Eighty million people are added to world population every year. India’s population at this growth rate, its population is expected to be 1.6 billion by 2050 and the country is set to become the most populous country in the world. During the 20th century the human population has increased three fold, the consumption rate of fossil fuel energy has increased twelve fold and growth in global economy has increased twenty nine fold.

India possesses around 16 percent of world’s population, 15 percent of world’s livestock but only 2.4 percent of world’s land and 1.7 percent of world’s forest stock. The population is multiplying in geometrical proportions. The production of food and services can’t catch up with its demand. The carrying capacity of the earth is finite. Yet another fall-out of over-population is phenomenon of increasing urbanization.

About 20 to 25 percent of urban households in our country live in slums and 52 percent of households have pucca roof their premises and 122 million lack basic sanitation in their homes. The sewerage system covers only 35 percent of the population of class IV cities and 75 percent of the population of class one cities. Changing life styles have resulted in massive increase in the volume of waste, half of which isn’t collected at all. They become breeding ground for host of disease vectors.

Forests store in them billions of tones of carbon-dioxide, deforestation destroys these forest houses. The population explosion accompanied with deforestation is one of the vital factors which are degrading environment. Indeed, when human waste loads on the air, water and land overwhelms the natural processes of assimilation of such wastes, contamination and pollution occur. Our population contributes directly to the environmental situations. As the population grows its direct impact is on natural surroundings that are on land water, air it becomes apparent in various ways. The problems arising from anthropogenic level induce environmental stress which includes the growing loss of biodiversity, increasing green house gas emissions, increasing deforestation worldwide, ozone depletion, and acid rain, loss of top soil and shortage of water as well as food, fuel and wood in many parts of the world.

In India, the people are not enthusiastic about family planning. The rural people are ignorant and illiterate and unable to understand the benefits family planning can confer on them in due course of lime. There are immediate visible and sizable gains either in cash or in kind. Since child labor is the order of the day in India, more children mean more income to the poor socially caste and religious factors are against family planning. One of the most challenging problems facing India today is its ever expanding population at the core of all human problems. It affects every aspect of individual and national life. The only way to overcome the problems is to go effective and immediate population control on war footing bringing down the birth rate. The Government should encourage late marriages, late child bearings. In rural areas families with one child should get more land on lease, contract and are allowed to retain more of the grain produced for free sale. Other facilities should include preferential treatment in getting Medicare, admissions, housing, employment etc.