'Smaller state size key to growth'

The Census 2011 that projected a 17 per cent decline in population growth, has got demographers worried. The focus, they say, should not be on the size of the population, but trimming down the size of the state.

According Ashish Bose, professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, the drop in the growth figure is substantial. He feels the strategy of reducing the size of population has to change. “The solution is better governance and the strategy for it is to cut the size of the state rather than the population,” he says.

To him, the states which have split from bigger ones have fared well in terms of development and population growth decline.

He says governance and low population are two sides of the same coin and cites the example of Kerala where, he says, a village has access to healthcare and education. But in Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh, healthcare facilities are far away from villages and there are less number of roads connecting them.

“The size of the states is so huge that it is difficult to provide enough in all parts,” says Bose. So Bihar, without Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand out of Uttar Pradesh are progressing better. May be there is a good case for Telengana, too. “It is much better than having 200 million people in one state,” he says.

For Bose, the fact that the population decline has not matched the predictions made earlier is not a big issue. “It is a worthless exercise comparing them,” he says. The states, he says, have to be looked at according to the categories they are in. There are states with more than 10 million, less than a million and in between.

The “bimaru” states, which are all more than 10 million, have highest growth rates. He compares this to the southern states. Kerala has the lowest growth rate at 4.9 per cent and other states with better development indicators have low growth rate in population, too, he points out.

He feels that targeted approach to population control, as done in China, was not the way forward for India. “Those who still talk about it are afflicted by a condition, which I call, 'targetitis',” says Bose. The solution he says is better governance and the strategy for it is to cut the size of the state rather than the population.

P M Kulkarni, professor at the Jawahar Lal University agrees with Bose that pressure on birth control is certainly not the way out. He prefers to leave it to time for changes to take effect in attitudes.