India has claimed recently to be one of the youngest work force among the
world and what going to happen when these youngest population get retirement?
Does government has any retirement plan for these old age senior citizens in
year 2050? If they have not obtained proper retirement benefits and regular
income source, how these retirements people going to manage their life?
The Government has almost stop to initiate the family planning programs and
focusing on developing the infrastructures and truing to stabilize their economy
but without seeing the upcoming collateral damage of the exploitation of
environment and natural resources. People have cornered the endangered animals
in to extinction and the forestry lands are becoming farming lands in common
and, other side farming lands becoming residential plots. What else government
plan that can retain the natural resources other controlling the human
population through the family planning initiatives when there were no
significant environmental amendments acts in the country over 20 years.
The First country initiated the National Program for Family Planning
India is the first country in the world that started the national programs
for family planning in 1958 and the aforesaid programs has been successfully
implemented in the country until 1990s but today the country has lost its
track and taking a wrong turn by following the neighboring countries that
far different in its geographic size, natural resources in tact to the
population.
Three decades before Indian Government has taken effective initiatives about
the family planning by advertisements such as:
"We Two & Ours Two", then after some years they even advertise, "We Two &
Ours One" and used to publish its advertisements about the contraception
methods in every media including TV, radio and newspapers.
The Men and Women were recommended going through Contraception implants
after their first child and Government of India dedicated their entire
resources for such initiatives and very serious defending the increase of
population exploitation. In fact, Government's such initiatives increased
the awareness to common man and their families about the family planning and
earned significant development in achieving the target family planning,
birth control etc in early 1990s.
Currently, the growth rate of the number of older individuals (age 60 and
older) is three times higher than that of the population as a whole (Giridhar,
Sathyanarayana et al. 2014).
Three dominant demographic processes drive the growing share of older
Indians: declining fertility rates due to improved access to contraceptives,
increasing age at marriage, particularly among women, and declining infant
mortality; increasing longevity because of advances in medicine, public
health, nutrition, and sanitation; and large cohorts advancing to older ages
(Bloom, Hu et al. 2014).
India's initiatives for saving the Environmentin 1990s
The Government of India took reasonable attempts to protect the environment,
to preserve the forest and wild life in early 1990 but sadly, government has
not paid significant amendments either to control the human population, nor
control the human intervention to the forest by appropriate acts over 3
decades.
But shockingly, the above said family control initiatives has been
dropped by the Government of India due to various reasons likely unstable
governments in central, national defense issues at borders, increasing
demand to improve economic stability by providing education, by increasing
industrialization, by increasing the armed force but ultimately the
Government has lost to stop the exploited population, which make them
luminously forgotten the root cause of all issues in one and final objective
mission "family planning" and "birth control".
Additionally, infrastructure in India needs to be elderly and handicapped
friendly. As India continues to modernize its infrastructure, designing
spaces for an aging population will involve building structures, adapting
transportation, and implementing services that meet the needs of older
adults and that address the principles of inclusivity, accessibility, and
connectivity (World Health Organization 2007).
This effort has started with Kolkata, Udaipur, and New Delhi becoming members of the WHO Age- 18 Friendly
World Global Network (Sinha 2012, World Health Organization Centre for
Health Development 2015), a network committed to sharing best practices in
urban healthy aging and promoting age-friendly infrastructure components
such as accessible buildings and public transit, customer service that is
friendly to older adults, and appropriate public places for walking and
resting (World Health Organization 2007).
With both urban and rural
environments that often pose major mobility challenges to older adults and
persons with disabilities, more Indian states and cities need to realize the
importance of a built environment accessible to the aging population.
- No legislative amendments in Environmental Acts over 3 decades
The encroachments towards forest land are uncontrolled for the last 30 years
where the natural resources of the country has been put to test and no
legislative amendments for decades. The forest land of the country is 19.44% in
year 1991 as per the state of forest report 1991 and that is reduced to 5%within
the last 30 years. The environment protection act came into force in India from
1986 to protect the environment and preserve the forest and animal pouches.
The
aforesaid law has been amended in 1991 and the said law has not been reviewed,
has not been revised for over 30 years and Most of the sections in the aforesaid
act are quiet outdated. The Government of India has also amended Forest
Conversation Act 1980, in Amendment 1991 where government made provisions for
allowing non-forest activities to set transmission lines, exploration and
hydro-electric projects with union government approval.
The Air Act 1981 came in
to force in year 1981 to prevent air pollution and amended in 1987 and no other
laws has been amended for the last 30 years, other than Wild life (Protection)
Act 1972 with 7 amendment in total.
- Government on developing the Industry & Infrastructure
On the other side, government taking aggressive initiates in developing
infrastructure and where they build road ways, bridges, tunnels and other
development projects by taking the free lands at the forest area and formers
lands in villages that cause more damages to environment and no significant
enforcement are in practice to regulate any encroachments for the last 3
decades.
Recommendations for publicly financed health insurance and provision of free
drugs and diagnostic services are a part of India's 2012– 2017 five-year plan,
and in January of 2015 the new government's Finance Ministry released a draft
National Health Policy (NHP) that states that "India would need to develop its
own cost effective and culturally appropriate approach […] to addressing the
health and care needs of the elderly," which necessarily includes community and
family support and meets the need for palliative and end-of-life care. It also
increases provision of national tax revenue to individual states and devolves
responsibility for health care program design and delivery to state governments
(Government of India 2015, Reddy 2015). However, due to resource constraints,
the government has drastically cut back on proposed spending for the plan,
leaving these "national health assurance" provisions in doubt (Kalra 2015).
At the present time, however, more than 70% of older Indian workers surveyed
cited economic necessity, rather than personal preference, as their main reason
for remaining in the workforce, indicating a high level of income insecurity (Alam,
James et al. 2012).
In the 2010 Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI pilot) study of about 1,500
older adults (adults 45 and up in rural and urban areas and their spouses
irrespective of age) in four states, a full 69% of respondents reported getting
no physical exercise; lack of exercise increased with age and was significantly
more prevalent among females than males (Arokiasamy, Bloom et al. 2012).
. This is highly significant because in many Indian communities, and
particularly under traditional Hindu law, widowed women have historically
suffered from social stigmatization and discrimination, although evidence exists
for improvement in the treatment of widows in the country as a whole (Kadoya and
Yin 2012)
This article is written to grab the attention of commonpublic as well as the
government for taking appropriate measures to protect the nature and whereas
they has no other plan to take initiative in family planning to the country and
therefore human population will not exploit the rest of the natural resources.
India is the seventh largest country in the world and second largest count in
Asia by covering 3,287,263 square kilometers and having land size around
2,973,190 square kilo meters. The county has its size big and considered to be
subcontinent but, in such subcontinent has been exploited by the population with
h 1 man: 0.002124 square kill meter and carrying 1400 million populations. India
only has 2% of land in the world but now carrying 20% population of the world.
India has covered with 40% of forest during 1947, but the forest land has been
reduced to 21% in 2017. The deforestation has not only reducing the natural
resources but also decreasing the numbers of endangered animals & species.
Ratio between skilled & unskilled workforcein India
India is one of the 54 commonwealth countries but having 50% of the population
of the entire commonwealth nations within its land space. The Government of
India has admitted in year 2017that they have only 2% of skilled work force
among the 400 million of young population and the rest 98% of population are
going to be end up with a retirement without any pension scheme benefit, without
any social security. The human has no other option to survive within the
affordable area and where he has no other source to exploit the resource by
deforestation and industrialization.
Therefore, India may have maxim chance by end up with unemployment due to huge
unskilled population;even face civil supply shortages in near future. The
Government of India has dreams to become to wipe of poverty by education,
employment but these educational initiative alone would not save the country and
government has to find out a solution to save the natural resources such as
forestry, wild life and river banks in order to save their natural resources.
The government of India has to pay significant importance to retake the lest
mission " the family control planning" and allot appropriate budget and also
amend the environment laws for the modern India and rid off the forest
encouragements.
A study in India's southern states reports that the prevalence of mental illness
among older adults may be as high as 27%, with depression, anxiety, bipolar
disorder, dementia, and alcohol dependence predominating (Reddy, Gupta et al.
2013). Meanwhile, data from India's National Sample
Survey (NSS) suggest a significant positive correlation between mental illness
prevalence and age, especially in rural areas (Lakhan and Ekundayo 2015).
- Populationand Infrastructure Developments cause extinction of endangered
animals & deforestation.
Surprisingly the increasing in population that has earned an accidental benefits
to India such as world's youngest work force, increasing in purchase capacity,
increasing in land price, increasing export, increasing imports, world's largest
democratic & republic country Reconginzation etc.
The aforesaid such unexpected
advantages India has lost its track to control its population and continue to
concentrate in improving its infrastructure, its nuclear power, its space
research and satellite and other technological developments to sustain its
creditability but has not allotted significant budget for the prime mission
"Family Planning & Birth Control".
The Government has funded for massive
infrastructures in the last three and they build high ways roads, bridges,
trains and underground tunnels, industrial parks across the country and these
infrastructure development never ends the demand of the increasing population
and no new environment laws, no amendments to existing laws has empower these
activities.
The mountain forests such as western guards and eastern guards at southern part
India has been exploited by the people encroachments due to high population and
also severely damaged due to expansion of highways authority of India. The
Government bureaucrats like IAS (Indian Administrative Service), IPS (Indian
Police Service), IRS (Indian Revenue Service), IFS (Indian Forest Service) like
officials has been groomed with an objective better administrative aspects to
serve the society, but has not been trained for serving the environment but they
are appointed for national missions such as Population control, Environment
development and Protecting Endangered species without any precious training
program about the mission.
The officials has capacity to take enforcement
against the any violation in their jurisdiction but they unable to deny the
orders by the ministries and they could not exercise their powers against the
ruling parties and they amicably do follow ministers.
- Retirement Schemes in India
Only Politicians and Government employees are enjoying the pensions through
various schemes but however, The Government employees who joined after 2004 in
the government service are not entitled for Employment Pension scheme in India.
The Employment Pension Scheme is a part of Employment Provident Fund (EPF) in
Private organizations in India; Employees who may eligible for EPF when receive
basic salary over 15,000/- whereas the employers are compelled for their
contribution and therefore most of employers purposely evading the EPF
contribution by classifying their employees basic salary below Rs. 15,000/- and
increase the Daily Allowance, Accommodation Allowance etc. Almost 94% of the
population in India is working for Private Organizations and not all employees
are eligible for Employment Pension schemes and employees over 20 in an
organization are entitled for employee provident scheme.
Thus, many of the
private employees in the country don't fall under this scheme. Moreever,
Government has also not timely paid the due EPF payments that detected from the
employees & employers. There are no straight forwards procedures in the country
to withdraw the EPF during the employment for any emergency and where there is
lot of hidden forms that no common man can access to the funds.
The Government
doesn't dispense the EPF funds after the retirement age of the employee
automatically and only the people who has been set for availing EPF from the
concerned government department. None of employees could easily withdraw the
aforesaid amount after the retirements and most people quiet and gives up due to
complicated procedures and unusual verification etc.
The left over self employed people and small and medium farmers in the country
has been left with no proper retirement schemes and mostly they used to rely on
their family members on their elderly age. The farmers has been entitled for
pension for only a tune of Rs.3000/- per month under PM Kisan Maandhan Yojana
and the aforesaid money could not even sufficient at all.
Almost the retired
farmers of the country has left with no other option to work until their end of
life and they have no other option for survival to engage some of the activities
likely production related activities that related to farming, or they may
decided to sellout their farming land to real estate for further survival. The
industrialist has looking out these kind of opportunities to convert the farming
lands to industrial lands and neighborhood forest lands has been encouraged by
public for the various reasons.
- The Enforcement oflaw in protecting the Environment
The one and only way for the environment lovers to file a suit in the
appropriate court or ministries for remedy but below challenges are faced and
subsequently the efforts drained without any yield. Therefore these missions
fall under the hands of legislation, but Indian legislator'shas not paid any
initiatives for the last 30 years and last amendment of Environmental Protection
Act 1986 was happened in 1991.
The Ministries is trying to protect the
Politicians properties in the encroachment areas and they only initiates rules
that subject to no action by the administrative and Government of India sadly
has not passed any new laws, has not amended to the existing laws for the past
three decades. India's natural resources has been exploited vastly across the
country whereas People has entered and cultivates in to forestry lands and
reducing the spaces for the animals and when man-animal conflicts, people blame
animals and killed elephants, tigers and other animals.
Since no amendment in
the environment Act, Courts in India could not able to apply the clutches of law
to protect the environment and therefore could not able to protect forestry from
the encroachment of public and it is very common to see the news about the human
and animal conflicts in daily basis and almost endangered animals in the edge of
extinction.
In 2012, for example, only 8% of Indian males aged 60 to 64 were widowed,
compared with 35% of females in this age group. Among adults 80 and older, a
majority of females, more than 60%, had been widowed, compared with just 27% of
males (Desai, Dubey et al. 2015). This is highly significant because in many
Indian communities, and particularly under traditional Hindu law, widowed women
have historically suffered from social stigmatization and discrimination,
although evidence exists for improvement in the treatment of widows in the
country as a whole (Kadoya and Yin 2012).
Most notably, widowed females may
suffer from income insecurity due to inheritance traditions that favor sons over
daughters and insecurity in their living arrangements (Dey, Nambiar et al. 2012,
Sathyanarayana, Kumar et al. 2014). Evidence also indicates that Indian female
widows aged 60 and up suffer from morbidity due to communicable and
noncommunicable diseases at a significantly higher rate—13% more—than do male
widowers in the same age group. Despite this, however, older female widows are
also significantly less likely to engage in health care seeking behavior (Agrawal
and Keshri 2014).
Forgotten the Millennium Goal
The Government of India has been equipped with significant tools with sufficient
funds raised and managed by the administrative departments but, theyhas neither
not spent sufficient money or allot budget for needful family planning
advertisement in media, likely TV, Radio and News Papers, nor its officials for
protecting the environment.
The Government of India tries to compete with China
in globalization era by adopting some of the policies of china to sustain its
economic powers and undermine its family planning policies without proper
feasibility study about the size of land intervention to the country population.
The China and United States are actually has almost same size of land and these
countries has almost setting policies to preserve their natural resources, they
don't set policies unique and not following neighborhood and thus, they save
their country's natural resources and protects its people and environments.
The South Korea, China, USA has over 50% of skilled work force and these
countries has significant retirement benefits including pension schemes and
sufficiently backed up with national social schemes. Therefore,The China has
relaxed their 35 year one-child policies in year 2015 after a deep research
about the area of land intervention with their population. I.e., China's 1.430 billionpopulationsare occupying the entire country nearly a size about 9597000
km² but India's 1.400 billion populations are occupying the entire country
nearly a size about 3287000 km².
India is democratic country has totally dropped
the family planning and started to following the tracks of china and ignored to
take initiatives to controls its population. The aforesaid activities going to
affect the country after 30 years and India may fall under the cruel civil
supply shortage, unemployment and may surrounded with poverty, unless the
government pay attention to take some reasonable initiatives to control the
population like earlier 1990s and protect the natural resources.
References:
- Agrawal, G. and K. Keshri (2014). "Morbidity patterns and health care seeking
behavior among older widows in India." PLoS One 9(4): e94295.
- Alam, M., et al. (2012). Report on the Status of Elderly in Select States of
India, 2011. New Delhi, India, UNFPA India.
- Arokiasamy, P., et al. (2012). Longitudinal aging study in India: Vision,
design, implementation, and preliminary findings. Aging in Asia: findings from
new and emerging data initiatives. J. P. Smith and M. Majmundar. Washington,
D.C., The National Academies Press: 36-74.
- Bloom, D. E., et al. (2014). Longitudinal Aging Study in India: Biomarker Data
Documentation. Boston, Harvard University Program on the Global Demography of
Aging.
- Desai, S., et al. (2015). India Human Development Survey (IHDS). University of
Maryland and National Council of Applied Economic Research. Ann Arbor and New
Delhi, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.
- Dey, S., et al. (2012). "Health of the Elderly in India: Challenges of Access
and Affordability." Aging in Asia: Findings from new and emerging data
initiatives. Panel on policy research and data needs to meet the challenge of
aging in Asia, JP Smith and M. Majmundar, Eds. Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press: 371-386.
- Giridhar, G., et al. (2014). Introduction. Population Ageing in India. G.
Giridhar, K. M. Sathyanarayana, S. Kumar, K. S. James and M. Alam. Delhi,
Cambridge University Press: xvii-xxvi
- Government of India (2015). Draft National Health Policy 2015. New Delhi.
- Lakhan, R. and O. Ekundayo (2015). "National sample survey organization survey
report: An estimation of prevalence of mental illness and its association with
age in India." Neurosciences in Rural Practice 6(1): 51-54.
- Kalra, A. (2015). Exclusive: Modi government puts brakes on universal health
plan. Reuters. New Delhi, Thomson Reuters.
- Kadoya, Y. and T. Yin (2012). Widow discrimination and family care-giving in
India. Osaka, The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka
University
- Kadoya, Y. and T. Yin (2012). Widow discrimination and family care-giving in
India. Osaka, The Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka
University.
- Reddy, V. B., et al. (2013). "Mental Health Issues and Challenges in Inda: A
Review." International Journal of Scientific Research Publications 3(2): 1-3.
- Sinha, K. (2012). Kolkata joins global network for age-friendly cities. The
Times of India. New Delhi, India
- World Health Organization (2007). Global age-friendly cities: A guide, World
Health Organization.
- The skill development updates by Pravalika on Govt of India updates in year 2017
- https://www.mygov.in/newindia/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/newindia301634_1504694260.pdf
- Environmental Protection Act 1986,
https://www.indiacode.nic.in/bitstream/123456789/6196/1/the_environment_protection_act%2C1986.pdf
- Ministry of Home and Family welfare records,
https://main.mohfw.gov.in/sites/default/files/56324455632156323214.pdf
- The land size and countries records data,
https://www.statista.com/statistics/262955/largest-countries-in-the-world/
- The Forest survey India, land recorded in state of forest report 1991,
https://fsi.nic.in/documents/sfr_1991_hindi.pdf
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