Education is a key determinant of population growth and human well-being

Benjamin Franklin has rightly said “If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”
One of the more sophisticated arguments against population growth is that it reduces the amount of education that children receive. In this tech-era, education is necessary for all but quality education is more important with the increase in population. The increase in number of youths is of no use unless and until we made them best for the society. So, both – population and education – are equally a cause of concern for the India.

Future trends in global population growth could be significantly affected by improvements in both the quality and quantity of education, particularly female education. Projections of future population trends that do not explicitly include education in their analysis may be flawed,
The President of India, Parnab Mukharjee has also shown his concern about the standard of especially when he says that none of the India Universities figure in top 20 institutions of the world.

Anyhow, in one issue, India is leaving behind and that is population. In the recently released report by United Nations – World Population Prospectus – it has been made clear that by the year 2028, India will become the No.1 country in the world, being the most thickly populated. India will continue to have increase in its population while the graph of China will show a downward trend.

No doubt, there is a little fall in the population increasing rate but it is still lacking behind among the developed countries in sex ratio. It is 945 as against 915 at the global level which shows that social evils like female foeticides are still on the higher side.

On the other hand, there is a little improvement in the literacy rate also but still three-fourth of our population is educated. Out of the total increase of about seven percent in literacy rate in respect of male during the last one decade, there is only 2.3 per cent increase in the case of females. However, the decrease in literacy rate of backward and scheduled castes has raised many questions. But we can well understand as to where the problem is?

Presently, the 15 per cent population in India is under fifteen years of age whereas the youths are more than 55 per cent. In the developed countries like Japan, France, Germany and Britian, the increase rate of population is almost zero but in the coming years, the number of old age persons will increase and working capacity will be reduced. The situation in India is totally reversed. At this stage, it would be difficult to say as to how India would be able to utilize the youths as it will depend upon as to how we train them and use them.

In certain other countries – Brazil, Russian, Indiana, China and South Africa – the birth rate and increase of population is decreasing considerably. In future, only India will be the country, whose youth population will highlight their skill at the global level.

So, instead of worrying about the China, India should worry about as to how our own population will develop as ‘perfect human institution’ and only then we could be successful in include ourselves in the line of ‘socially-cultured institution’ of the world.

In other words, nearly all future population growth will be in the world’s less developed countries, and the poorest of these countries will see the greatest percentage increase.

Our President has rightly pointed out that this was not the case in the past. Between sixth century BC and 12th century AD, our seats of higher learning — Nalanda, Takshashila, Vikramashila, Valabhi, Somapura and Odantapuri — dominated the world. They were visited by knowledge seekers from round the world. But now, many bright Indian students go abroad for higher studies. Nobel laureates Har Gobind Khorana, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Amartya Sen and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan did their graduate or post-graduate studies in Indian universities before they went abroad to pursue higher learning.”
Frankly speaking, education is the true alchemy that can bring India to its next golden age and to improve the standards of higher education, the quality of teachers, the learning capacity of students, and the physical infrastructure need to be improved. In case we failed to take care of the youths for their education and proper development, all these statistics would be reversed with worst results.