Agriculture is the mainstay of Indian economics; 65% of the labor force is involved in farming. Approximately three out of four members of rural work force are dependant on aggriculture, but 60% of the holdings are to small to support the average family. There is a recognised need to increase the productivity of these plots, but most farmers are too poor to invest greatly in fertilizers or agricultural machinery. Also Indias conventional farming methods are a great environmental hazard. Great amounts of topsoil are lost every year because of crop irrigation. Crop irrigation is often excessive which not only increases soil erosion, it has contributed to the serious shortage of accessible or potable water in many areas. Along with the topsoil the hazardous chemicals used in agriculture are washed into local water ways. Because of the poverty in rural areas farmers can hardly ever afford to spend income on the necessary soil restoration.
The common property areas in India, which provide needed wood for fuel and other resources, have declined by more than twenty-five percent since 1970. Because of this and the lack of sufficient land, the expanding rural population is being forced to migrate to cities to find alternitive means of supporting themselves. Meanwhile the expanding urban population has no alternatives.
In rural areas the fertility rate remains higher partially because their is less education here than in the urban areas. Also the strong need for children, the only form of old age security for parents who eventually lose the ability to cultivete their land alone, remains in rural areas. On average, rural women have at least one more child during their lifetime than urban women.
In the urban ares the pollution problems are constantly on the rise. Presently there are inaddequate sewage systems which further limit the painfully limited clean water supply. Also constant industrial expansion, charicterized by short term profit, leads to increased toxic emissions which further limit safe environments.
Throughout the 1980's economic expansion was estimated at 5% anually. At present the industrial expansion rate is approximately 7%. Since the eighties there has been a consistant and significant increase in per capita private consumption. Often environmental development is equated with decline in fertility rates; since this is what global surveys display. Yet other social factors play large roles and there is clearly no threshold level of economic development that causes the shift to fertility decline. Apparently the present economic expansion is mainly influencing the standards of living in India's small middle class of 200 milloin people. According to the typical socio-economic patterns this class is quickly decreasing their reproductive rate. Yet the rest of the population, especially in rural areas where the standard of living is improving the slowest, fertilty declines are not nearly as rapid.
In the urban sectors the standard of living has increased to the extent that 84% of India's villages are now electrified. With this comercial energy consumption in India also increased; by four times from 1970 to 1991. Only 1.8% of India's electricity is produced by nuclear fission. The rest is mainly produced through coal burning. This and rapidly growing atomotive emissions combine for an internationally recognised (and feared) level of carbon dioxide emissions.
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Ian Dorresteyn
Copyright © Ian Dorresteyn, 1996