When Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath chose the occasion of World Population Day on July 11 to announce a new state population policy, there normally should have been no quarrel about it. After all, the state is India’s most populous, harbouring nearly 200 million people (as per Census 2011) or 17 per cent of India’s population. If it were to become a nation, Uttar Pradesh would have the fifth largest population in the world.
So instead of welcoming a policy to control the state’s burgeoning population, why was there such a storm over Yogi’s announcement? Sure, some of the birth control measures are coercive. While pushing for a two-child policy per couple, the state plans to introduce both incentives and disincentives to ensure its implementation. In terms of incentives, government servants adopting the two-child norms would get two additional increments during their service apart from being eligible for maternity or paternity leave for 12 months with full salar
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-Sidharth Nath Singh
Any change in the population policy of the country’s most populous state is bound to be a big deal, but it is not a surprising one. With 240 million people, Uttar Pradesh has 16% of India’s total population and is home to every sixth Indian. If it was a separate country, it would be the fifth largest in the world by population, just behind China, India, US and Indonesia, and bigger than Pakistan and Brazil.
We, as a country, have already been warned of a ‘population explosion’ and it is deemed that the continuous increase in the state’s population will result in a dystopian future as population growth tends to outpace and stifle economic growth. Therefore, an essential part of the solution to this predicament is to have a small family.
2020 Progress Report: Lao PDR - United Nations Partnership Framework 2017-2021, A Partnership for Sustainable Development
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Executive Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic that erupted in 2020 brought significant disruption to Lao PDR but with a fortunate low caseload to date the impact has primarily been socio-economic. Since March, the UN system and international partners have rallied to support the country in its COVID-19 response. The UN’s assistance covered both preparedness and response, including technical and financial support, procurement and logistics services for personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical equipment and supplies, data analysis and impact assessments, policy advice, programme interventions, capacity building as well as the provision of information and communications technology (ICT) and other equipment to ensure business continuity. A Socio-Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA), building on a number of joint surveys and rapid impact assessments of COVID-1