It was music to the people of the Northeast region when a Union minister said that ‘the prime reason behind the lack of development in the Northeast was the less number of Parliamentarians from the region.’ According to Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, number of Parliamentarians from Northeast should increase otherwise the region won’t develop. Well, it is a bad policy to take the size of population into account in the distribution of the number of law makers. An area is sized down to various parts or constituencies when its population becomes too thick.Because of this basis the state of Uttar Pradesh with the total area of 2, 43, 286 sq.km has 80 Lok Sabha MPs while the seven states of the Northeast—Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Assam, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram whose total area is 2, 55, 657 sq. km—are represented by just 24 Lok Sabha MPs. Now, find out the justification for the fact that total amount of MPs’ Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) of 80 MPs is utilized in the smaller Uttar Pradesh when the same scheme of 24 MPs are spent in the bigger region of the Northeast. There may not be a better factor to encourage the population race than this basis. Faulty strategy such as this (number of MPs based on population alone) will invite bleaker situation—spadework to address the development imbalance of the country will bear little or no results. Note this—1.27 billion (127, 42, 39, 769) and counting, thanks to the ridiculous policy. We are going to surpass China (1.39 billion) in 35 years time “if current growth rates continue,” according to the Jansankhya Sthirata Kosh or National Population Stabilisation Fund (NPSF), an autonomous body under the Union Health Ministry as revealed on World Population Day (July 11). There have been other studies which have projected that India’s population will surpass China by 2025. Now, India’s population constitutes 17.25% of global population. Just little over 4 years ago (2011 census) the population of India was 1.21 billion. The NPSF report also said that the population of our country is equal to the combined population of USA, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Japan. The NPSF data further said that the population of Uttar Pradesh is almost that of Brazil, the fifth most populous country in the world.
