The national government made clear in several forums that it opposed coercion in family planning, including in parliament, where it said it did not support such policies, the report added.
“Sex-selective abortion, preference for male children, denying the paternity of female children, prenatal sex determination, and violence against women for giving birth to girl children will be on the rise,” one commentator is quoted in the report as saying. In India, when some states proposed a two-child policy in 2021, including financial incentives for sterilization and penalties, such as lost benefits, commentators pointed to the harmful impacts of similar policies. In particular, it pointed to governments trying to influence fertility rates through family planning targets and policies, which can fuel gender-based forms of discrimination. In its report, UNFPA said that while reaching the milestone of 8 billion people on the planet was a reminder that more people are living longer, healthier lives, concerns over the number had increased anxiety among governments and led more to adopt policies aimed at influencing fertility rates. “There will be social unrest if it cannot create enough employment in a relatively short period of time.”
“India is sitting on a time bomb,” Chandrasekhar Sripada, professor of organizational behavior at the Indian School of Business, told CNN earlier this year. By comparison, the rates for China and the United States stood at 68% and 61% respectively in the same year. India’s labor force participation rate, an estimation of the active workforce and people looking for work, stood at 46%, which is among the lowest in Asia, according to 2021 data from the World Bank. Already, data show a growing number of Indians are not even looking for work, given the lack of opportunities and low wages. This number is expected to hit more than 1 billion over the next decade, according to the Indian government.īut these numbers could become a liability if policymakers do not create enough jobs, experts warned. India’s working-age population stands at more than 900 million, according to 2021 data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “A country’s demographic dividend depends not only on the total number, but also on the quality not only on the population, but also on the talent,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Wednesday when asked about the latest UN projection.
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