planning services through teleconsultation at health and wellness centers across Uttar Pradesh. Mentioning the achievements of Uttar Pradesh in the last five years, the chief minister said that maternal anemia has come down from 51.1% to 45.9%. Full immunization has gone up from 51.1% to over 70% in the last five years. The rate of institutional deliveries, which was 67-68% earlier, is now 84%.