“Birth rate in India is very high.” Mention two reasons in support of the statement.

1. EARLY MARRIAGE, especially of girls, which lengthens the child-bearing period and so increases the number of children per couple.
2. ILLITERACY AND LACK OF AWARENESS about family planning and contraception, together with the preference for a male child, which leads couples to continue having children until a son is born.

Two reasons, one mark each, and they should be different in kind — one social custom, one about awareness.

Other acceptable reasons: poverty, where children are regarded as earning hands; the joint family system, which spreads the cost of raising children; religious and traditional beliefs opposing contraception; and high infant mortality, which encourages parents to have more children in the expectation of losing some.

THE CHAPTER’S CENTRAL POINT, worth stating: the population explosion in India is caused by a birth rate that has stayed high while the DEATH RATE has fallen sharply with better medicine and sanitation. The gap between the two is the growth — which is why population programmes work on the birth rate.