NEW DELHI, Feb 2 (Reuter) - India, the world's second most populous nation, has succeeded in slowing population growth and the trend is expected to continue as people realise the benefits of raising smaller families, analysts said on Sunday.
"In the next few years, our population (growth rate) will decline faster than what we are anticipating," D.B. Gupta, a demographer with the Institute of Economic Growth, told Reuters.
Experts said the change was linked to higher media exposure of the advantages of smaller families.
"The concept of more-children-means-more-hands-to-earn (once) ruled the roost in a country where almost 30 percent of the people live in abject poverty," said an official with the Family Planning Association of India, who asked not to be named.
The government said on Thursday the population grew to 936 million in 1996/97 (April-March) from 920 million a year earlier.
"In the previous years, the figure (of annual growth) used to waver between 18 and 19 million. So, an increase of 16 million in 1996 shows that...the Welfare Ministry and its policies are on the right track," Gupta said.
Officals say government measures to encourage smaller families include literacy campaigns, particularly among women, and allowing an active role by voluntary organisations to educate rural Indians on the benefits of having fewer children. The organisations often use folk lore and music to help increase awareness about family planning.
India's current population of 936 million is second only to China's 1.2 billion. The rate of population growth, 2.1 percent per annum in the decade between 1980 to 1990, fell to 1.8 percent in the period 1990-94, according to a World Bank report.
Gupta dismissed the forecasts of some demographers who say that India's population will overtake China's by 2040.
"Such forcasts are rather gloomy and not really tenable if one takes into account the economic, social, cultural and behavioural factors," Gupta said.
India conducts a census every 10 years. The population was 548 million in 1971, 683 million in 1981 and 846 million in 1991.
Population experts say a wider media exposure generated by India's economic reforms launched in 1991 is helping to slow population growth.
"The aspirations of people to lead a better life after being exposed to a widely accessible electronic media is making the them realise the virtues of a small family," said G.K. Chadha, a professor at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.
"Going by the figures, it does seem that some brakes have been applied and a further slowdown is only logical," he said. India in 1951 was the first country to introduce a family planning programme but it failed to have much impact on millions of illiterate people. In 1977, then prime minister Indira Gandhi led her Congress party to a humiliating electoral defeat widely linked to efforts to force a sterilisation programme during her two preceding years of emergency rule.
In a nation where child marriages are still common in some rural areas despite a legal ban, social trends were changing to help family planning, Gupta said.
"The marriageable age for girls has increased to around 17.8 years as compared to merely 17 earlier. Late marriage means a smaller fertility period," he said.
Indian laws say that men cannot marry before 21 and women before 18.