What are the causes of High Birth Rate in India?

While we have succeeded in bringing down our death rate we have not been able to control the birth rate in our country. Come reasons are listed here. 1. Early marriages are one of the major cause for the high birth rate. According to the law it is not permissible for girls to get married before the age of eighteen years and boys before twenty-one years. But in many rural and backward areas people are married early and even child marriages are prevalent. This generally leads to a larger number of children being born. Increase in social awareness is the only way to solve this problem. 2. Poverty and illiteracy are two other factors. Children are seen as additional working hands in poorer families. It is felt that they can contribute to the familys income and also support their parents in their old age. In reality, in a larger family it is harder to provide proper food, nutrition, and education for all the children. Thus, more children are condemned to being illiterate. Illiteracy, especially amongst women again leads to a larger number of children. 3. The preference of a male child is still very strong in our country because of religious beliefs and social conditioning. Even educated people keep on having children, as they want a male child. As we have seen earlier, our country has made remarkable progress in the field of agriculture and industry. However, the unmanageable growth in population has prevented the benefits of this development from reaching all the people. This leads to scarcity of food, shelter, and employment among the people of our country. Thus, the biggest challenge before our country today is to check the population growth.

3 essential causes for High Birth Rate in India

High birth rate is a special feature of all the developing economies. The factors responsible for high birth rate are discussed below. 1. Climatic factor: India is a hot country. In the hot climate girls get puberty at an early age which lengthens the fertility period. In the cold countries, girls get puberty late which reduces their effective period to produce children. In India, this climatic factor along with other socio-economic factors has in a high birth rate. 2. Socio-Cultural Factors: (i) Universal and Early Marriage System: In India universal marriage is a social custom. 76 percent of ladies between the age group 15-44 are married. Since marriage among women is almost universal, birth rate becomes higher. Further, Indian women marry comparatively, at an early age. The average marriage age of women is about 16 years. As the child-bearing capacity is more at an early age, birth rate tends to be higher. (ii) Craze for a male child: In Indian society, more importance is given to the male child as certain religious duties have to be performed only by sons. So they go for more and more child expecting a son to come. This lades to a high birth rate.

(iii) Joint-family System : In India there is joint family system, which induces the young couples to have more children though they are individually not able to support them. An additional child brings no immediate hardship to parents. This is another factor responsible for high birth rate. 3. Economic Factors: (i) Poverty : Some demographers establish a casual relationship between poverty and high birth rate. In poor families children are considered an asset as they add to family income from an early age. Further, a large family acts as a social security for the old age. Besides, it is believed that the reproductive capacity of the poor is intense as sex is the only form of entertainment for them. According to one economist, sexual play is the national play of India. Thus a high birth rate is always associated with poverty of the people. (ii) Illiteracy and Unemployment: In India people are illiterate and ignorant. In 1991, 60 percent of Indian women were illiterate. Further, 68 percent of women were unemployed and confined to four corners of the house. They did not know the benefit of family planning measures. This results in high birth rate. (iii) Partial success of Birth Control Measures: Birth control measures have not been fully successful in India. This is evident from the fact that in 1981, every Indian women in the age group of 15 - 49 years gave birth to 5 children on an average. This partial success of birth control measures is regarded as one of the causes of high birth rate.

In terms of growth of different religious communities, Hindus showed a decline over the previous decade, their population growing by 20% during 1991 and 2001 as compared to 22.8% during 1981-91. Muslim Population Catching Up Fast The Muslim population grew by 29.3% during 1991-2001, compared to 32.9% during 1981-91. According to India's right-wing Hindu organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), if the current trend continues, the population of Muslims in India would equal that of the Hindus by 2051. (See Table 3 ). Hindus Still Majority Out of the total population of 1.028 billion in India as at the 2001 Census, the Hindus were 827 million in number and constituted 80.5% of the population of the country. (See Table 1 ).The Muslim population stood at 138 million comprising 13.4% of the population. (See Table 2 ). A majority of the Hindu population (74%), it was revealed, resides in villages as against 64% in case of Muslims. (See Table 4). Sex Ratio & Literacy Rate The sex ratio or number of females per thousand males for Hindus was estimated at 931. The literacy rate among Hindus at 65.1% is better than the national average (64.8%) for all religious groups combined. The female literacy rate among the Hindus was 53.2%. The highest literacy rate among the females was recorded among the Jains (90.6%). These statistics were revealed in a report entitled "2001 Census Data On Religion" released in September 2004. (March 2002) The annual count of births in India over the last few years has provided increasing evidence of a slowdown in the decline of the birth rate of the world's second most populous country. Vital rates from the country's Sample Registration System, which have just become available for 2000, confirm what has recently been suspected: Fertility decline has reached a classic "plateau," with the downturn coming to an end, at least for now. This development is particularly noteworthy in light of the Expert Group Meeting on Completing the Fertility Transition, held March 11 to 14 by the United Nations Population Division. The conference focused on the prospects for fertility decline in countries with intermediate levels of birth rates those where couples have an average of fewer than five children but more than the 2.1 level required to "replace" themselves in the population. Such countries include India, Indonesia, and Brazil. The conference discussed whether birth rates in these countries would decline to 2.1 children per couple, level out above it, or decline even further. In the case of India, some in the expert group remarked that this country of roughly 1.1 billion people is a case where birth rates at the state level are particularly important given the wide variations among the populous northern states and the effect those states have on the national rate. India has the world's oldest population policy, having recognized rapid population growth as a serious national concern as early as 1952. At that time, women in India averaged about six lifetime births. With mortality rates falling, particularly maternal and infant rates, India's population, which was about 350 million at Independence in 1948, was growing at an ever-increasing rate. Since the inception of India's population policy, fertility has fallen in fits and starts. By 2000, women were having an average of about 3.3 children. As has often been observed, a good part of the national fertility decline occurred in the southern states, which generally have higher rates of literacy and education, along with greater equality for women. In the graph, one such example is Tamil Nadu a state where birth rates have declined to about two children per woman, but which also started from a lower level.

Birth Rate Decline Stops in India, 19712000

* In late 2000, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh were each split into two states. Rates and populations shown above are pre-breakup. Source: Registrar General of India, Sample Registration System Bulletin 35, no. 2.

Many agree that future fertility decline in India must come from the large and highly illiterate northern states in the socalled "Hindi belt." In the graph, birth rates for Uttar Pradesh (population of 175 million at the 2001 Census), Bihar (110 million), and Madhya Pradesh (81 million), along with Gujarat (51 million) are shown as representative examples. Here, the slowdown in the decline is evident, and a similar conclusion could be reached for major states such as Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and West Bengal, among others. India is among the very few developing countries with birth, death, and infant mortality rates available annually. The Sample Registration System surveys nearly 7,000 rural and urban sampling units monthly to ascertain the number of births and deaths. While some undercounting is likely, this system, which became fully operational in the early 1970s, is now widely accepted as an invaluable indicator of demographic trends in the country. India's National Population Policy 2000 calls for the country's fertility to reach the "replacement level" of about 2.1 children by 2010 so that population growth would eventually reach zero. But for this to happen, there must be an accelerated fertility decline in the high-fertility states of the north. There is a key point here: if significant fertility decline does not resume, the populations of these large states will grow more rapidly, gaining an ever-increasing share of the national population. In that event, fertility could even rise, a possibility that has not yet caught the attention of planners. What are the prospects? Is fertility decline to replacement level becoming a distant dream in India? Certainly, fertility decline moves in differing patterns (notice the definite plateau in the rate for all-India in the 1980s, following the unpopular sterilization campaigns of the late 1970s), but there has been a noticeable tendency for high-fertility countries to decline fairly rapidly from those high levels and then "stall" at medium levels. Recent examples of this are Bangladesh, Egypt, and Turkey. If this proves to be India's fertility future, population projections will have to be rewritten once again.